For New Chorus, Harmony With Heart in 'Damn Yankees'

Three days before their debut before a packed house at Arena Stage, the chorus at Stuart-Hobson Middle School is suffering a collective case of the fidgets. Which is more than forgivable, given that the chorus was created specifically for this honor a little more than a week ago. Now the girls in the chorus have pronounced Miss Allen's choreography "too corny," so some eighth-graders add a couple of more modern, MTV-angular moves, which are looking sharp.

But then the fidgets. Arms swinging when they should be still. Eyes wandering when they should focus. In just 80 hours, these children will take center stage in Arena's production of "Damn Yankees," playing members of a Washington Senators fan club joining in the song "You've Gotta Have Heart." Things must come together, now.

Enter Thomasena Allen, who has survived as vocal music teacher at this middle school on Capitol Hill for 20 years, even as the city school system has largely relegated arts instruction to an urban trash heap built of streetcars, smoky bars and stand-alone movie theaters. At Tuesday's rehearsal, Allen tells a quick story about the Boys Choir of Harlem and the young men who audition to be in that prestigeful group. On their very first day, members of that famed choir are hustled into a gym, where "they just stand, without moving. For 20 minutes."

Suddenly there's a hush in Room 114. Miss Allen stands before her singers, and they face her, hands at their sides, their eyes focused on the teacher's little Santa figurine across the room. The seconds tick by. No one moves. Or speaks. Or giggles.

A full minute goes by, and the CD spins and the kids hear their cue, and the room fills with song.

Many of the 24 schools Arena selected to perform in "Damn Yankees" have drama programs and students who've grown up attending theater. But not one child in the chorus at Stuart-Hobson had ever seen "Damn Yankees" before a field trip to Arena yesterday. And in a school located 21 blocks from RFK Stadium, only three of the 17 kids had been to a Nationals game in the team's first season in Washington, and those were the three white kids in the chorus.

"Theater is just not part of their experience," says Allen, who is black. "Their frame of reference is just limited by how they grow up, and unless someone does something, it stays that way. Let's face it, when I go to the Kennedy Center, I don't see a lot of people who look like me. These children need experiences like this."

The kids are eager to learn, but "most are totally bereft of any musical experience" when they arrive in middle school, Allen says. When she assigns them to write about a musician, the reports tend to focus on characters such as rapper 50 Cent. But the kids get that this is something different. When the children told me about the auditions to get into this chorus, they described selecting pieces that would demonstrate that they were serious artists. Elaine Bowers sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," Caressa Rice recited Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise," and Tarik Harleston chose Langston Hughes's "I Dream a World."

As rehearsal broke up, Donavann Rimpsey told one of the other kids, "I'm just so nervous, I can't hardly count the days."

The chorus from Stuart-Hobson takes the stage tomorrow night and again Jan. 3.

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In the immortal words of his 1994 victory celebration T-shirt, "Barry's Back -- Get Over It." The former Mayor for Life and current Ward 8 council member has been a fleeting shadow since returning to city politics last year. He's been ill, he's tired, he misses meetings.