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Hero (Traveling Theatre)

2012 · Lincoln Land Community College

Hero was the Fall 2012 Traveling Theatre production created by Ken Bradbury's Lincoln Land Community College class (THE 299 J01, "Traveling Theatre"). Built around the theme of personal heroes, the roughly thirty-minute show was devised by Ken and his college students and taken on the road to grade schools throughout west-central Illinois. As Ken framed it for the class on the first day, the semester's work was "Traveling Theatre — 17 schools… Hero," with the students interviewing grade-school children about who their heroes were and weaving those answers into the performance.

The piece grew directly out of the children it played for. Students gathered real "hero stories" from kids at the schools — moms, dads, grandmas, coaches, brothers, sisters, teachers, and the police — and these short first-person testimonies became a recurring spine of the show. The class also reflected on their own heroes, writing personal tributes to mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and family friends, so that the cast carried the same theme they were asking the children to consider.

The Story

The script frames the theme as a comedy: a young girl who has everything except a hero is granted a sassy Fairy Godmother (Gabriella), who conjures up a series of would-be heroes through a "hero machine." Out come a self-absorbed pop singer (a Justin Bieber send-up), a showboating sports star named Olympia who runs through a Super Bowl touchdown, a World Series home run, and a rodeo bull ride, and a chaotic mash-up of fairy-tale characters who all crash into a pile. Each "hero" fails her — they only want to sell her a CD, sign no autographs, or are pure mayhem — until the cast steps forward with real-life testimonies about people they admire, and the Girl realizes she is already surrounded by heroes: ordinary people who care about others.

Songs and Material

The emotional core is spoken, not sung: a block of real hero testimonies — cast members speaking about a deployed mother who earned her Master's degree, a grandmother who taught "we're all one race," a father who worked nights at Nestlé through college — delivered under Soleil's live guitar. A "different script at each school" section had the actors read verbatim hero quotes written by the local schoolchildren themselves, each signed with the child's name. Surviving audition scripts also include scenes between two friends, Morgan and Dana, debating "what do we want to be when we grow up?" and "who was your hero?" — scenes that turn the question of heroes back on friendship and honesty.

Cast

Other class members during the semester included Maddy Albers, Andrew Holtschlag, and Bev Nienhiser, who ran sound on tour (celebrated in a class Christmas poem, "The Tale of Bev, the Tech Babe").

Production Notes

The tour ran in late November and early December 2012, with the troupe leaving from Triopia each morning and playing two to four schools a day. Scheduled stops included North Jacksonville, Franklin, Lincoln (Jacksonville), Roodhouse, Murrayville, Salem Lutheran, Our Saviors, Washington, South Jacksonville, Triopia, Beardstown Brick, Meredosia, Westfair, Eisenhower, and Winchester. In his letter to the schools, Ken noted the show ran about thirty minutes and required only an open space and an electrical outlet.

The class used a Facebook group as its weekly blog, where students posted reflections tied to the hero theme. THE 299 was a practicum course emphasizing performance — staging, acting, choreography, and stage presence — and the traveling tour gave the college students a real audience of grade-school children, many of whom, as Ken noted, "would not see theater in any other way."