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How to Eat Like a
Child is, more than any other show we did at Pontiac, strictly for little kids.
Really Rosie fits that description as well, but for the adaptation
in 2004 I added some of Carole King’s other songs to it to pad the
narrative and give it broader appeal. There wasn’t much I could do
with this material, though; in fact it was probably the easiest adaptation
of them all, as I essentially just copied the original script, deleted a
couple of songs, changed a few lines of dialogue, and adjusted some of the
stage directions. There really wasn’t much to it.
Arlene Virga, a
fellow longtime adult staff member at Pontiac, whose sons Michael and
Andrew performed in several shows as campers and who herself appeared in
three, and who runs the Yorkville Youth Theatre program in Manhattan,
recommended How to Eat Like a Child to me around 2003, when I
decided to find more child-friendly material for the lower-camp
productions. Sarah Davis seconded the recommendation that year and I was
all set to do it in 2004 (I even got my hands on a recording of the songs;
there is, of course, no cast album), but Sarah never got me the sheet music
so we did Really Rosie instead. Having the same concern two years
later, I was considering Free to Be You and Me for the lower camp,
but fortunately Arlene still had the sheet music for How to Eat
Like a Child and was kind enough to forward it to me.
The best thing about
How to Eat Like a Child was that it promised to be very simple and
easy to produce. Lower-camp shows are always a challenge, and 2005’s The
Simpsons, as fun as it was, presented a number of challenges including
the need to match the actors and costumes to the familiar cartoon
characters as best we could. How to Eat… would present no such
difficulties. The characters didn’t even need to have names (although
we used them in rehearsals to distinguish who was doing what), let alone
match audience expectations, and the costumes could simply be the
children’s everyday clothes. It didn’t even need set-pieces or
a backdrop. The only challenge, really, was acquiring all the food we
needed (somehow, the canteen ran out of Animal Crackers the day before the
show) and keeping the cast from eating it before it needed to be used on
stage.
This was actually
one of the better lower-camp casts we had over the years, not just in terms
of their talent and performances but their conduct during rehearsals. The
numbers were somewhat more manageable here than usual, unlike on The
Simpsons where we had three times as many audition as we really needed,
then had a great many drop out along the way. As always, the freshman and
sophomore counselors were a great help in supervising the children during
rehearsals, and the respective group leaders were very accommodating.
The children in this
show were really great. Matt Kaminer, already in his third show, took the
lead on the boys’ side; Matt has a great voice and stage presence and
has a fine future on stage. So does Cole Friedfertig, who also has a great
singing voice, and who went on to work on the technical crew of the middle-
and upper-camp shows later that summer. Like Matt and Cole, most of the
other lead performers on the boys’ side had performed in The
Simpsons the year before: Collin Zucker, Tyler Katz, Ben Gilman and
Jacob Rosen. Zack Davis, a newcomer to camp, and freshman Griffin
Berkenfeld rounded out the male leads. On the girls’ side, we had
Rebecca Levine, Jillian Silverman, Morgan Schneider, Emily Altstadter,
Gabby Bettan (sister of Max, 2005’s Homer Simpson), Max Rosenbaum,
Hannah Edelman and Jordyn Katz.
Also helping us get
off to a great start in the theatre in 2006 were two young people from
Canada whom the camp directors hired to work with me in the theatre. I met
John McNeish-Hastings first; Julia Gemmell arrived later, but I knew right
away that the directors had hit a home run with these two. John was
actually the first male staff member whom the camp hired specifically to
work with me in the theatre, and he brought something to the table that I
had never had on my staff before: technical expertise and proficiency. John
could paint, build things, work audio and lighting boards, and coordinate
all the technical and logistical elements of a show. As I had done most of
this sort of work myself since 1998, having John on board was a tremendous
asset. I put him in full charge of the technical crew on all three shows,
and he never let me down. Julia also had plenty of stage experience and was
a terrific choreographer, in addition to being just amazing with the little
kids in terms of keeping them focused and under control, teaching them what
to do, working with them both individually and as a group. She brought
great enthusiasm, dedication and skill, not to mention cheer and warmth, to
the program.
Having John and
Julia on board to handle their respective tasks left me free to concentrate
on directing the show, coaching the actors, teaching and playing the music,
compiling and publishing rehearsal schedules, and overseeing the
production. It was far and away the most efficient arrangement we ever had
among the theatre staff. John and Julia were both awarded Specialist of the
Year plaques on the last night of camp, a testament to their outstanding
work.
Although I thought How
to Eat Like a Child was a very good show, and the performances were
wonderful across the board, the audience reaction was rather lukewarm, a
fact attributable to the nature of the material which is, as I mentioned
above, strictly for little kids. As The Little Mermaid had proven to
be a bit too difficult for the performers, How to Eat Like a Child was
perfectly suited for the eight- to ten-year-old actors but it was just a
bit too puerile for the camp audience as a whole. Which is not to say we
didn’t have a great time putting it together.
______
Pontiac
Players present
HOW TO EAT
LIKE A CHILD…
...and other
lessons in not being a grown-up
Music and
lyrics by JOHN FORSTER
Book by DELIA
EPHRON, JOHN FORSTER and JUDITH KAHAN
Principal
Cast
MATT KAMINER
REBECCA LEVINE
COLE
FRIEDFERTIG
JILLIAN
SILVERMAN
MORGAN
SCHNEIDER
COLLIN ZUCKER
EMILY ALTSTADTER
TYLER KATZ
BEN GILMAN
GABBY BETTAN
JACOB ROSEN
MAX ROSENBAUM
HANNAH EDELMAN
ZACK DAVIS
JORDYN KATZ
GRIFFIN
BERKENFELD
Directed by
JAY BRAIMAN, JULIA GEMMELL and JOHN McNEISH-HASTINGS
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