Kansas City Star Covers the HMC

Men's chorus members identify with teased hero of new musical
By KAREN UHLENHUTH The Kansas City Star
Date: 06/13/01 22:15

Rick Fisher knows the anguish of Oliver, the belittled and humiliated protagonist of the children's book Oliver Button Is a Sissy. So does Randy Hite. Peter Northcott has been there, and ditto for Joe Nadeau.

"The situation the book describes is something many of us could identify with -- the feeling that we didn't fit, or were different from `normal' boys," Fisher said. He's the executive director of the Heartland Men's Chorus. The other three men sing in the choir.

The tale of the boy who was ostracized because he preferred singing and dancing to playing ball with the boys "has a powerful resonance for us," Fisher noted. That's why this weekend, the Heartland Men's Chorus will perform a musical adaptation of Tomie dePaola's story.

Heartland joined with three other gay men's choruses in commissioning a musical version of Oliver Button. A couple of years ago Nadeau, the choir's musical director, received a copy of the book from a friend with the men's chorus in the Twin Cities.

"By the time I was done (reading it), I was crying," Nadeau said. "I thought, `This is my story.' "

The musical, about 25 minutes long, features a soloist in the role of Oliver. The singers will be accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble. Children in the audience will be invited to sit onstage during the performance. Fisher is excited that the author, dePaola, will narrate the story.

"It's like having a star on your marquee," he said.

Several chorus members saw parts of themselves, and their early years, in the story of Oliver Button. For Nadeau, it was Oliver's passion for the stage and make-believe.

He and two younger brothers used to "present musicals and plays and dress up and make my mother laugh. My favorite pastime was to go in the attic, put on costumes and act out characters. The safety is that there's no one around to make fun of you."

Oliver Button was no good at sports. Neither was Nadeau.

"I remember kids would tease me. Kids were grabbing my lunch or my bookbag and tossing it around. I was called `sissy' a lot."
His thick, dark glasses and buck teeth -- the result of a tumble -- didn't help matters any.

That aspect of childhood hasn't changed much. As the music director at St. Agnes Church and school in Roeland Park, Nadeau said, "I see this stuff happen a lot. Kids want so desperately to be liked. There's a lot of teasing, whether it's `sissy' or `stupid.'... There are lots of ways to isolate kids. I try to stop it."

Randy Hite, another chorister, remembers that when he was a schoolboy, life was never more unpleasant than at the bus stop in the mornings. It was a sort of no man's land, between the safety of home and the controlled chaos of the schoolgrounds in Raytown. In the absence of any adults, Hite felt vulnerable to attack by bullies at any moment.

"I'd try to ignore 'em. I'd pretend I didn't hear them. I'd try not to look at them so I wouldn't attract their attention. I'd pray the bus would hurry and get there.

"The word I heard over and over and over was, I was a `fag.' I didn't know what the word meant. I wasn't tough. I didn't play rough and tumble."

Hite remembers struggling to fit in.

"I tried to pretend I liked this girl in the ninth grade. That's what everybody else was doing."

Blending in was his mission.

"I didn't want any undue attention on me. I was a good student. Sometimes I thought that's what it was, I was smart like a girl."

When he enrolled in college, Hite finally found his niche and felt a great sense of relief. But for years there would still be awkward moments, reminders of his differentness.

"I used to hate going to the hardware store," he said. "I didn't know a screw from a nut. And going to get my car fixed, I had to pretend I knew what I was talking about.

"I had to work through that, feeling OK that I don't know this or that. I'm good at certain things."

Although Oliver Button hits home with many of the gay men in the Heartland Men's Chorus, Hite sees it as speaking to much more than the matter of sexuality.

"It's broader than that," he said. "It's gender stereotypes."

During his years in a Lutheran elementary school in a Detroit suburb, Peter Northcott, another chorus member, felt free to be himself -- to play dress-up with girls.

But then came time for him to transfer to a public high school. Northcott bought a wardrobe of "flashy fun stuff" that he couldn't wait to share with his new classmates. The first day of school, he recalls, he wore a pair of purple bellbottoms -- one leg lighter than the other -- and a matching purple top with a huge yellow smiley face on it, and a macrame belt.

"Really fashionable," he thought to himself.

Really big mistake, actually.

"The minute I walked in the door, it was like I had a bull's-eye on me," he remembers. "I was the target of every expletive imaginable. I had no idea what they were talking about. These people would chase me down the hall. I thought, `What is going on that you'd attack me?' I couldn't go anywhere without being called a nasty name."

Even students who'd been his friend when they were younger spurned him.

"All of a sudden they weren't my friends," he said. "They felt the peer pressure."

The minute the bell rang during his last class, Northcott was out of there. He didn't take shop ("I would have killed to take shop.") He avoided the theater crowd "like the plague," certain that associating with them would only make him a bigger target.

"There were things I would have liked to do, but I was scared I would be teased. The minute the bell rang, I made a beeline for home. I missed out on so many neat, enriching things."

In the past few years, Northcott said, he has learned new skills, pursued opportunities that he was "too intimidated to do in high school." And he has made some discoveries about himself that might have surprised his former schoolmates.

"I found out I'm athletic, and I'm even good at building things."

Rick Fisher, the chorus' executive director and a preacher's kid who heard about his "missionary barrel" wardrobe, hopes that this weekend's performances may lead to new understandings for those in the audience, both adults and children.

Although the choir is a collection of gay men, he said, "We are trying not to make this a gay story. It's an important message that our society needs: that each child needs respect. Because its impact on us is so great, we're the ones bringing it."

Northcott hopes that among those in the audience, "The light may go on, that diversity makes us good. If you have an Oliver or a Peter, they have something to give, even though you may not know what it is."

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