AG Bell Show: Destination Milwaukee

Posted by Kurt on June 25, 2008

School Shows

Welcome, Monkey Blog Readers.  Lots of news coming up.  Pay attention real close, ‘cuz this blog is coming to you from Kurt Chiang, who has only been in the company for about a year and a half, which means he doesn’t have a digital camera yet.  So, this entry is going to be flavored a tad differently.  You’ll see what I mean in a second.  Unless you’ve cheated and you’ve already scrolled yourself down on the digital browser.  Let’s get to business…

The upcoming show is for the AG Bell Convention, hosted by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.  The convention will be in glorious MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN.

Ten Monkeys involved in this show.  Here are their stories…

You may have remembered the marathon of blood and sweat and talent that was the Celebration of Authors show, that only concluded itself a few weeks ago.  Well, about seven of the Monkey participants in that show? they wrote in their diaries the morning after, and those diaries read – Dear Diary, I miss performing stories written by contagiously gifted and wholly inspirational children.  And even though I can barely stand up after that monster-of-a-show last night, I think I could do it all over again.  At least once.  In June.  On Friday the 27th.

Those self-indulgent diarists are named Ricky, Brennan, Mary Winn, Emjoy, Geoff, Tea Party, Kurt, and Laura Grey.

An additional two monkeys jet-setted into the rehearsal space from LA, wearing matching outfits.  Their names are Luke and Oona.

Whitney Hayes is the remaining tenth.  I don’t know what her story is.  I can only assume she’s well rested.  Which means she’s holding us up like she’s a ROCK.

This show is unique (and awesome) in that all of the stories are written by children who are deaf or hard of hearing.  In addition, a majority of these children have or will have cochlear implants to help them hear.  Child’s Voice, a school in Wood Dale, IL, specializes in educating children with cochlear implants, and we visited them earlier in June.  A few things about these kids:

1) They were interested in all of the things that our usual CPS kids are interested in, i.e., tigers, princesses, lunchtime

2) They could write novels about their personal hearing devices

3) Two of them excel above and beyond in entomological knowledge, specifically hymenoptera (ants), leaving Dixie and I flabbergasted. (all words in that sentence over six letters I learned from those two kids)

The stories in the show are awesome.  We’ve been rehearsing for a week, and did a full run through stumble-dee-dumble through today.  We even had an impromptu audience of receptive Loyola Park kids.  Stories are funny, including an untitled gem touting the benefits of hearing loss, with the sung refrain “Because I am deaf, I can turn off my hearing aid when my brother screams” (see Mary Winn in pic below, turning off her hearing aid while Geoff screams),

as well as The Princess Who Met a Prince, where a princess marries a prince who sews the wedding dress himself, and forgets her name right before the ring goes on, and marries him anyway.

Other stories are sweet and sad and uplifting, such as an untitled about a daughter’s camping trip with daddy (see below, Luke trying to put up a tent while Oona dances),

One Memorable Day, a simple goodbye to a friend that is no longer with us, and I’ve Decided…, the story of a girl deciding to have the cochlear implant surgery, made into awesome rock ballad by Geoff Rice, who faced the challenge of molding the somewhat abrasive syllables of CO-clear IM-plant into tune.  Nice, Rice.

The next post will be about the road-trip and the show.  Here’s a last picture of Laura directing.