Journey to Lands Beyond - Zooming into The Phantom Tollbooth
Journey to Lands Beyond - Zooming into The Phantom Tollbooth
“So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.”
I've directed The Phantom Tollbooth 5 or 6 times with middle school ensembles in full productions, with cardboard cars and full banquet scenes, terrific bug, bee, and dog costumes and a genuine turnpike tollbooth. In April 2020, I offered middle schoolers a workshop on Zoom to bring the script to life in a week filled with pandemic news and the announcement that schools would be closed to the summer. Here are some reflections on the experience.
My Mom loves puns and anagrams, wordplay, synonyms and syllogisms, consonance and assonance. A dancer, she taught me to revel in the way sounds move in the mouth, with kinetic energy and graceful dips. A choreographer, she taught me to cultivate a math brain as well, looking for the magic and beauty in the way a square can become a circle, in the infinite and the definitive gesture.
It was Mom who shared The Phantom Tollbooth with me for the first time. Besides being a simply excellent story, Tollbooth connects me to my Mom's joy and passion, and is one of my top go-to handbooks for living a life in balance with both Rhyme and Reason. I love words; I love math. I must have Rhyme and Reason, Letters and Numbers in my life both professionally and personally. I am an artist who loves a balanced budget. I make mind maps and outlines. I must dance both in circles and squares.
Now more than ever we need both the power and joy of words, the playfulness and kinetic energy of numbers. In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, our lives look a lot like Milo's at the beginning of this adventure – stuck in our rooms, overwhelmed by the noise of the words and numbers screamed at us by the media, trapped by the static and paused quality of life, in danger of boring ourselves to distraction.
Boredom is dangerous drug. When we are scared of confronting our own emotions, desires, and possibilities, we cry boredom and turn to distraction. But as a medication, distraction is both addictive and ineffective. The best remedy for being stuck is to learn something. To be curious. To engage.
“The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between.”
What a delight, then, to see a group of young people – strangers to each other and to me at the start of this process, choose to come together and engage with this story. Middle-school years are hard under any circumstances – imagine trying to do all that hard work of socialization and identity-formation, of understanding your body in space when you're stuck at home with your family and no friends?! I am so proud of these young people for taking the risk to learn something new about themselves, to meet new people. I am inspired by their courageousness, playfulness intelligence, and creativity. In a time that asks us to distance and stay in place, they rise to the challenge of connection and adventure.
“There are no wrong roads to anywhere.”
A great story is a simple story. In it, faces look two ways: at each other, and together facing forward. A great story is a hello! Who are you? And is a look, what's over that way? Let's go find out together! Life goes by in a blink, in a flash. Where do you want to say you were? On an adventure!