There’s something very bittersweet about growing up, producer and playwright Larissa Catalano said.
“The entire experience is very nostalgic and the feeling of nostalgia is both so joyous and so heartbreaking at times,” she said. “And that’s really what I wanted to try to encapsulate in this show.
“It’s definitely something a 3-year-old can dance in the aisles to. There’s no doubt about it. But it’s also something for our patrons who are grown and who have gone through this, they can hopefully relate to each of these pivotal moments …”
Relive your formative years when the musical revue “Driver’s License, a Coming-of-Age Playlist” runs June 17-26 at Elgin Community College’s Blizzard Theatre in Elgin.
Showtimes for the joint production of Children’s Theatre of Elgin and Fox Valley Theatre Company are at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The 2 p.m. June 19 and 7:30 p.m. June 24 performances will include American Sign Language interpretation. The 2 p.m. June 18 and 2 p.m. June 25 shows are sensory-friendly performances.
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“We are really trying to make advances in making the arts more equitable for everyone,” said Catalano, who is also a board member.
“I feel it definitely makes for a wonderful experience for all of our patrons,” she said. “Additionally, it gives the kids an opportunity to perform in different settings and perform for different groups and have the experience of receiving a different kind of energy from the audience and still being able to perform and be fueled by that. I love giving them that access.”
The musical revue is a decades-old tradition at the theater company, intended to showcase the talents of all of the students that participate in the organization. Audience members can expect “the most extravagant musical revue that they could imagine,” Catalano said.
“Kind of like a jukebox musical,” she said. “It is a wonderful representation of what the arts and theater community is capable of.”
Sixty-two students ages 6 through 20 perform in the original production. With a theme of coming of age, the program features songs audience members grew up with, spanning the decades from the ’60s through last year.
“The main focus of the show is the idea that we’ve all grown up. It’s one of the most unifying experiences that we can have, even though that looks different on each person,” Catalano said.
“The goal is to have every single audience member relate to something in the show and recognize how others’ experiences may have impacted them as well.”
For many of the students, the revue is also a lesson in pop culture touchstones.
“One of our poems references a lot of commercial jingles and cartoons that a lot of the audience has grown up with throughout the years,” Catalano said.
“And we have some kids where I’m trying to explain this (Band-Aid) jingle to them, and I realize I have not seen this commercial since before these kids were born. They’re getting a lot of new pop culture experience, which is always very fun.
“That’s really what the show is about. It’s taking us back to those moments,” she said. “Another one, I had to teach the kids about ‘E.T.’ They have never seen ‘E.T.'”
Catalano gave the students a lot of common movies and commercials and TV shows for them to go watch and learn about.
“It’s been very interesting to learn about their experience growing up versus how I view growing up or anyone older than me views growing up as well,” she said.
The revue includes shortened renditions of 35 songs ranging from the Beatles to Twenty One Pilots, five poems and 10 scenes focused around themes of growing up such as school days, friendships, young love, world events and finding your own voice, she said.
“And how the culmination of all these events and experiences help us to determine what our voice sounds like,” Catalano said.
She selected and arranged each of the songs and poems. Then she wrote a script with a plot line following a group of friends on their last night before they go to college, featuring flashbacks to key moments in their friendship such as when they first met or had their first fight, going all the way up until the first friend drives away.
The show is based, in part, on her some of Catalano’s own experiences.
“The day before I went to college my friends from CTE came and we rallied together beforehand. We drove around most of the night,” she said. “And one of those people who spent that last night before college with me is actually my stage manager on this show.
“So she has come back to work with us as well. This show is in so many ways a love letter to our current performers. That I see the things they’re going through because I’ve been through it as well.”
‘Driver’s License: A Coming of Age Playlist’
When: June 17-26
Where: Elgin Community College’s Blizzard Theatre, 1700 Spartan Drive, Elgin
Tickets: $14 adults; $12 seniors and students
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Information: 847-214-7152; cteelgin.com
Kathy Cichon is a freelance reporter for the Courier-News.