A Way to Introduce 'Schoolhouse Rock' to Your Children

From an edited press release:

Schoolhouse Rock Live! explodes onto the stage, updating a pop culture phenomenon for a whole new generation at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre in an all-ages performance at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 28.

Tickets, priced starting at $17 for adults and youth 17 and under and $10 for full-time Pepperdine students, are available now by calling (310) 506-4522 or online. More information: http://www.childsplayaz.org/

There will be a free, open to the public Family Art Day from noon to 2 p.m. before the performance, featuring hands-on art projects and Weisman Museum tours.

Schoolhouse Rock Live! follows Tom, a nerve-wracked school teacher who is nervous about his first day of teaching. He tries to relax by watching TV when various characters representing facets of his personality emerge and show him how to win his students over with imagination and music. Academic subjects will never seem boring again, with megahit songs like “Conjunction Junction,” “Just a Bill,” “Interplanet Janet,” and “Three Is a Magic Number.”

The original Schoolhouse Rock television series was the brainchild of an advertising executive who noticed his son could remember all the words to popular songs on the radio but could not remember the multiplication tables. He reasoned that if important educational information was coupled with exciting animation and catchy music, children would be able to learn and remember it.

From this simple idea, Schoohouse Rock was born and quickly adopted by ABC-TV, which broadcast the series on Saturday mornings from 1973 to 1985, garnering four Emmy Awards during that time.

Fast forward 20 years when five young Northwestern and Theatre School at DePaul graduates realized the series would make a great stage show and opened Schoolhouse Rock Live! in 1993 in the basement of Cafe Voltaire in Chicago, quickly gathering a cult following with adults and children alike.

This nostalgic, rollicking ride of a show has toured the country, from theaters in Chicago and New York, to school auditoriums, and now to the Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University. Chicago Theater Review calls Schoolhouse Rock Live! “a joyful, intoxicating blast from the past…the best way to both introduce young people to theatre and put a spring in everyone’s step.”

Founded in 1977, Childsplay is a nationally and internationally respected professional theatre company whose chosen audience is children. Childsplay believes that young people deserve to experience challenging, thought-provoking theatre of the highest artistic quality. In the past 36 years, they have educated and inspired more than four million young people and families, serving an average annual audience of 200,000 students, teachers, and families.

The Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts at Pepperdine University provides high-quality activities for over 50,000 people from 600 zip codes annually through performances, rehearsals, museum exhibitions, and master classes. Located on Pepperdine’s breathtaking Malibu campus overlooking the Pacific, the center serves as a hub for the arts, uniquely linking professional guest artists with Pepperdine students as well as patrons from surrounding Southern California communities. Facilities include the 450-seat Smothers Theatre, the 118-seat Raitt Recital Hall, the “black box” Helen E. Lindhurst Theatre, and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art.

THE DETAILS:

WHAT: Schoolhouse Rock Live!

WHEN: Sunday, September 28, 2014 at 2 p.m.

WHERE: Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, CA

TICKETS: (310) 506-4522 or http://arts.pepperdine.edu/

PRICES: $17-$35 for adults, $17-$20 for youth 17 and under