It’s as if an 8-track and an iPod came together to create one heck of a mixtape.
Children’s Theatre of Elgin and Fox Valley Theatre Company present “Mashup: When Songs Collide” June 22-July 1 at Elgin Community College’s Blizzard Theatre.
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays.
After staging musicals the last few summers, the theater company decided to bring back its song and dance revue format.
“It should be fun for both the performers and audience, because as we’re combining songs — each song generally only appeals to a particular generation,” said Producer David Combs of Elgin. “And this is a way for us to be able to plug in the same song material that will appeal to both the performers — who are generally craving more current sounds — and the audience, who has a much broader spectrum of appreciation of music.”
Twenty-nine mashups (the combination of two or more songs) featuring bits of 89 different songs will be performed by 49 students. Drawing material from different eras and musical genres results in songs like “Too Legit to Leave,” a mashup of MC Hammer’s “Too Legit to Quit” and Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now.”
“When we look around in general, we can see that the country is quite divided right now, and this is a way for us to show that, even though things might appear they don’t go together or you wonder how would they work together, you can actually bring things that look a lot different together and make it work,” Combs said.
A little over half of the songs were created specifically for this show. The rest of the songs live on the Internet and have been put together before, he said.
“But this will be the first time that any of them have come to stage,” Combs said. “For example, the show opener is one that we put together for the show.”
The song “Jessie’s Girl Dance With Me” mashes up Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” from 1981 with Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance.”
“That’s going to set the tone for the show,” Combs said. “It will bring these things together in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily think would work right out of the gate.”
Right after that is “My House is Common Love,” a mashup of “My House” by Flo Rida with Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”
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They’re definitely not three songs that you would think would go together well,” said Combs, who put together many of the mashups.
“Probably three out of every four ideas I get I end up scrapping,” he said. “All of the ones that we’re doing work. There’s a laundry list of ideas that I just couldn’t get to work. But that’s OK. That’s part of the creative process.”
Choreographers were hired to create dances for each number in an effort to highlight the show’s theme of contrast.
“We have six different choreographers that we have hired, all 22 and under, so it’s really going to be putting a fresh take on a lot of this,” Combs said. “And you’re going to go from song to song and you’re going to notice there’s a little bit different style in many of the songs, which is intentional.”
The entire cast will perform “Rock of Ages,” a mashup of 23 different classic rock songs, including the Def Leppard song of the same name. There’s even a song dedicated to those musical guilty pleasures like Los del Rio’s “Macarena” called “Armagangnam.”
“It takes Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style,’ which let’s face it, it’s not a good song. And it mashes it with a number of other songs that also are not good songs,” Combs said. “But it creates something that’s pretty cool, even thought it’s pretty ridiculous.”
Mashup: When Songs Collide
When: June 22-July 1
Where: Elgin Community College Blizzard Theatre, 1700 Spartan Drive, Building H, Elgin
Tickets: $12 adults, $10 students and seniors
Information: 847-214-7152; www.cteelgin.com