What an incredible experience music directing GODSPELL at the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan was! We sold close to a thousand seats in one weekend–no small feat–and received rave reviews from those in attendance, including the one below from a patron who was moved to write a letter to the editor of the Sheboygan Press! I am so proud of the students of mine in the cast: Marielle Schuchardt, Casey Campbell, and Danielle Rammer, as well as the members of my band, with whom I played piano for this production. Director Simon Provan, an Equity actor, was an absolute delight to work with. Here is the text of the letter to the editor, and the link to the online Press follows:

             “The University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan went above and beyond expectations with its recent production of “Godspell.” At times, the audience was louder with laughter and applause than the performers. I would compare “Godspell” to the off-Broadway theaters in New York, it was that terrific. I would like to take this opportunity to give the cast and crew a big “God Bless.”  Thank you for sharing your talents with our community.” 
              Phyllis Welsch, Sheboygan

http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20120408/SHE0601/204080315/Letters-UW-Sheboygan-s-Godspell-outstanding?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs

In other news, student Caitlin Barclay was awarded a $10,000 merit scholarship to pursue her studies in voice at Carthage College by the Kohler Foundation. She was one of five Sheboygan high school senior finalists competing for $60,000 in scholarships sponsored by the Kohler Foundation:
http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20110428/SHE04/104280356/Top-high-school-musicians-will-perform-Sunday-Kohler-Arts-Center-Senior-Honor-Recital

2010-2011 OPERA for ALL:

I’ll never forget the unexpected response I and my teaching partner, Chicago Opera Theatre Education Director Linden Christ, received last year after inviting Opera for All elementary school students to participate in a creative project intended to enhance their understanding of an opera plot.

We instructed students to make a collage of a scene from the opera, and showed them an example. We presented them with the materials creative dreams are made of: colorful construction paper, glitter, sticky “jewels”, patterned backgrounds, 64 Crayolas, magazines to cut . . .items my inner child found tantalizing, but which these kids found perplexing. “What do we do?” they said, confusion and very real anxiety evident in their faces and voices. “Is this right?” they asked, holding up forlorn, virtually naked pieces of paper or results that were exact copies of the example we provided.

 The kids didn’t know how, were afraid to, create.

 As many of us know, “teaching to the test” is now the MO of our school system. It’s a well-intentioned mindset, unavoidable in schools that are designated as failing. Of course, some standards are necessary so that teachers and students can assess their progress towards basic learning benchmarks, and tests are a traditional way of measuring mastery.

At the same time, however, arts curriculums, the impact of which is less easily quantified, are increasingly cut, viewed as fluff compared to reading, writing, and arithmetic, especially since many students are reaching high school age without competencies in those vital skills.

Nonetheless, that anxious, tragic response, coming from 5^th and 6^th graders, their need to be told exactly what to do, and, especially, their initially negative emotional reaction to what should have been a joyous activity, all led me to question their ultimate ability, basic skills notwithstanding, to participate as adults in an economy that has moved away from manufacturing and towards innovation.

Now more than ever, our kids need experience in creative, imaginative brainwork. How many job ads read: Wanted: someone who thinks inside the box? Wanted: workers who require constant and comprehensive direction?

This year, we asked Opera for All students to increase their involvement in the creative process. In cooperation with CAPE guest artists Adam Busch, Sonja Henderson, and the late great Mary Scruggs of Second City, we guided them through lyric writing, composing, staging/choreography, and props construction. We learned to ask kids at every step of the way; What do you think?

And at first, they didn’t have answers. How do I play with words in a way that leads to rhymed couplets? Why should one pitch be preferable to any other pitch in this line of a song? What gesture represents excitement? What is brainstorming?

The students eventually realized that there were no right answers; only exciting possibilities. They learned how to ask, not: “Is this right?”, but rather: “What if. . .?”

And then we could hardly keep up with the flow of enthusiastic creation. 

Although it would often have been easier, and faster, to just tell the kids exactly what to do, allowing them to create the opera themselves has resulted in enthusiastic participation, a faster learning curve, and artistic authenticity and integrity.

If creative initiative, our essential intellectual vitality, is repeatedly stifled (as I fear it may be by elimination of arts curriculums and “teaching to the test”), learning becomes rote memorization and mandated drudgery, rather than independent discovery. Children may not learn how to learn, given that so much of learning comes either from asking: How? Why? What if? or from the desire to have the ability to find one’s own answers through reading, writing, and artithmetic. Or physics, or philosophy, or history. . .

At this point in the school year, we have in the past sometimes had issues with memorization, failure to commit to the process, and an overall lack of enthusiasm perhaps not unlike that which leads students to fail in their regular academic courses. This year, we are experiencing the opposite.

“What if I do a slide to center on this line of the song?” we are asked. “How about I dress in disco clothes for this song?” a child suggests. “Can we all fall down when we are talking about tripping on our baggy pants?” the boys demand. “Can I make a poster with my sketches for the opera?” “Why don’t we add some music here?” “Can I do a solo?”

Telling, in a different way: “When is the opera, I want my grandma/dad/mom/aunt to come?”

We’re done, we have to tell them. Our opera has a due date determined by the performance and there comes a time when we have to “finish” our work of art. But we don’t have to be done creating and learning. In fact, it seems to me that once people of any age experience the sense of limitless possibility that comes from creativity, they return to it again and again, both through artistic activity, and through applying that open-ended, discovery-oriented mentality to new learning frontiers in every discipline.

School, when it fosters independent initiative, creative thinking, and a love of discovery, can indeed, as our opera title suggests, “Rule”.

Lisa Golda
COT Teaching Artist

I’m appearing with Chicago Opera Playhouse this month as Mama Bear in their touring production of Goldilocks and the Three Bears! I am also looking forward to working with students in my spring Vocal Excellence Class at the Northshore Academy of the Arts in Grafton, WI.

Welcome to new students Brinn Crocker, Caitlin Barclay (who recently starred as Aida in her high school production of Aida), Michelle Zuehlke, and Molly Hetzner. Congratulations to Erin Walton, Vox Box student, featured in the STATUS soiree, who is playing  the Narrator in an upcoming production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with St. Matthias and who will be appearing in Soulstice Theatre’s spring musical American Enterprise. Congrats also to student Marielle Schuchardt, recently seen as Mimi in RENT at UW-Manitowoc, currently featured as a member of “the Council” in UW-Sheboygan/TYA’s production of Hairspray.

Stay tuned for announcements regarding the next Vox Box “Sweethearts” Soiree, coming up in February!