C.H.A.N.G.E! is a twelve-scene vignette style musical-drama accounting the tragedy of homelessness and poverty among children and families in the U.S. The timeline is centered around the decade of the 1980s, when homelessness became a politicized term under Ronald Reagan, because of Reaganomics, also known as “trickle-down economics.” Never before in the history of the U.S., had the term homelessness been ascribed to people living on the street. Hobos, drifters, transients, and the like, have filled pages of Americana history, peaking during the Great Depression, as preserved in the works of Dorothea Lange and John Steinbeck. Homelessness was something new. It comprised a population of children and families, mostly single-mothers and fathers, who due to various circumstances, found themselves without jobs, without resources, and without a place to call home.

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C.H.A.N.G.E! is designed to bring a heightened awareness to the issues surrounding poverty and homelessness by providing musical “snapshots” into the lives and experiences of those subsisting and coping with this affliction. These stories were gathered from texts, articles, speeches, and personal interviews. Jonathan Kozol’s, Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America (1988) provided a spellbinding account, which helped inspire the creation of this piece. Common threads began to show themselves early on. This piece is an attempt to tie those threads together into a tapestry fraught with questions, fears, and hopes.

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C.H.A.N.G.E! aims to tell a story of people, who are, at this very moment, suffering from a social disease, and as a result, are “maimed in body and spirit”, to borrow the phrase from Michael Harrington’s acute observation as penned in his Kennedy report, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962). Casting a line thru the history of poverty and exclusionary practice in the U.S., this piece hopes to provoke further inquiry into the political, religious, and other institutionalized systems that permeate, and often denigrate our lives.

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SCORING

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1 flute (alt.piccolo)

1 oboe

1 clarinet in Bb

1 bassoon

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1 horn in F

1 trumpet in Bb

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Percussion (triangle, pitched/non pitched bells, snare drum,)

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Piano

Electronic Keyboard

EMU Virtuoso 2000

EMU Proteus 2000

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1 violin

1 viola

1 cello

1 double bass

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SATB Soloists & Chorus

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Performance note:

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Cast/Singers perform multiple roles.

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Approximately 1.5 hours in length

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SCENES

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Prologue ……………………………………………...........Potter’s Field

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Scene 1 ……………………….........Subway Station/Martinique Hotel

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Scene 2 …………………………………………….….Failure To Thrive

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Scene 3 …………………………………………………...Media Scream

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Interlude 1 …………………………………................EZ Come, EZ Go

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Scene 4 ………………………………….Craze Maze/Financial Follies

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Scene 5 ………………………………………………..Dance Sequence

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Scene 6 ……………………………………………...Inside These Walls

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Interlude 2 ……………………………………………….Luxury, Poverty

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Scene 7 ……………………………………………..............Call of Duty

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Scene 8 ………………………………….......................Subway Tunnel

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Scene 9 ……………………………………………….Squares & Circles

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Interlude 3 ……………………………………………..EZ Come, EZ Go

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Scene 10 …………………………………………………....Police Seize

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Scene 11 ……………………………………….............................Storm

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Scene 12 ………………………………………………………......X-Mas

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Epilogue …………………………………………………....Potter’s Field

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C.H.A.N.G.E! premeired 27 April 2012 at the

UC Berkeley Music Department with support from the

Max Weinbach UC Berkeley Musical Theater Prize

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Jessica Clarkson, Director

Vanessa Ramos, Stage Manager

Daniel Alley, Music Director Conductor

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Jennie Jang, Sets/Prop Designer

Aries Limon, Costume Designer

Anthony Ferraro, Lighting Designer

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Michael Schiff, Sound Designer

Michael Ross, Art Designer

Stevie Lee Crouch, Audio/Video, Tech Support

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