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New
Ground takes a Journey for a Reason: Original music meant to
spur local writers
By Jeff Ignatius, RIVER CITY READER -- May
21, 2003
 New Ground Theatre,
which this season has produced the Pulitzer
Prize-winning plays Wit and Proof,
will next month stage a musical about teen suicide.
Not only that, but the script of said musical was
written by the company’s artistic director, Chris
Jansen.
On the surface, this decision could be one of two
things: an act of ego (My play is as good as those!)
or an act of self-flagellation (I deserve to be
ripped to shreds!). Alternatively, it could simply
be a leap of faith, a bold choice meant to inspire
others.
And that’s how the playwright is treating it.
After she’d made the decision to include her
musical in the New Ground season, Jansen realized
that she had put her work next to plays that have
drawn worldwide acclaim. “I started wondering if
I’d lost my mind,” she said last week.
There are perfectly good reasons for the inclusion
of Journey for a Reason into New Ground’s
season. For one thing, it fits well thematically
with a season heavy with mortality, grief, and loss
(Wit and Proof) and other serious
issues. (Spinning Into Butter deals with
racism on a college campus.)
Beyond that, Journey for a Reason represents
New Ground’s first foray into producing the work
of local playwrights. “I want to do original stuff
at New Ground,” Jansen said. “I’m finding so
far that there aren’t a lot of playwrights here. I
kind of wanted to say, ‘I’ll go first.’”
Jansen is also directing the play.
On the upside, it’s easy to obtain the rights to
something one wrote. And, of course, “I know the
script inside and out,” Jansen said. “I know
exactly how I want it to go.” Everything else is a
risk, because whatever fault people find with the
production – from the choice of material to the
dialogue to the music to the quality of the
performance – reflects on Jansen and her
collaborators. All blame lands squarely on her
shoulders. That takes guts, and she sounds anxious
about it.
But there’s also the incredible potential for
reward. If it goes well, if the audience responds to
the work, then Jansen can claim a lion’s share of
the credit.
Jansen seems hesitant to brand her work a musical
about teen suicide, but that’s exactly what it is.
This isn’t a drama in which somebody commits
suicide; it’s a drama exclusively about a
person killing herself. Although the subject matter
is grim, Jansen stresses that “it’s not a
downer.” There’s humor in the work, she said.
The script’s main conceit will immediately bring
to mind classics of page and screen, particularly
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Frank
Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Sara is
visited by her dead friend Laura, and expresses a
desire to figure out why she killed herself. “If
life was like the 7-Eleven, there’d be a video
camera on us the whole time,” Sara explains.
“Then, if we needed to, we could just play it
back. We could see what we missed at the time.”
Laura invites Sara to take a trip through their
lives in search of clues to why she killed herself.
“Think of it as a kind of journey,” Laura says.
“We’ll look at everything that happened. We’ll
find your reason for you.”
This flashback structure is a stroke of genius.
Unlike the guides of Scrooge or George Bailey, Laura
has a real stake in getting her friend to understand
what happened. As she tells Sara at the beginning of
the play, “You’re holding me back. … You’re
holding yourself back.”
As in the aforementioned classics, Journey for a
Reason strings together vignettes, in this case
showing Laura withdrawing from her friends or
protecting her little brother from an abusive
father, for example. Where it pays off is in the
final scene, as it becomes clear that unlike with
Scrooge or George Bailey, there will never be an
epiphany with Sara; she will never understand. And
the scene offers an interesting reversal, as Laura
begins to see for the first time the effects of her
actions; the guide becomes the guided.
The musical got its start nearly 20 years ago. In
1985, Jansen got a job at a performing-arts camp in
Boston, and it was suggested that she and another
staff member, Andrew Wilder, write a show. They did,
and have since collaborated on two more pieces: Journey
for a Reason (initially written in 1986) and The
Turnip (1988). Jansen wrote the scripts, and
Wilder wrote the music. (Jansen has written roughly
five full-length plays and 20 one-acts, but these
three works with Wilder remain her only
collaborations.)
Jansen and Wilder started with an outline, from
which the composer would “figure out places for
the song to go,” she said. Next came a rough draft
of the script, and when that was done, Wilder
started working on the songs. “The song should
advance the plot,” Jansen said. “That’s what
we try to do. You learn something with each song.”
The play was performed once at the arts camp, and
Jansen re-wrote it after that production. When she
picked it up again in the past few years, she had a
reaction familiar to writers around the world: “I
was horrified,” she said. So began another round
of revisions. “I think it’s much better than it
was,” she said. And, of course, she’s protective
of it. “This is my baby,” she said. “I like
it.”
But she’s still not satisfied. “The lyrics
aren’t where I want them to be now,” she said.
Wilder, now a composer and conductor in New York,
had planned two visits to the Quad Cities to assist
with the production, but both fell through.
“We’re still hoping he’ll slide in,” Jansen
said. The playwright describes her relationship with
her collaborator as “really positive. I don’t
think I’ve ever had an argument with Andy. …
It’s almost like having half the work done for
you.”
The musical’s cast has been pared down to 10, the
result of art bending to practical reality –
namely money – but in the end improving because of
it. “I killed three people when we started,”
Jansen said. “When you’re paying them [the
actors], you find out who’s important.”
The characters include one boy, eight teenagers, and
one adult, so to the peril of directing her own
musical Jansen has added working with a young cast.
“The challenging part is you’ve got to be
teaching young performers about commitment,” she
said – things unrelated to performance.
But the cast has been helpful as the work has taken
its final shape. Jansen relates that questions from
one actress have resulted in changes to the final
scene, and even the act of casting has had a
positive effect. Jansen said she’d never liked her
one adult character – the school-newspaper adviser
– but then she got an e-mail from Susan McPeters
asking about a role in the production. “When I
thought of Susan McPeters, I had the character,”
Jansen said.
And so it goes that even this close to the
production, Journey’s journey still isn’t
quite complete.
Journey for a Reason will be performed June 19 to
22 and 26 to 29 at Rivermont Collegiate in
Bettendorf. For more information, visit www.newgroundtheatre.org.
Tickets are $12 for adults and can be reserved by
calling (563)326-7529.
Lincoln Gets the Musical Treatment from Local
Teen
Journey for a Reason isn’t the only locally
written musical on tap for this summer. And it’s
not the only one that might seem a little strange.
Derek Bertelsen, a 17-year-old from Aledo who just
graduated from high school, has written the 19-song
musical Abraham! , about none other than
Abraham Lincoln. He’ll perform the musical in
workshop form on Friday, May 30, at 7 p.m. at Quad
City Arts.
Bertelsen, who will study theatre in the fall at
Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, started
the play in August 2001. “I thought this would
give me a better understanding of how a show is put
together,” he said of the project.
The teenager has always been fascinated by Lincoln,
so the 16th president of the United States seemed a
natural subject. “Most of it is done,” he said.
“I’m still working on the script.”
The workshop will involve Bertelsen and a piano,
“singing the songs and telling the story,” he
said. That pared-down approach is meant to generate
feedback on what he’s got so far, so he can
continue to improve it. “I just want to know what
people think about it,” he said.
This is a long-term process for Bertelsen, who noted
that Cats was in workshops for eight years.
“This isn’t something you do overnight,” he
said. “It takes time and patience.” He hopes to
do another workshop in August and is interested in
staging a full local production some time in the
next few years.
“It’s important for the Quad Cities to get some
local work out there,” he said.
Other Musical Offerings This Summer
In addition to the locally written musicals Journey
for a Reason and Abraham! , theatre
organizations around the Quad Cities are offering
plenty of musicals this summer for your enjoyment.
Circa ’21 ’s Fiddler on the Roof
runs through May 31 and is followed by Bob
Almighty (June 6 through July 19) and Funny,
You Don’t Look Like a Grandmother (July 25
through September 13). It will also offer the
children’s musical Little Red Riding Hood’s
Big Adventure! (August 4 though 16).
The Quad City Music Guild will feature Titanic:
A New Musical (June 13 through 22), Kiss Me
Kate (July 11 through 20), and State Fair
(August 8 through 17).
The lineup at Clinton Area Showboat Theatre
includes My Fair Lady (June 5 through 15), Dirty
Blonde (June 19 through 29), Phantom
(July 9 through 19), Clap Trap (July 24
through August 3), and Oliver (August 7
through 17).
The Music Man will be performed at North
School High School (July 18 through 26).
Fans of opera can see Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial
by Jury, performed by Opera@Augustana at
Rock Island’s Lincoln Park (June 14 through 22) or
Otello at Theatre Cedar Rapids (June
13 through 15). Theatre Cedar Rapids is also
offering La Cage Aux Folles (July 11 through
26).
And in the category of strange but true, Ghostlight
Theatre is planning to perform a
country-and-western-style adaptation of Wagner’s Ring
cycle, Das Barbecu. The production is set for
North High School the last weekend of August and the
first weekend of September.
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