"Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business"
adapted by Joan Cushing from the books by Barbara Park
NW Children's Theatre, 2007
Photos courtesy of David Kinder
This was my first foray into children's theater, at the bidding of Diane Englert, who had directed me in "As You Like It" a year and a half before -- and boy, was it fun! (A lot of work, too: something like 36 performances, including 17 weekday shows, often in pairs at 10 a.m. and noon.)
I played "The Boss of the School," the nameless principal of Junie B. Jones's elementary school. I probably had less stage time than any other character, but I made a big splash in my pivotal scene -- the climax of which appears in the above photo.
The Boss of the School has a couple of stern and forbidding moments with Junie B. just prior to the number, and I played them up with prop spectacles. When I burst into song and dance -- a modified jitterbug with the teacher, played by Caren Graham -- with jacket unbuttoned and the spectacles gone (into a pocket), the kids in the audience usually went wild.
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One way I made the part more fun for me and the cast was to wear a different crazy necktie in every performance, from the extensive Tasmanian Devil, Yellow Submarine, Bugs Bunny, Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Seuss, and other designs in my tie collection. I wore a nondescript professional tie supplied by the costumer for the first half, changed into the special one for my big scene but kept it hidden away under my buttoned jacket until it came time for the song-and-dance, and then unbuttoned my jacket. I can tell from the colors that the tie in the photo at the top of the page is the Cirque du Soleil "Saltimbanco" design, which I had purchased the first time the Cirque came to Portland, a few years before; while the tie in the pair of photos just above has a movie motif, with lines of spotlights, directors chairs, and celluloid.
The dance sequence with teacher and class wasn't my only action in the show, however. All the adults were coralled into other group numbers as background "chorus" singers and dancers. One was a sort of "Singin' in the Rain" spoof in which we were dressed in yellow rain slickers and armed with toilet plungers:
Another was the sequence in which the adults put on animal masks to people Junie B.'s fantasy about the jungle creatures that share the environment with her "monkey brother":
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I've seen the other adults from the cast -- Hillarie McKenna, Royal Hebert -- around town since, and Don Stewart Burns, who played Junie B's Grandpa -- would appear in "Arcadia" with me several months later. (That's Don as a bear -- I think -- in front of my giraffe, and Hillarie as a tiger, with Royal looming in the blue background as an elephant.)
One of the kids in the cast, Steve Rathje, who was a "swing" substitute for Crybaby William and Meanie Jim, has become a solid friend.
WHAT THEY SAID
"... the cast delves into the script and songs with gusto. ...The show reveals the work of some kids who have been studying acting at the [Northwest Children's] theater's school for a while, and it's first-class. -- Holly Johnson, the Oregonian, Feb. 7, 2007