It’s a whirlwind look at our nation’s history.
Fox Valley Repertory will host GreatWorks Theatre’s production of “50 States in 60 Minutes” at 9:30 a.m. May 1 and at 10 a.m. May 13 at Pheasant Run Theatre in St. Charles.
“The show is basically a 500-year tour of the history of the United States of America,” said Matt O’Brien, the producing director at GreatWorks Theatre Company. “Actually, it starts even before that.”
The performance is part of Fox Valley Repertory’s “Theatre for Young Audiences” field trip performance program, which gives students the opportunity to see live, professional shows that are geared toward their age group and enhance the curriculum they are studying in the classroom.
Appropriate for grades three through freshman year, “50 States in 60 Minutes” is GreatWorks Theatre’s most popular show of the 14 it has on tour, O’Brien said.
“What we’re trying to do is come up with a show that feels very much in the tradition of Chicago improv, like Second City,” he said.
The cast of three men and three women play more than 75 different characters in less than an hour time span.
“We’re generally having a good time with the history of the country, but there still are some really interesting twists and arcane facts that are in there,” he said. “The goal for us is to get the student audiences having a good time – letting them say, “OK, cool. I get that joke, I know why that’s funny” – and at the same time present to them a more complex picture of the country than they might be able to get from a regular old textbook or from the national approach we have where everything is good and we’ve never have done anything bad ever.”
The show addresses topics that include slavery and gender inequality and the right to vote.
“We touch on all of that, but we do it in such a way that we’re trying to get across, yeah, these things have happened, but in the end we always figure it out. Eventually, we come up with the right answer,” O’Brien said.
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O’Brien, who wrote the play, said the show was created to help fill a void in educational entertainment.
“Because there’s nothing else like it out there,” he said. “We knew there was an opening in the educational market for a show that tackled these types of topics that spoke to the student audiences in this tone of voice. It’s very contemporary.
“We have a tendency to try to speak to the kids in a language that they feel is more contemporary rather than more traditional, sort of, kiddie theater, which we don’t do,” O’Brien said.
When writing the script, the idea was to come up with 20 scenes “that sort of demonstrate in a comedic fashion what was going on in the country at that time,” he said. The play tackles U.S. history from beginning through present day.
“We talk about the Missouri compromise, we talk about the original Great Compromise,” he said. “We actually cover the Bill of Rights in one of the most popular segments of the show.”
Taking its cue from the tradition of Chicago improv, the costumes are simple – actors throw on a vest or hat to change character within seconds.
“Everybody is playing so many different characters, the focus is really on the writing and on the character choices of the performers and also just on the precision that’s involved,” O’Brien said. “There’s a lot of words flying out there, and the whole thing is for the cast about making sure the level of precision is extremely high.”
For this show, GreatWorks puts six of its most reliable and consistent performers in the cast, he said.
“Because it’s a challenge, and they have to have a lot of stuff running in their head all at the same time. And the way the script is written, every line is really tightly dovetailed into whatever came before it and whatever came after it. And they have discovered some of them, the hard way, that if you mix two words up in a line, you kill the joke, or it totally throws the rhythm of the show off. For the performers, it’s a great stunt,” O’Brien said. “I know every time when they finish a run, they always have a pretty good feeling about what they’ve just accomplished the way a marathon runner does at the end of a marathon.”
Through the 58-minute show, GreatWorks hopes to use comedy to tell the truth about the nation’s history and entertain at the same time, he said.
“We’re trying to be irreverent but still celebratory of the idea behind the country,” O’Brian said.
With all of its performances, GreatWorks looks “to come up with shows that are age appropriate for school audiences but still have the feeling of something that’s very contemporary, and very adult in a good way,” he said. “We always challenge kids to play at the top of their intellectual games. And this show is no different from that.”
School groups, local families and home school students and parents can purchase tickets by contacting Katie Kerr, group sales manager for Fox Valley Repertory, at 630-770-7699. Tickets for these performances are not sold online.
’50 States in 60 Minutes’
When: May 1 and May 13
Where: Fox Valley Repertory Theatre at Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 E. Main St., St. Charles
Tickets: $8
Information: 630-770-7699
Cichon is a freelance reporter for The Courier News.