Second Act

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New Life at Duke Ellington

A new principal and a bevy of theater pros are trying to help the Duke Ellington School of the Arts revive its reputation. First hurdle? An ambitious production of "The Wiz."

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"Hold!" Leonard, the stage manager, speaks into her headset. The actors come to a halt, but no one seems to know why. Then Leonard gives the cue for the scene to begin again. The sound of the wind blows, and Dorothy again runs from side to side looking and calling here and there. And as the cast members move across the stage, dancers emerge spinning, twirling and leaping.

"Stop," Gravátt's voice rings out.

"Hold!" follows Leonard.

"The wind just went by," Gravátt says, referring to dancers personifying the wind. "The wind just went by, and no one responded!"

The scene begins again, and again the dancers emerge to move around the stage, almost reaching the other side . . . "Stop! Gravátt says again, looking at her notes. "Tin Man, very nice with the wind. Antonio, that's two winds you didn't respond to. You have to respond to the wind," she says to them all. "Now it's time for you to create."

Days later, the sound still isn't right. This is not a new issue; it was evident when the theater rehearsals began, but everyone assumed that it would be worked out by now. Quietly frustrated by the lack of progress, Ken Johnson is sitting nearby, listening intently to a musical number that is being overshadowed by the crackle and hiss of faulty microphones.

Pullens walks in with a worried expression. "What's going on with the sound?" he asks.

"We're going to have someone from the Kennedy Center come in to check it out tomorrow," Johnson says.

Pullens folds his arms and looks at Johnson. "You do know that sound can ruin even the best of shows?" he says.

Johnson nods in agreement as he steps aside to receive a call. Gravátt joins in the conversation, and Pullens asks her what time she will require the students to arrive on days that the curtain will go up at 10 a.m.

"Nine," Gravátt answers.

"Nine?" Pullens asks, his eyebrows raised in surprise. "You're brave."

"I'm not brave," Gravátt says to her growing crowd of listeners. "I'm gonna tell them like my daddy told me. I came downstairs for my . . . I think it was my second wedding, and he was gone. I went to the church, and I said, 'Daddy, who were you gonna take down the aisle?' And he said, 'Whoever was here at 10.' I have two casts. They'll be on time."

IT IS OPENING NIGHT, AND THE CAST IS ALL HERE, but the crows don't have heads. Johnson has been concerned that the costumes were running late but didn't imagine he'd still be waiting for a delivery half an hour before the show.

"Have the heads arrived yet?" Johnson asks peeking into the costume room.

"No, not yet, but they're due any minute," says Beverly Johnson, who is in charge of Ellington's costume design technology program.

It's 7 p.m., and the show will begin at 7:30, with or without the crow heads.

Backstage is buzzing with activity.

Two designers are urgently working to adjust late-arriving costumes. The makeup artist had to pull out the day before, so Gravátt and one of the mothers are helping the students put on makeup.

At 7:15, a young man dressed in black hurries down the hallway with a large cardboard box.

"Is that them?" Ken Johnson asks.

"They just got here,"the young man nods.

He takes the box straight into the costume room, to the delight of the two crows waiting just inside the door. The box is opened, and the headpieces are lifted out reverently as students Le'Asha Julius and Ellen Winter inspect them quickly and then tug them on their heads. Julius, the taller of the two, struggles a bit to pull on the beaked head, but she manages and secures it under her chin.

Harper, the show's musical director, comes in to inspect the costumes. He's apprehensive because they didn't rehearse with the heads on. "I'm concerned because anything on your heads can change the sound of the mikes," he says. "Who, who, who," one of the girls excitedly practices.

The fully dressed crows start out of the costume room, "No matter what, just keep singing," Harper says with a smile. "Don't stop singing."

THAT EVENING, AS THE OPENING PERFORMANCE NEARS A CLOSE, the young woman playing Dorothy on this night, Keziah John-Paul, stands at the center of the stage, disheartened that she has been left behind by the Wiz, who has just lifted off in a hot-air balloon.

Dressed all in white, her hair separated into thick girlish pigtails, she is comforted by the band of friends who have been by her side for the adventure. And as they circle round about her, Glinda the Good Witch, a radiant vision in white and silver, descends as if from a cloud. Her angelic presence is accompanied by the surging orchestra and the sounds of surprise that can be heard from children in the crowd.

Dorothy begins to say goodbye to her faithful friends. As John-Paul sings the lyrics to the song "Home," the friends who accompanied her in Oz walk by one by one, leaving Dorothy to make the last leg of her journey alone. As she clicks the heels of her silver shoes three times, a distant light illuminates her aunt and uncle standing in the center aisle, waiting for her to return. She runs to them, a better, stronger and more grateful person, having been invigorated by new experiences, new friends and a belief in herself.

Postscript:

By all accounts, "The Wiz," which ran in mid-February, was a great success, selling enough tickets to cover the $200,000 investment and then some, Pullens says. The production also seems to have gained the school the attention Pullens was seeking. Even before the play was staged, Virginia businessman Kenneth Feld decided to extend a $100,000 grant to the school for another year, and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, who attended the production along with Feld and D.C. Council member Jack Evans, has since committed to improving the school's deteriorating building. The experience also has brought with it a more personal revelation for Ken Johnson. Perhaps what he has been looking for is already here. "You might be thinking, 'I need to go somewhere else'," Johnson says. "But what if somewhere else comes to you?"

Robin Rose Parker is a freelance writer based in Maryland. She can be reached at roseparker.robin@hotmail.com.