Back in the early 1970’s, advertising exec, David McCall realized that one of his sons could sing all the words to every song on the radio, but did not know his multiplication tables.
If you’re familiar with the phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention” (And if you’re not, don’t worry, you’ll learn about it in this show!), McCall took it to heart and came up with a great idea that would help his son.
He wrote a catchy little song, and needless to say, it wasn’t destined to just help one child, and kids didn’t just need help in math. This little project grew. More songs. A record. Coloring books. Eventually, the songs were animated and became the first music videos that the kids of Chris’ and my generation knew and loved.
The songs in this show hold great nostalgia factor for Chris and I. Actually, we’d picked a different show to present this spring, and it also has great nostalgia factor for us. We had chosen Footloose, and Chris and I were so excited that everyone who auditioned, brought their A game. However, as it often goes (at least in the non-professional theatre world), we didn’t have enough men audition. We then had the difficult tasks of 1- picking another show and 2- telling the kids who auditioned, that we had to pick another show (we knew that we had several who had auditioned specifically because it was Footloose), but to their credit, not one person dropped out because of the show change. Side note: we did have a few kids who eventually needed to withdraw, due to schedule conflicts and illness, but we REALLY hope they will try out again. Maybe next year?
In any case, landing on Schoolhouse Rock Live! has turned out to be a fantastic choice!
We hope that you, as an audience, will have a third as much fun watching, as we all have had creating this show. No really, if you have more than a third of the fun we’ve had, you might hurt yourself.
Chris and I now have a year’s worth of productions under our belts here at BHS, and we cannot say enough about the level of talent, willingness to just play and most importantly, the quality of character these kids have!
To the parents, thank you for sharing your kids with us. To our wonderful cast, our
fabulous crew members and our amazing band, thank you for saying yes, and putting in a lot of hard work!
And now, let’s Rock this Schoolhouse!
Cheryl Kouns
