Marquez’ Lantos Debuts Newest Play at the Broad

Teacher Jeff Lantos and a troupe of Marquez Elementary fifth graders and Paul Revere thespians present the latest study of American history through musical theater this weekend. The play ‘Plymouth 2.0,’ will debut on Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Broad Theater, 1310 11th St. in Santa Monica. Based on a short story by Nathanial Hawthorne, the production takes up the drama between the Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth and Thomas Morton, who founded the nearby community of Merrymount. Moving to the Broad is a boon for Lantos and his method of teaching history through music and song, which caught the attention of 2009 Festival of New American Musicals producers. The four-month festival, produced by Marcia Seligson (UCLA’s Reprise! producing artistic director), Bob Klein (Reprise! founding board member) and producer/performer Linda Shusett, is home to full productions, staged readings, workshops of musicals in progress, cabaret events, concerts and master classes offered in and around Los Angeles. This effort to celebrate the importance of musical theater, apart from the big blockbuster Broadway productions, began with Klein, who headed the Reprise! company’s effort to market Broadway revivals. ‘When we began running into trouble getting the rights to revivals because New York had already optioned so many of them, I figured that we had to slide into new shows,’ Klein told the Palisadian-Post. ‘We came up with the premise that there was something going on in musical theater. I thought of it as a renaissance, reminiscent of the 1984 Olympic celebration of the musical returning to the center of popular theater.’ Klein consulted with Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz (‘Wicked’) and Michael Kerker, director of musical theatre of ASCAP, the major organization that represents American theater composers. ‘As we started on this year’s festival, Linda [Shusett] said that her neighbor was Jeff Lantos,’ Klein said. ‘We went to a rehearsal of ‘Hello Louisiana,’ his musical history of the Louisiana Purchase, and we videotaped the performance for our Web site. In the meantime, we talked to [Broad Stage Artistic Director] Dale Franzen, who helped arrange the premiere of Jeff’s newest play.’ Lantos was able to come up with the match for the $4,000 grant from the Carnation Milk Foundation to pay the Broad’s union fees. Lantos, who brought the Declaration of Independence to life with ‘Miracle at Philadelphia,’ and recaptured the Industrial Revolution with ‘Water and Power,’ characterizes ‘Plymouth 2.0’ as ‘Woodstock meets the Religious Right.’ The Merrymount colonists personify jollity and dance around a maypole, while the Puritans are the emblems of gloom. The love between Morton and a good girl from Plymouth complicates the plot even more. The show, with book and lyrics by Lantos and music by Bill Augustine, features a multi-grade cast of Marquez and Paul Revere students, who participated in Lantos’ fifth-grade productions at Marquez. The choreography is by Jeanette Mills, a Palisades High School and UCLA graduate. With high hopes for exporting his pedagogy to other schools, Lantos says that UCLA Professor of Education Jim Stigler wanted to test the hypothesis that fourth and fifth grade elementary school students comprehend and retain history lessons better than those who study in a conventional manner. He studied kids with a similar demographic profile and economic status; the results showed that the musical theater kids had double the retention of the others. In a follow-up to the study, Stigler will offer a class to education students that allows them to apprentice with Lantos in his classroom and learn his method. Lantos is encouraged by the idea, adding that Marquez principal Phil Hollis is on board as well. During his 15 years teaching at Marquez, Lantos has also produced ‘Miracle at Philadelphia,’ ‘Carry On’ (about the battle to integrate public schools) and ‘Lewis and Clark.’ He rotates three of his shows throughout the curriculum. For tickets to ‘Plymouth 2.0’ ($15 and $30) visit www.stareventtickets.org.