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Asbury Park High School’s department of theater and dance will ease on down the road to Oz this week as they perform their spring musical, “The Wiz,” in the school auditorium.

“I think long and hard about the selection of the show each year,” said Gary Kilmer, show director and head of the department. Last year, the students performed “Footloose” “because it’s about a group of students saying, ‘We want things to be different in our town and we’re willing to stand up and fight for it,'” Kilmer said.

This year, Kilmer selected “The Wiz” — an urban adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” — because “students are often not happy with the circumstances they come from … When you get down to it, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is a story of a young girl who’s unhappy with her home life and circumstances.”

After the protagonist is away from home for a while in Oz, though, she learns “home is where you belong,” Kilmer said. “Your family is where you belong. You find home, peace and tranquility within and you appreciate what you have.”

This year’s spring musical production marks the department’s fifth year in existence, although it is the first year they have been without outside grant funding from ArtsCAP, Interfaith Neighbors, Algonquin Arts Theatre, Blackbox of Asbury Park and Revision Theatre. Those groups joined and successfully wrote a grant proposal to begin the after-school theater and dance program five years ago, but the flow of funding ended in the past year.

Producing the show without the grant funding for the first time this year “is a success story,” Kilmer said. “We’re firmly on our own now.”

The school district helped by establishing a theater and dance budget and converting an old auto shop classroom into a half-theater-half-dance space with a roll-out ballroom dance floor, some dance mirrors and a small sound system.

“We’ve gone from oil changes to scene changes,” Kilmer said. [Students in photo at top are shown helping to prepare stage elements for the production.]

Kilmer, a former Broadway dancer, started out helping with the grant program, but he is now employed full-time by the school, teaching the theater and dance arts elective classes during the day and also running the after-school programs in those disciplines.

This is also the first year the show’s director has not had to re-write the show to accommodate lackluster student participation.

Five years ago, only six students participated in the school’s first spring musical, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Last year, Kilmer had to re-write “Footloose” to remove four roles. The cast and crew keeps growing, though, and this year, enough students turned out that he “had the wonderful, awful task” of holding auditions for the roles, he said.

Students are also playing in the orchestra for this production. Kids from the high school’s graphic design class designed the poster, and visual arts students painted some of the sets.

In addition to learning about teamwork, commitment and sometimes compromise, the students in the theater and dance department learn how to dream about the future, Kilmer said.

“Before we can expect these kids to dream about being an architect, lawyer, engineer, designer or inventor, we need to take a step back and remind them to dream in the first place,” he said. “They are creative human begins and they can be creative themselves. For a student population that has to grow up a little too fast, those messages can be pushed aside.”

The success of the theater program at Asbury Park High School surprises some people, Kilmer said.

“There are some misconceptions about the students at Asbury Park High,” he said. “It’s true we see some kids that are throwing trash on our sidewalks or causing problems on the streets … But for every kid who has earned that reputation, there is a kid here who’s trying to keep their head down and get an education against some really daunting odds. Those kids are the silent majority.”

Those students “deserve the support of their community and the applause of their community,” Kilmer said. “If we’re going to ask them to do the right thing, we should be here to applaud them when they do.”

Kilmer urges people to attend the shows tonight and this weekend.

“Some kid up there on that stage needs to see that if they commit, if they show up and do the right thing, perfect strangers or their neighbor down the street or the old lady they think is the meanie on the block will appreciate it,” Kilmer said. “It will be noticed and it will be appreciated.”

“The Wiz” starts at 7 p.m. tonight, tomorrow and Saturday in the Asbury Park High School Auditorium, which is directly through the school’s front doors on Sunset Avenue. Tickets for adults are $5, while anyone under 18 or anyone employed by the school will enjoy free admission.

For more information about the dance and theater program, click here. To see a promotional video made by the students, click here.

 

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