Splendid Performance
Superior students team up with MCT to bring Robinson Crusoe to life, sort of.
The lights went down and Superior principal Scott Kinney stepped out onto the gym floor, the set behind him.
"I searched the world," Kinney announced, "high and low, over mountains and under the oceans to find the most amazing troop of dramaticists for you today and I found them in my own school."
An audience gathered in the Superior Elementary gym on Friday night to watch a play put on by the students in cooperation with the Missoula Children's Theatre (MCT). The play, The Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was loosely based on the novel by Daniel Defoe or as Kinney put it "sort of." In fact, it was so loosely based that really the only similarities were the island, a character named Robison Crusoe and a character named Friday.
The play started out with a group of kids who didn't like books, but a teacher of theirs who loved books convinces them that books are great because you can "make it your own" and so they set out to write a play. In their play, "Robby" and Friday's island has become well known and so it is an attraction for tourists. The tourists then hear the retelling of how everyone on the island became friends.
"It's a play within a play and inside the play it's a retelling of how Robinson Crusoe got to the island," said Dave Smith, tour actor with MCT.
In this version, Robinson and his goat Wilson get stranded on the lion and gradually make friends with the creatures who live there: turtles do the limbo, a monkey that tells jokes, singing and dancing chameleons, Friday and his brothers and sisters, the island goats, a leopard and a crazy gang of individuals whose sole goal is to be scary. The performance also featured musical numbers and dancing.
Smith came with Addie Barnhart, tour director for the show, and they spent a week practicing with the kids to get ready for the Friday performance. On Monday, auditions were held and by Wednesday, the kids knew the show. On Thursday, they ran through it for the first time. For Smith and Barnhart this was there last week on the road after 37 prior stops. Barnhart said they spend the week with the kids teaching them life skills including working on a team, collaboration and interacting. The students also got to partake in two workshops, makeup and improvisational acting. Smith said that it's also about allowing the kids to create something that is their own.
"We teach them it, but in the end they've created their own show," Smith said. "No week is the same as the week before even though it's the same show. They've created something themselves and it's their success not ours."
Barnhart said that while it is a lot of work a new group at the beginning of the week really refreshes you as a tour director and actor.
"You're rejuvenated at the beginning of every week because the kids are so different," Barnhart said. "The hardest part I think is not being able to stay afterwards and see the impact, but it's different every week."
Barnhart also said that one of the neat things about MCT is it gives kids an exposure to an art form that they might not necessarily get to experience living in a small community.
"Some small communities don't have arts and art programs and it's really nice for the kids to have the exposure," Barnhart said.
Smith said that the students at Superior were wonderful to work with.
"There are a lot of really talented kids here. They've been working really hard," Smith said. "And it's very rewarding when you're on stage for the finale and you see their faces shine because they did it that makes it totally worth it."
MCT theatre will have more than 65,000 young people participate in the tour project this year. Nearly 1,300 communities in the 50 states will be visited, including three Canadian territories, five provinces and sixteen countries. Sponsors from Superior that made the visit possible were S & S Foods, Castles Market, Superior Lions Club, Wells Fargo Bank and Shirley Hollenback's Budget Host Big Sky Hotel.