The cast and crew of this production of “Through the Looking Glass” will truly be making it their own.
In the last five years, the musical has been performed in the United States less than three dozen times.
“This show has not been performed much at all. A lot of the kids didn’t know this show at all. A lot of the shows we do are familiar to the kids, at least the storyline is familiar and they can learn the music later,” Producer Jessica Yeska said. “This, the storyline and the music were all very new to the kids. I think that’s been a challenge, but also pretty exciting to be able to perform something that not a lot of people have seen before.
“It gives them an opportunity to put their own spin and their own take on it. Having no reference for it, they can make it their own,” she said. “I think that’s pretty cool, and they’re doing an amazing job too.”
A joint production of Children’s Theatre of Elgin and Fox Valley Theatre Company, “Through the Looking Glass” opens June 16 at Elgin Community College’s Arts Center. Performances, which run through June 25, are at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays.
The musical is based on “Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There,” Lewis Carroll’s follow-up to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
“Alice, having visited that mirrored land, she goes back through the mirror in order to discover herself and take on the Red Queen,” Director Andy Bero said.
Audience members will get to meet well-known characters including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Red Queen and the famed Jabberwock.
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“We have a gigantic puppet that our parents have built that spans 24-feet on stage,” Bero said of the Jabberwock. “We have seven students that are manipulating the puppet. In order to get this done, we have parent volunteers that not only created it, built it, but then they taught seven students to be puppeteers as well.”
The musical, which runs at just under two hours, features 48 cast members ranging in age from 6 to 19. The production brings together the younger students in Children’s Theatre of Elgin and those who in Fox Valley Theatre Company, which is for students in ninth grade through age 20.
“Every summer we combine forces and perform a show at the Blizzard Theatre at ECC,” Yeska said. “I think a lot of the little kids really look up to the older kids
“And I think a lot of the older kids like being that role model… It’s a good learning process for everybody.”
With the show being relatively new, everyone involved is learning with this production, Bero said. YouTube has become a source of information for the students, directors and choreographers to see how other theater companies have staged the musical. Even for those who came to the production thinking it was “Alice in Wonderland,” there’s been a learning curve, he said.
“There are no resources for this show. There’s a very obscure cast recording that you can find but it doesn’t have all the songs on it. There are no orchestrations for it,” Bero said. “There’s just no outline for the show anywhere, so it truly is something that we’re learning together.”
That also includes the numerous parent volunteers, who take on a variety of tasks for every Children’s Theatre of Elgin and Fox Valley Theatre Company production.
“These shows absolutely do not happen without our parent volunteers,” Yeska said. “The time that they put into everything that we do is just incredible.”
Many of them, like Yeska and Bero, took part in the theater company’s productions when they were students themselves.
“We really have generations of students and families that have been a part of CTE (Children’s Theatre of Elgin) that come back, they’re a part of our process and part of our history,” Bero said. “We make sure that CTE is truly a theater for our community, by our community.”
And the theater gives the community an experience they can’t get via the digital world.
“It’s really important, especially in the world we live in today, to realize that outside of screens, outside of YouTube and films and TV, that a theatrical production can give you the same thing on a personalized level,” Bero said. “You can see these large characters. You can feel the joy, the happiness, the fear.”
Kathy Cichon is a freelance writer for The Courier-News.
‘Through the Looking Glass’
When: June 16-25
Where: Elgin Community College Arts Center, 1700 Spartan Drive, Building H, Elgin
Tickets: $12 adults; $10 students/seniors
Information: 847-622-0300; www.tickets.elgin.edu