This play taught its performers joy of harmony
/The Boston Herald
BEVERLY BECKHAM
There is not even an attempt to keep them quiet. They swarm into Concord's Alcott School auditorium, at 10 o'clock on a Friday morning, all of them happy because they're missing something - arithmetic or social studies or science; most of them chatting, a few of them shouting. The din is festive, chirpy, happy, full of kids' sounds.
I sit among them, 300 7 to 12-year-olds and am reminded of Saturday matinees years ago, and the near to bursting rush of anticipation just before the movie starts.
The children fill every seat. They are restive, like birds before flight. Only gravity and their lack of wings keep them earthbound.
I think nothing will silence this crowd. But when the lights go off, the kids hush, all at one, as if they have collectively inhaled,.
No one tells them to pay attention. No teachers loom. The children turn their attention to the stage.
"This play is dedicated to harmony," a young narrator says.
Then, from the back of the auditorium, 40 students break into song. "Love Changes Everything" they sing as they make their way down the aisles. The opening number couldn't be better. It engages the crowd. From that moment on, the play is like a train. It doesn't lose its momentum until it stops.
The play is "Maniac Magee." It wasn't written by a playwright and it isn't being performed by professional actors. It was written by Earl Corey's fifth graders in Concord and is being performed by those students and Rosalind Hoey's sixth-graders from the Lewenberg School in Mattapan. (Performances were held at both schools last weekend)
Make no assumptions here. The play is not childish and is not unprofessional. It is bright, articulate, funny, touching, fast-paced and wickedly clever, indisputable proof that children are bright and articulate and clever.
Earl Corey, who has taught in Concord for eight years, is an old hand at directing plays. His fifth grade class is famous for its musical productions.
But this year he broadened the challenge he always gives his students. This year instead of performing an already written play, he encouraged them to adapt Jerry Spinelli's Newbery Medal winning book, "Maniac Magee," into a play.
And this year instead of involving just his all-white class, he got together with a colleague who teaches in the city and integrated her all-black class with his.
Integration. This is the overriding theme of "Maniac Magee." Why can't people get along, Maniac wants to know. Is he called Maniac because of the crazy things he does, because he never stops running, because he's a consummate daredevil? Or is he called Maniac because he believes that white people and black people are the same?
Orphaned at age 3, he lives for eight years with a nasty aunt and uncle who are so nasty they don't even speak. He finally runs away, but to the East End where only black people live. A black family takes him in and he is happy for a while. But then some black kids tell him he has to leave because he's white and he doesn't belong. Reluctantly he returns to the East End where he tells people that color doesn't matter, that there's no reason blacks and whites can't live together.
"They're just regular people like us. I'm telling you, it's the same. There's bathtubs and refrigerators and rugs and TVs and beds..."
Since February, the students have been practicing this play three times a week, twice at their individual schools, once a week together. Their effort is evident. The play is a success.
But more important than the result is the experience. They will always remember this. This production will loom in their minds.
I know it will loom in mine. You look at these kids, and you think: the world isn't doomed; nothing is impossible.
Because nobody got paid for this. Nobody got famous. Nobody got any external rewards.
The rewards were all internal. Satisfaction at a job well done. The joy of doing something you love for someone you love. The teachers did it for the kids, and the kids did it for the teachers, and together they did it for an audience. They collaborated. They created. Young and old, black and white, city mouse and country mouse.
And the result was excellence, the blending of a book, a play, music, lighting, slides, scenery and cultures. And all who participated and all who watched saw that these things combined resulted in something exceptional, something that transcended its separate parts.
