[Dixielandjazz] What ever happened to happy music?

[Steve Barbone]

While not about OKOM, the following article might help explain the
differences in attitudes of college kids, 2006 v. 1926. Perhaps shedding
light on some of the differences in musical messages.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

College Life 101: Dramatically Stark Orientation

NY TIMES - By KAREN W. ARENSON - September 11, 2006

Many colleges around the country feel obliged to caution entering students
about what to expect and what to avoid, but few offer more hard-hitting
warnings than New York University¹s theatrical orientation created by the
New York playwright and director Elizabeth Swados.

The musical ³The Reality Show: NYU,² which has already played to nearly
5,000 incoming students at the university and will be shown twice more this
month, tells of drugs and date rape, drinking and anorexia, depression and
suicide. 

It is not a pretty picture, but it is not far from the reality of a large
urban university. And N.Y.U. feels more pressure than most because of the
spate of student suicides during the 2003-4 school year.

³This production came out of that terrible year,² said Marc Wais, N.Y.U.¹s
vice president for student affairs. ³There was a sense of urgency.²

In the fall of 2004 the university used an outside theater group to tell new
students about a telephone hot line and counseling and referral program it
created after the suicides. But N.Y.U. officials decided that a production
by students, for students, might be even more effective, and turned to their
Tisch School of the Arts. Arthur Bartow, chairman of the undergraduate drama
program at the time, recommended Ms. Swados, 55, who first gained fame with
her 1978 Broadway musical ³Runaways,² and had just become a full-time
teacher at the school.

³I knew Liz had a way of working with students to get them to tell the truth
rather than some adult¹s version,² he said in a recent interview. ³They
produce something that is much more stark, much more real, much more
shocking than adults would allow themselves to write.²

Suicide and depression are topics Ms. Swados knows well. Her mother and
brother took their own lives, and, as she explained in ³My Depression: A
Picture Book,² published last year by Hyperion, she contemplated doing the
same. 

But Linda Mills, senior vice provost for undergraduate education and
university life at N.Y.U., who commissioned Ms. Swados, said her personal
history was not an issue. Ms. Swados was being brought in as ³a creative
talent and director, not a clinician or therapist,² Ms. Mills said.

And Ms. Swados, whose teachers and mentors included Joseph Papp, Peter
Brook, Ellen Stewart and Andrei Serban, said she did not want to put too
much of a spotlight on suicide ³because it¹s so easily romanticized by young
people.² She added, ³The N.Y.U. kids have no relationship to the darkness of
my past.² 

The students, chosen from Tisch after several rounds of auditions by Ms.
Swados, provided their own darkness.

Vella Lovell, a senior, said that while at times the students did portray
themselves, other times they were portraying ³someone far removed from
them.² 

³To do this piece we all had to be willing to play the most outrageous
characters because to at least one person in the audience it¹s not so
outrageous,² she said. ³If we were playing ourselves, we tried to make it as
big as possible ‹ all extremes.²

Ms. Swados worked with one group of Tisch students, who produced the first
version of the musical last year, and another group this summer, who
revamped it, cutting numbers and adding others, including a segment on
Facebook.com and other online communities.

The students ‹ there were 10 actors and a stage manager this year ‹ were
paid by N.Y.U. and worked through the summer, writing the musical, including
all the songs. 

Ms. Swados, who has no children, says she is ³not maternal,² but thinks of
herself as a kind of gang leader.

³The kind of kids who would take on this kind of project tend to be
disciplined,² she said. But she also tells them that ³anyone with an
attitude toward me or toward each other will be fired.² She added,
³Everything else, they can do anything.²

Joanna Shaw Flamm, a senior who worked on both shows, said, ³Liz was pretty
merciless, and we started being merciless ourselves.²

Jordan Woods-Robinson, another senior who worked on both shows and was
musical director, called Ms. Swados an inspiration: ³She has a genuine love
for everyone and can see what must be said in order to take each person to
the next level, again, whether in a rehearsal space or in life.²

One scene that drew gasps was performed by a dark-skinned woman, who
announced in a naïve-sounding patter: ³So I got this letter the other day
telling me to go back to where I came from, and it was all about Œpeace in
the Middle East,¹ and how my kind isn¹t welcome in the United States. But
I¹m from New Mexico, and I¹m not even Middle Eastern. So the letter
obviously wasn¹t meant for me. Should I pass it along to my friend Radia
down the hall? I think she would really appreciate it.²

Another portrays a date rape. At the end the young woman says: ³I¹m sick
from it. I feel so dirty.² The young man echoes: ³It¹s embarrassing. I feel
so dirty.² A narrator sums up: ³No always means no, and it¹s never the
survivor¹s fault. But you both have a responsibility to control your actions
before they get out of hand.²

There were tamer topics too: how not to worry about getting lost in New
York, how to find a cushy couch in the library for a nap. And there was one
brief upbeat respite, when a student told how she could ³wake up to a view
of the Empire State Building, stroll through Washington Square Park with
breakfast, attend art history class at the Met, tan in Central Park with
friends and Frappuccinos, window-shop on Fifth Avenue, student-rush a
Broadway show and enjoy tea and cheesecake at my fave cafe.²

Jesca Prudencio, the student who wrote and delivered that monologue, said:
³The first time I wrote it, it had a lot to do with money and doing fun
things in the city that involved spending. Liz made a great point that I
didn¹t even realize. She had me make it less about spending and more about
the things that are free.²

And always there is the commercial: Whatever the problem, help is there.
Again and again the cast sang the hot line phone number that students could
call for help. By the third or fourth time the number was a joke but one
students would remember.

So far the musical has played to hoots and hollers.

³I was at the edge of my seat, wondering what topic they were about to cover
next,² said Katherine Cheng, a first-year student from New York City, who
called the show ³extremely hysterical yet thought-provoking.² Arnold Ng,
another New York freshman, said he loved the singing, dancing and comedy.

Mary Schmidt Campbell, the Tisch School¹s dean and one of the N.Y.U. faculty
and staff members who saw the performance, said she had been educated too:
³I guess there really is a lot I don¹t know about students¹ lives outside
the classroom.²