Offstage Voices

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to see a proper production of Noel Coward’ s cavalcade, his wartime play that takes an entire town to perform.
I did see a Chinese village play once, as well as a postmodern variation on that form overseen by Peter Sellars at Harvard in the mid-1980s. And of course I’ve caught the Cornerstone Theater Company a few times.
But my curiosity is not so much about community as it is about quantity. Thirds came back to me as I attended the annual New Haven Public Schools Music Department Spring Sing Festival last Thursday morning. The show had over 400 performers singing for an audience of 16.
The auditorium at Troup school in the Dwight/ Edgewood of New Haven is a study in flexibility. A sign on the door warns students to respect the space as a hall and classroom, and not degrade it as a “hallway” or ashortcut to classrooms.
This is the neighborhood school my kids would probably be attending if they hadn’t gotten into the magnet school system. This is the school we visit in order to vote. It was extensively renovated and expanded a few years ago. It’s a great place for a school concert. And in these days of decreasing arts education budgets, school concerts and school choirs aren’t as prevalent as you’d think. The one at my daughter’s school was only just founded.
On Thursday, the concept of a conventional performance was sublimated by the sheer exuberance of these music teachers and their students gathering in one spot to sing a set of songs they’d all been rehearsing for weeks. They were sharing the joy of existing as choruses, as a chorus of choruses.
The audience, despite being honored and onstage, was an afterthought. The observers validated the event by observing it, but it was owned by the community that presented it. Each aspect of the “show” was public, from the warm-ups to the restarting of a couple of songs when soloists were trampled by the mass of young voices, or a closing shout wasn’t jubilant enough.
In the theater, you live for moments when formality breaks down, when vulnerable performers feel free and natural and at ease, when the audience disappears. This was that—a cavalcade I hadn’t expected, and an overwhelming morning in a grade school auditorium.