When Band Geeks premiered in the summer of 2005 at the tiny 70-seat Live Bait space, the tune-filled fable quickly became the late-night show that everyone wanted to see, its exclusivity fueled by the limited number of tickets available over its short run before the Single Box Turn company decamped for the New York Fringe Festival. Despite its sometimes juvenile humor ( e.g., two matronly females played, with all seriousness, by strapping male actor Ed Jones ) , audiences of all demographics warmed to this low-tech musical recounting the progress of a small-town high school marching band toward its goal of playing the halftime show at an NFL game. From the instant we met this ragtag squad of gawky adolescents ( whose roster includes a scoliotic flautist, a chain-mail-wearing trombonist and a visibly pregnant cheerleader ) , right up to the crucial game against the Cincinnati Bengals, we were firmly in their corner.
The goal at this rehearsal in Andersonville's Ebenezer Lutheran Church, however, is to expand the marching formations, originally choreographed for Live Bait's cramped quarters, to fit the expansive up-against-the-front-row dimensions of the 150-seat north stage in the Theatre Building Chicago complex, where the revival production is scheduled to open following an appearance at the New York Fringe Festival. Fortunately, the music for these scenes is pre-recorded, so the actors need not worry about actually playing their instruments, though all have been carefully coached in proper stance and technique.
'Stand in your windows. You should be standing in three lines of four,' dance choreographer Paula Kroening instructs. The ensemble members, assembled in chorus-line fashion, check their distances. Composer Andy Eninger switches the tape recorder to playback, starting the accompaniment to the Elyria High School bandmaster's rap-style introduction to The Music's In You.
The nervous youngsters move hesitantly through their military-inspired choreography—which still manages to incorporate a few Bob Fosse postures—while whispering the individual steps under their breath, faces frozen in concentration ( 'one-two-three-PIVOT/PLANT-two-three-four/dirty-dirty-dirty-JAZZ/sexy-sexy-sexy-STOP' ) . A few stumble, but always return to the mantra-like refrain: 'If you can't find the rhythm/and you don't know what to do/Just listen to your heart/because the music's in YOU.'
'The material is close to our hearts, but also ripe with possibilities for poking fun at our dorky teenage selves,' declare co-authors Becky Eldridge and Amy Petersen. 'We cemented lifelong friendships in high school. Writing this show was an opportunity to pay homage to that experience. And the intensity of adolescent emotions and 1980s sensibilities filtered through the lens of a hometown marching band seemed to us like something other people might identify with.'
'Instruments UP!' snaps the bandmaster, and the tape recorder blares forth Eye Of The Tiger, its punchy opening chords lent additional muscle by full brass and woodwind sections. The marchers square their shoulders and plod hesitantly through their paces, finishing with the various musicians circling the stationary piccolo player in the figure known as a 'Starburst.'
'I purposely chose formations from classical high school drill repertoire to recreate the feeling of a homecoming game,' says Mik Erwin, a drill instructor with the Righteous Outrageous Twirling Corps, who acted as consultant to Kroening for the play's premiere production. 'I wanted the audience to recognize what they were seeing right away, and then remember the earlier time in their lives when they saw it.'
The score for the show, says Eninger, 'is less concerned with 'high school' music than with the songs and arrangements that defined the '80s. I used an old Yamaha keyboard to get that synthesized period sound. And I wanted to write a song with the word 'fag' in it more times than any other ever before. In high school, we were ALL called 'band fags,' and the more times we say it now, the more it loses its pejorative meaning.'
The marchers are now performing a 'Pass-Through,' splitting into two lines—one circling left and the other right to file upstage in a pattern reminiscent of a Virginia Reel—to the beat of that sturdy mid-1980s hit Come On, Eileen. As they emerge to resume their beginning positions, however, Kroening stops them, asking 'Why isn't there anyone HERE?'— indicating a gap in the otherwise uniformly-spaced row of bodies.
The actors extend their arms to touch the shoulder of the next person, re-assessing their distances. 'Can you guide off her shoulder?' Kroening asks the cheerleader after a group do-si-do—a step borrowed from barn-dancing—winds up with too many instrumentalists on one side of the stage picture.
'Last year, some of the jocks didn't march in the finale,' Kroening remarks as all the actors take their positions for that number, 'but this year we wanted everybody on the playing field, so to speak. So we now have the entire cast onstage at the end of the show.'
Eninger endorses that idea. 'I didn't come out until two years into college but high school band, for me, was a place where being gay was just one of the many kinds of 'otherness' embraced by teenagers who could only be cool when making music,' he said. 'Putting on feathered hats, dancing in patterns, playing orchestral version of pop songs—there's a natural gay sensibility in that. You don't have to dress it up for the play.'
'We didn't know how our sweet-but-naughty style of comedy would play to audiences [ at the Fringe Festival ] ,' recalls Kroening, 'But they laughed in all the right places. And they went CRAZY over the marching! We took the award for best choreography, beating out all those Equity shows slumming away from Broadway.'
Concludes Eninger, 'The message of the play is just simply, 'You belong.' Isn't that what we ALL want to hear?'
The finale 'Everybody Wants To Be A Band Fag'—has completed its spectacular 'Pinwheel' formation, as well as its soul train-styled epilogue apprising us of happy endings for everyone. The actors have arranged themselves parallel to the stage apron, their faces radiating megawatt dazzle to light up the dreariest game day. 'Instruments DOWN!' barks the bandmaster, and all bend at the waist to bow in perfect unison.
Band Geeks plays at Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, through Nov. 4. For tickets and information, phone 773-327-5252 or see www.ticketmaster.com .