Once Upon a Time...

From Leslie Arden, composer/playwright of The Princess & the Handmaiden:

It was opening night of LKTYP’s production of The Princess & the Handmaiden, and I was sitting in the audience beside two of the original cast members from…oh my…over twenty-five years ago. It’s been a long journey. I first wrote the musical in 1982, but it was originally a three-hander, with one performer (me) stuck playing the piano most of the time. We toured Ontario schools from January until April for over two decades with my own Children’s Theatre Company, and we survived to tell the tale. Ah, the memories…

I remember one school in which they had to move the piano to the performing area from a classroom far, far away, so, to ease its journey, they greased the wheels. Literally. Throughout the show, every time I depressed the sustain pedal, the piano slipped out from under me and silently rolled away. I constantly had to stop playing and grab it to keep it from rolling across the stage.

In another school they provided an electronic keyboard which boasted a handy transposition button, but every time I played the keyboard louder than mezzo piano the keyboard would launch into a new key. This happened so frequently and so unpredictably throughout the show that eventually we all resorted to simply shouting our lyrics instead of singing, as we never knew when the accompaniment would fly off into unknown territory.

Then there was the school that provided a piano that had a couple of keys that wouldn’t play. No problem, I thought, I can work around those notes. As the show progressed, however, more and more keys disappeared until, by halfway through the show, it sounded like I was playing some sort of percussion instrument, with nothing but wooden clicking and clacking emerging from the piano.

One school provided a tiny, two-octave mini Casio keyboard, upon which they expected me to accompany the show. They couldn’t understand my hesitancy. After all, it came with the added attraction of a pre-programmed rhythm section. Evidently, with just a push of a button, one could effortlessly begin the beguine.

We drove to Ottawa during the infamous ice storm to perform at the Children’s Festival. We had full houses because the theatre was one of the only buildings that still had electricity, and families came to stay warm. I like to think that they also enjoyed the show.

We performed in gyms with no heat, we tap danced on carpets (yes, I’ve been known to tap dance). We were interrupted by school bells, fire drills and p.a. announcements. Kids threw up. They peed themselves, and not necessarily in the humorous scenes. Entire classes arose and left just before the end, so they wouldn’t miss their bus. We drove to venues in snow storms, ice storms and thunderstorms, only to arrive and find no one else there and the show cancelled (yes, it was back in the days before cell phones). And I loved every minute of it.

Today, people ask me why I still choose to work in Children’s Theatre. The answer is simple. It’s the most rewarding work I can do. I cannot count the number of children for whom we were their first theatrical experience. How many behaviorally challenged kids were riveted by our troupe? How many deaf children “heard” our musicals through interpreters signing off to the sides? How many teachers considered our company an inconvenience when we first arrived, and were then utterly charmed and entertained for an hour (after which they would beg us to join them in the teachers’ lounge so they could regale us with stories about their wonderful school and their beloved students)?

I’ve spent twenty-five years entertaining children and young adults with stories set to music. Frankly, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Leslie Arden has written over a dozen musicals, including the critically acclaimed and multi-award winning The House of Martin Guerre and the Chalmers Award winning The Happy Prince. Leslie’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, The Boys Are Coming Home, was produced by Chicago’s American Musical Theatre Project in Chicago in August, 2006, and this musical was chosen to be showcased by The National Alliance of Musical Theater in New York City later that same year. Leslie composed the music for Toronto’s Canadian Stage Company’s productions of The Beard of Avon and It’s a Wonderful Life (in which she was also a performer), as well as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 2009 production of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Colm Feore. Leslie’s currently at work on musical adaptations of Moll Flanders and Somewhere in Time.