They've got that Go-Gos beat
Totally Electric is a musical
trip back in time to the 1980s
By Peter Covino
Osceola News-Gazette
October 2007
Whether you
fondly remember your high school yers or just have some painful
memories, it all will come back home with the new show opening at the
Osceola Center for the Arts this weekend called Totally
Electric.
Written and directed by former Clearwater resident Jonathan Van Dyke
and based on his high school experiences, Totally
Electric
comes to the center weekends through Oct. 28.
"I moved to New York in the 1990s and was working part-time as a
bartender in a cabaret club" when the idea for Totally
Electric
started to take shape, Van Dyke said.
There were a variety of shows at the club, many with songs that were
popular back in the 1980s, the same time period Van Dyke was a student
at East Lake High School in Clearwater.
Van Dyke was part of what was called the high school show choir back in
Clearwater. Their venues generally included places such as nursing
homes and pep rallies.
"We weren't really friends," he said. "We were kids from throughout the
school that happened to like music."
And the music, Van Dyke recalls, was generally hit songs from the era,
performed rather badly; or, as Van Dyke puts it, "they were lobotomized
versions of good songs." All of it is a part of the ensemble show
modeled after his high school experience with the show chorus.
"I actually used my high school yearbook a lot for inspiration,"
looking at photos of former classmates to remember all those good and
bad experiences, he said.
Totally Electric
has been performed off-Broadway in New York
City and also at the MAD Theatre in Tampa.
"I've been so happy that so many theaters took a risk with this show,"
he said.
Totally Electric features
15 songs, some sung pretty much as
they would have been performed by a high school chorus, while others
are sung in character, one performer to another.
And almost all of the songs are instantly recognizable, including songs
such as The Go-Gos "We've Got The Beat" or [Tiffany's] "I Think We're
Alone Now," but Van Dyke doesn't like to reveal too many of the titles
because from the beginning, the song titles never were included in any
program accompanying the show.
It's more fun for the audience to let them guess the tiles from some of
those opening bars of music, he said.
It's the songs that proved to be the trickier part to assemble
clearance rights, and as luck would have it, just about every song
required a different publisher. Fortunately, Van Dyke said he was able
to use some of the songs without cost.
The version that will be presented at the Osceola Center for the Arts
basically is the same one from New York City and Tampa, he said, but
with a few changes here and there.
"I have been taking some artistic liberties as I go along and I think
it has gotten tighter," he said.
The show moves on to Brandon after the Kissimmee shows, and then goes
to New Orleans.
"The hope of course is to get investors and wind up back in New York on
the Great White Way," Van Dyke said, "but we are very happy with the
way it is progressing now."
