By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

It’s session 11 out of 18 afterschool workshops for the 15 students in this year’s JCC Children’s Theater program. No one knows exactly what the final performance will look like. And that’s part of the plan.

Instead of another book musical, JCC Children’s Theater teamed up with the Muse Machine to present World Harmony, an amalgam of dance, music, and acting workshops which will culminate in a performance on Feb. 9.

Muse Machine Elementary School Artists Michael Bashaw, Michael Lippert, and Beth Wright are facilitating sessions to guide the children through performance traditions from around the world.

“The hope is that each instructor will build upon the previous one,” says Yale Glinter, the JCC’s youth, teen, and family program director.

He says World Harmony is an original concept. “As we sat around the table we explored how to get the kids to appreciate one another. It’s an appropriate title because kids today need to learn how to live together and play together.”

The students, in grades two through six, come twice a week for the workshops at Sugar Camp in Oakwood.

Glinter says he has students from as far north as Tipp City, as far south as Centerville, and as close as one building away: from Hillel Academy Jewish day school. JCC Children’s Theater draws children from all of Dayton’s synagogues and temples and is open to the general community.

“I thought we were just going to do another play. I didn’t know we were going to actually make our own,” says 9-year-old Benjamin Char, son of Deborah and David Char of Kettering. Char participated in last year’s JCC Theater production of Schoolhouse Rock Live! Jr.

“We’re actually making our own play and script,” Char says. “We made some musical instruments. It’s kind of like a mixture of a banjo, and then you have a bucket and you can scrape that bucket with a Chinese chopstick. Every kid put one together. We can get a lot of notes out of it. We get to keep it.”

Today, Muse Machine Dance Specialist Beth Wright works with the children.

“This piece is about World Harmony,” she tells the students after they warm up. “So what I thought we would do is watch some videos. I thought we would take ideas from movement and make them our own, and take ideas that you worked on and we’re going to go with that a little bit more.”

Wright says the creative process for the World Harmony project is a twist on the Muse Machine’s in-school programs for students in these grades.

“I usually go into a school and we meet with the teachers prior to working (with the kids) and

we choose some curriculum,” she says. “And the residency is about five days long, and the first four days we are creating together, basically curriculum. And so in this one, it’s not curriculum but we do have a theme. We are deep in the creative process.”

Char says he looks forward to the acting segment of the workshops, with Michael Lippert. “He worked with me in third grade at my school and it was really fun.”

“The kids work together not knowing where they may end up,” Glinter says, “and that’s an exciting part of the creation of performance art.”

JCC Children’s Theater and Muse Machine present World Harmony, Sunday, Feb. 9, 3:30 p.m. at S. Smithville Center, 2745 S. Smithville Rd., Kettering. $10 adults, $5 children 6 and up, free for children 5 and under. R.S.V.P. to Karen Steiger, 853-0372. 

To read the complete February 2014 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.