It Takes A Village: Far Corners Community Musical Theatre

Featured Member Profile

Far Corners Community Musical Theatre (FCCMT) initiates and produces musical theatre shows in communities abroad that lack performing arts opportunities. The Honolulu-based organization, which has organized productions in China, Costa Rica and Mozambique, was founded on the belief that musical theatre as an art form can cross borders and that youth everywhere should have a chance to participate in the performing arts.  Founder and executive director Lisa Burns describes how FCCMT relies heavily on volunteer dedication and the willingness of their participants to try something — even many things — new.

Lisa, can you tell us how you choose which communities to work in and with?

The communities we target are isolated in one way or another.  They are places that lack arts opportunities, places where teens and young adults need a creative outlet. I have also tried to think of where we will find the most interest and support. I’ve never been to a place where I didn’t find plenty of interest from the youth I worked with; unfortunately, interest from the adults in charge can be another story. FCCMT is still in its early stages, though, so there are still many, many places we haven’t been to yet where we’d love to work.  At this point, having some sort of connection to or knowledge of the community is important, because it is much easier to get the support of a community to which we have some connection.

Also, I believe that continuing to work in communities where we’ve been successful is very important.  It was after the incredible results of my second show in Monteverde, Costa Rica, that I was inspired to build an organization around the idea.  We did our third show there this July, and as one musician put it, we’ve built a real artistic community.  When we don’t have another project lined up, people want to know when we’re coming back, when we’re going to organize something else.  So while reaching out to different communities is important, we also want to work with each community long enough to build a lasting — and ultimately self-sustaining — arts community in that area.

Do you always go abroad, or do you do shows in the U.S. also?

FCCMT has not yet done any shows in the U.S., although it is a possibility.  Perhaps eventually, we’ll be able to do some kind of exchange where international students who have worked with us abroad come to the U.S. to work with and educate U.S. participants.

How do you choose your shows to “fit” a community?

Choosing a show that fits the community is a top priority.  We want to choose stories that are relevant to the cast and to the community, while also ideally opening up new worlds.  Also, I strongly believe that musicals should not simply entertain but should present meaningful ideas, pose important questions and deal with societal issues.  Fiddler on the Roof proved to be a great fit in this way for Jiujiang, a small city in a rural province in China.  There was a lot of cultural learning involved — not only were the Chinese university students unfamiliar with Judaism, but they were unfamiliar with religion in general.  At the same time, many grew up in small farming villages similar to the setting of Fiddler — and if they didn’t, their parents did.  Especially when it comes to marriage and family, tradition is a much stronger force in China today than here in the U.S., and just like Tevye’s daughters, young adults in China are struggling to fulfill their own desires without disrespecting their parents.

How do you publicize your auditions?  Do you ever find yourselves having to explain what musical theatre is to your potential cast?

We always begin by publicizing introductory meetings, during which the first step is explaining the concept of musical theatre.  Most of the students who show up have no exposure whatsoever to musicals.  ”High School Musical” is on TV sometimes in Costa Rica, and a few kids have seen The Sound of Music. American TV reaches quite far, but it’s more along the lines of “Prison Break” or “CSI”, and the concept of “American Idol” is well known, which has been a source of confusion more than once!  In Jiujiang, only a few of the students knew what a play was, making the concept of a musical even more foreign (and during the performances, the audience cheered and applauded, I think at the sheer novelty when the cast first walked out onto stage in costume).  I think it’s not until well into the rehearsal process that the cast really understands what musicals are all about.  However, we also present the bare bones story of the show at that very first meeting, which is something for the cast to grab onto, even though the medium is unfamiliar.

How do you perform your shows in “a mixture of at least two languages”?

As often as possible, I try to use multiple languages in a way that makes sense dramatically.  For example, for our production of Urinetown in Monteverde, it worked very well to have Officer Lockstock and Little Sally, who often take the role of narrators, speak to the audience and to each other in Spanish, while the remainder of the scenes were in English.  Similarly, when we performed Fiddler in Jiujiang, Tevye’s step-out monologues, in addition to a few other sections, were delivered in Mandarin Chinese.  Finding professionally translated lyrics is very difficult, so thusfar our full productions have only been sung, by necessity, in English.  However, this is something I am continuously looking into; I would love to do a bilingual or even trilingual production of Les Miserables, which I read has been performed in 23 different languages including Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.  I also hope to experiment with more complex ways of intertwining languages.  We’ve even been toying with ideas for My Fair Lady, which of course centers on language issues, but is a daunting prospect with a non-native-English-speaking cast.

Keeping a balance between English (the original language of the material for everything we’ve done so far) and the native language of the place is important.  We want to make sure that everyone in the audience can follow and enjoy the story.  Musical theatre conveys a great deal non-verbally, but the translation obviously helps a lot.  We also include information about the story and songs in the program in the native language.  However, our cast members are mostly quite keen to perform in English; the shows are a great language-learning opportunity that they want.  I once found myself in an extended argument with one Chinese cast member about translating a scene he was in — I wanted to perform it in Chinese, so the audience would really get the jokes, but he wanted to do it in English.

What has been your biggest challenge?

My biggest challenge is finding adult volunteers willing to put in the time it takes to produce a show.  A lot of people are willing to contribute a weekend, or a hour here and there, but a musical will always be a huge undertaking, and I come out of each show knowing that we need more staff.   Everywhere I’ve gone, the students are extremely enthusiastic and capable, which leads me to believe that it is worth it to scrape together the resources to bring in a qualified staff from outside.  Eventually, I hope that alumnae of our programs will take over production roles in their communities and others.

How do you measure success?  What has been your greatest success to date?

I suppose I would measure our success by the growth of the students, the quality of the performance, and the response of the community.  I would consider our most recent production, Urinetown in Monteverde, to be our greatest success.  We had a fantastic creative team, cast and orchestra and managed to pull it all off in five weeks.  Although we bring in new kids each time, some of the students have been in all three of our musicals over the past four years and they’ve really matured as performers — they are bright, dedicated and unique, and so much fun to work with and watch on stage.

How did you find out about Fractured Atlas and what motivated you to become a member?

Fractured Atlas was recommended to me by a friend from the New Opera and Musical Theatre Initiative (NOMTI) in Boston, a dynamic group of writers and composers I’ve been involved with in the past.  I was looking for a sponsor for a specific grant application — the grant didn’t pan out but Fractured Atlas proved to be a great resource.

How do you use your Fractured Atlas membership?

We are fiscally sponsored, and it’s useful to receive online donations through Fractured Atlas.  I’ve also investigated liability insurance and I’m enrolled in a “Fractured U” online course.

Please finish the following sentence: “A world without art is…”

A world without art might as well be without humanity.  In my opinion, art is pretty much what we have to offer as a species; frankly, most of the rest of what we do is propagate and take care of ourselves, often at the expense of the planet.  Our board president loves this quote from Dead Poets Society (which could easily be about musical theatre):  “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

What’s next on your professional horizon?

Our big focus in the next few months is recruiting teens for our Musical Theatre Connections program in Costa Rica next summer.  It’s a combination of a summer theatre camp and an international exchange program; high school students travel to Monteverde where they live with local families and take part in a full production of a musical.  We introduced the program this past summer and it was a hit with the international students, the local students, and the community. We are also planning to introduce a week-long musical theatre class for younger children from the community, co-taught by our staff and the teen participants.  This will be a great service learning opportunity for the teens and fulfill a real need of the elementary-aged kids in town, who have absolutely nothing to do during their school vacations.

I am also working on a reprise of the Inter-school Music and Theatre workshop hosted by the American International School of Mozambique (where I currently teach music) in June of this year.  The event included a range of performing arts activities, such as capoeira, gumboot dancing and multilingual theatre (including Mozambican sign language).  This year we’ll add, by popular demand, hip-hop dance and more traditional African dance.

How can our readers find out more and/or get involved with FCCMT?

Visit our website, join our mailing list, or become our fan on Facebook.

We are very much in need of volunteers! We frequently need people to edit and review (or if possible, write or design) documents and web content. Other possible tasks include web-research, scanning documents, preparing mailings, translation, and video editing. We are also looking for one or two additional educators to serve as choreographer or technical director for Musical Theatre Connections: Monteverde 2010.