By Donald H. Harrison
EL CAJON, California–As we left the Stagehouse Theatre of Grossmont College on Saturday, Dec. 7, my grandson Shor, 12, said apologetically that he really didn’t care for Follow Me, a production that the Theatre Arts Department had taken on tour to numerous elementary schools in San Diego County. According to Shor, it was for little kids, not for middle school students like himself.
“All that may be true,” I said, “but I liked it.”
“That’s because you want to revisit your childhood, grandpa. I want to leave mine!” declared Shor, who is almost a bar mitzvah.
“Well, yes, er, that may be true, harrumph, but I liked it also from the standpoint of an educator who is trying to introduce little children to the world of art,” I responded.
In fact, I thought director Jerry Hager and the nine cast members did a great job using their bodies– and a 20-foot long rope — to help stimulate a younger audience’s imagination. The truth be told, I did enjoy seeing some concepts explored de nouveau — which is a grown-up way of saying I felt as if I were once again experiencing a child’s sense of discovery.
Imagine a rope held up by two people so that it forms the top three sides of a picture frame. Now imagine that another actor pretends to fling the rest of the actors at the canvas like colorful globs of paint. One of the actors hurdles toward the imaginary frame and stopping suddenly, as a mime would, turns his body into a strange shape within the frame. Splat! There go other actors! Splat! Splat! We have an abstract painting! Splat!
Or imagine that the actors huddle together and hold the rope in an upside letter U over them. They have outlined a mountain of some sort. They are snoring peacefully inside the mountain. Why yes, they are portraying a sleeping volcano.
As the ensemble segued from one picture at this exhibition to another, they chanted, “Let’s draw, let’s sketch, let’s doodle, let’s scribble.” Say that faster and faster and you can almost hear the rhythm of a train, which was another of the illusions they created with rope and imagination.
Remember, this was a show for elementary school students, and it became even more engaging when the cast coaxed children out of the audience and onto the stage. With the rope, the actors made a zoo cage and, with the children following their leads (Follow Me!!) , they pretended in turn to be the animals that the children said were their favorites. There was a gorilla, a dog, a cat, a wolf, and a lion. Owwwwooooww, could that little wolf howl!
In another sequence, a little girl pretended to be a baseball batter. Take a swing, she was urged. She did. Strike one! The actors facing her mimed nearly being knocked over by the force of her swing. Another swing! Strike two! Don’t get discouraged, try one more. Crack! It was a long homerun! I’ll bet the ball from that swing is still travelling, even now.
Many of the imaginative scenes were inspired by abstract paintings created by artist Dominic Pangborn, who also is the playwright.
One of my favorites was when crouching actors holding the rope over their heads slowly stood, creating the effect of a sunrise with their rope. As they did so, they hummed the theme song from the movie Chariots of Fire, which I remember not only because it concerned a Scottish Christian and a British Jewish athlete training for the 1924 Olympics, but because that was the first melody that my son, David (he’s Shor’s uncle) learned to play on the piano. If I am not mistaken, it was the only melody.
So, however middle school students might feel about watching “kid stuff,” I say there is much in Follow Me to enjoy. My congratulations go to the actors, Rhiannon Burton, Brittany Carrillo, Miesha Fuller, Andres Lagang, Safiya Quinley, Rachel Quinn, Daniel Ramos, Ryan Sandvick and Bernie Toledo. Kudos go also to Michelle Bales, who created the painted costumes that roughly approximated each motivating art work.
Following the performance, Hager said Grossmont College has been bringing performances for 18 years to elementary schools, showing, as he did in this play, that with the use of imagination a black stick can serve as a pencil or a telephone, or that a 20-foot length of rope can be used in so many interesting ways.
Hager is very familiar to older San Diegans as the man who was the mime for many years at Seaport Village, delighting child and adult alike.
“Art,” he declared to us, “belongs in the schools!”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com