The storyline is set in the year 2050 when the nations of the world have jointly overcome the major challenges facing humanity: pulling the planet back from the brink it nearly toppled over due to regional conflict worldwide; environmental issues, overconsumption, school violence, intercultural misunderstanding, and conflict over natural resources such as water and fossil fuels. This musical gives young people a chance to have a voice in changes that can help create the world in which they want to live!
The international cast is comprised of 20-25 young performers from around the world and will be backed up by a chorus of 100 local children.
This play changes lives. It empowers kids to make a difference in their world. It provides kids from very different backgrounds a chance to work together to solve problems. It has been performed all over the world (Russia, Ukraine, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Jordan, England, Japan, Bulgaria, and many more countries), and now will be produced in Thousand Oaks.
“Peace Child” is a musical play, a curriculum, a movement, and a passion. It is a strategy for cultural change that works. Here’s how:
The original story was set in the future. The play looks back to the 1980s and tells of an American boy and a Russian girl who meet in Washington DC, where their parents are diplomats. Initially, they express distrust of each other; later, they realize they are equally frightened of fighting each other in a nuclear war.
Determined to “do something,” they slip unannounced onto a TV talk show, express their wish for peace, become media celebrities, and finally get invited to meet with their presidents.
The heart of the play is in the dialogues with their two presidents where the children get a sense of the magnitude of the problems, and the presidents see in the innocent trusting of the children perhaps a way that points towards world peace.
The end of the story sees the two presidents going off on a fishing trip, determined to get to know each other better. Or, it ends some other way, because the script is just a starting point. David Woollcombe must be one of the few playwrights in history who actively encourages kids to rip up his text and re-write it in their own words.
“I hate acting; nothing offends me more than to see smart-as little kids reciting other people’s words with ghastly inflections and poses.” - D.W.
Children need to be honored and respected as equals, not coddled as an exalted kind of domestic pet. We love kids to be real on stage, and the best way of making them real is to have the kids write their own lines within the framework of an existing play. We encourage them to do this through a process of background reading, research, discussion, and joint analysis followed by staged improvisations.
From all this, the writers go away and write up the scenes. In this way, each child who is in the play knows that he/she has helped to create it. The kids are empowered to believe that they could become the children of the story, and that they could bring peace to the world.
They have explored their own inner resources and, in most cases, found that they have some views on the crucial question of survival. Expressing those views on stage gives them great confidence, makes them want to explore more. The artists, everyone, must dare to stir up the spirit of rebelliousness in young people. Make them angry, make them see that the survival of this great country and of the planet is at stake. Make them recognize the terror, and then give them enough love to enable them to overcome it.
Empowerment is the name of the game. Give them the feeling of their own power and then teach them the means to powerfully express it. We adults always have to keep our aspirations one step ahead of theirs. We have to dare to be wrong, dare to be great; dare to fail - dare to hope! We must dare to rejoice in a future that is by no means guaranteed, but one that guarantees survival. It is important to share with our kids the generosity and idealism that lurks so close to the surface of this wonderful country.
Please give generously. Your donations will enlighten a new generation. Thank you for your support.
Dr. Stacey McEnnan, founder and director of education at the Alexandria Academy for gifted children is the play's producer. The play, entitled “Peace Child 2015-We Create Our Future,” will be showing at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks, California USA on August 28th, and 29th, 2015.
