Traveling Theatre 2006
2006 · Lincoln Land Community College (LLCC) — Jacksonville/Triopia
The 2006 production of Ken Bradbury's Lincoln Land Community College Traveling Theatre was The Magic Key, an original children's musical with Ken's own songs. As with each year's "On The Road" show, Ken wrote and directed the piece for his college students and then took the company touring directly into central Illinois schools, packing a tight, high-energy show into a touring kit and bringing it to one elementary and pre-school after another. The surviving 2006 folder holds the touring script, the formal December script, the performance schedules, the class list, and Ken's own first-person planning and directing notes for the tour.
A young girl wishes to be "everything I want to be," and the Wish Fairy appears, offering her the Magic Key to happiness. The girl keeps wishing for grand adventures — becoming a princess fighting a dragon, a ferocious pirate, a jungle explorer, a Las Vegas dancer, then a string of careers (doctor, pilot, president, soldier, teacher) — but fails at each because she keeps forgetting the key. In the end she discovers the key is Education: only by learning can she "fly" and have real choices in life.
The show opens on a set littered with wooden boxes and colorful pieces of cloth; two actors dance in and arrange the boxes and scarves into the set, joined by the rest of the cast with "a spirit, fun, and lots of energy." Audience participation drives the piece — actors "borrow" a child's name from the crowd for the heroine, the audience names the jungle animals, and children are prompted to shout "The Key!" Ken kept the staging physical above all: his own reminder to himself reads, "Physical, physical, physical…dropping pants, riding the horse, Nick tumbling onto the stage, dance."
Songs
Song titles below are descriptive labels drawn from the sung lyrics and cues, not necessarily Ken's formal titles.
- I Got the Key (the Wish Fairy's song) — "Well, I got the key, and girl, it's yours and mine… If you wanna be happy, then hon, I got the key!"
- Yo! Ho! Ho! (A Bloody Pirate) — "Yo! Ho! Ho! A bloody pirate! Yo! Ho! Ho! Blow me down! … Sailing out for big adventure! Sailing on the wicked sea!"
- Fly (Fly Away) — "Fly…oh fly away… Soar above whatever life brings, with the wind on your wings, just fly!"
- If You Wanna Be Glad / The Key (finale, with Derek's rap) — "If you wanna be glad..Lift up all of your voices! … Just take hold of that key…. Raise your hands and rejoice!"
Cast
The cast was drawn from Ken's LLCC / Triopia Traveling Theatre students — fourteen performers in all:
- Lauren Beal
- Derek Carls
- Dylan Schnake
- Gracie Johnson
- Hannah Johnson
- Hope Kyrouac
- Jeremy Little
- Marie Meunier
- Erich Nobis
- Cody Nordsiek
- Rachel Schone
- Hannah Stephens
- Brian Tonry
- Jillian Preston
Production Notes
- The premiere was a December 3, 2006 show at 2 p.m. for friends, family, and Triopia Pre-School, then the company went "On The Road" touring December 4, 5, 11, and 12 to central-Illinois schools.
- Tour stops spanned the Jacksonville area, including North Jacksonville, Westfair, Washington (LVA), Lincoln, Murrayville, Eisenhower, Franklin, South Jacksonville, Meredosia, Bluffs, White Hall Elementary, J. Turner, Beardstown (Gard, Brick, Beardstown Christian Academy), Triopia, Ashland, Virginia, and Winchester.
- The polished December 2006 script file is titled "The Magic Key," with a companion Lincoln Land variant; the cover sheet reads "A Journal of The Magic Key / 2006 / LLCC."
- Ken's notes record the run at "30 min. exactly…perfect," and that the show had "3 tech guys and didn't need three."
- Ken's notes on the schools: Eisenhower "great"; Turner "rough but worth it"; he could forgo Rushville for a year and maybe Beardstown, while Dosh and White Hall Elementary wanted on the list.
- Ken noted that Fred Rogers "always sends such nice letters of thanks" for the tour.
Photos