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12/21/2016 08:30 AMWhat do we do when we see someone being bullied, and how well can we recognize when it is happening? These are some of the questions Madison resident Jill Nesi hopes to address for students, parents, teachers, and school administrations through a new musical public service announcement (PSA), called Her Song, which will debut on the Ivoryton Playhouse stage in spring 2017.
With music composed by Nesi and Nick Fradiani, Sr., the production aims to entertain its audiences while also helping adults to learn to look for warning signs of bullying by asking and answering the following questions: Is your child being bullied? Could your child be the bully? What do I do? Who do I go to?
Nesi is also the musical’s producer; Colin Sheehan will direct the musical and choreography is by Michelle Natalino.
This is not Nesi’s first foray into educational, musical PSAs. The four-time Emmy nominated songwriter began writing music when she was young and is one of the voices behind the animated fruit and vegetable rock and roll band Vita 4, which promotes healthy lifestyle education for kids aged 3 to 8 years old. This program is accompanied by a curriculum that educates and includes healthy active movement programming, as part of the fight against the childhood obesity epidemic. In addition to writing jingles for nonprofits, Nesi also produced a CD to raise money for Circle of Care, an organization that works to bring the cozy touch of home to the hospital for children diagnosed with pediatric cancer, and who also then redecorate the childrens’ bedrooms, when they are able to return home.
“Amongst all the other healthy lifestyle themes that I’ve worked with, one thing that came up over and over again was bullying,” said Nesi, on where the impetus for her latest show came from. “When I was growing up, whatever happened in school, you could go home, and you had family and the TV and that was it. Now, they can’t get away from it, they can’t escape it, between Facebook and SnapChat and social media. And teens and kids don’t realize that things will change and will get better.”
“We used the showcase to just share the music with the community, and see how people felt about it,” said Nesi. “Music is an equalizer; when music moves you it has the power to change you.”
The musical itself centers around the experience of Stephanie, a shy girl who auditions for a talent show and has a bad audition. It ends up videotaped and on the Internet, and the audience watches her cry herself to sleep. A friend of hers ends up appearing in her dream and shows her the different situations in which the people who tormented Stephanie are being brought down in their own lives or being bullied, and how their own low self-esteem affected their treatment of her.
“The goal is to get people to recognize these situations and to get bystanders to be up-standers instead,” said Nesi. “How can we help? What can we as adults do to model better behavior in our own lives? Where are we maybe careless about the comments we make and the effects our words can have?”
Nesi’s goal is to bring this program to every school, beginning with Connecticut. Her preliminary feedback has been positive. Not only did the adolescents cast in the Nov. 17 showcase in Clinton refer to the experience of singing these parts as life changing, but Steven Hernandez, the executive director for the Connecticut Commission on Women, Children, and Seniors attended the showcase and was encouraged by the musical’s message. Staff members of the Ivoryton Playhouse also attended the showcase, which led to Nesi’s next step in this production.
Her Song will be performed as part of the Ivoryton Playhouse’s annual anti-bullying program, which busses students in from local schools to see pieces aimed at fostering kindness and addressing the underlying causes of bullying. The musical will be performed at no charge. The last piece to be performed as part of this programming, Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical, is now an off-Broadway production.
When it comes to stepping out of the theater and into schools, Nesi sees this happening either as a DVD that is sent to schools with regionally located performances, or as being performed directly in schools as an assembly program.
“Ideally, it can be an assembly where, at the end, we can sit all of the kids down on the stage and talk about what they just saw and how they are all feeling,” said Nesi. “And then have a night where we could bring the parents in and say, this is what your kids saw and talked about, and open the discussion on that level as well.”
“I hope that people see this and take with them that we need to think before we speak,” said Nesi. “What you say, good or bad, can affect someone’s life. And, it might sound completely idealistic, but I want meanness and unkindness to be the most uncool thing, so that those who are doing it become embarrassed by that choice.”
“Parents have to take that message to heart too,” continued Nesi. “Often they can show that behavior in the home, perhaps not purposefully, but we all have to stop and think before we set that example.”
“Hopefully we can start a ripple effect,” said Nesi.
Casting for the 45 minute PSA musical will take place on Saturday, Jan. 7 from noon to 3 p.m. at the Madison Arts Barn, located at 8 Campus Road, Madison, and Sunday, Jan. 8 from noon to 3 p.m. at Studio Be, located at 139 Middletown Avenue, North Haven. For more information about auditions, or the musical in general, email Jill Nesi at jillnesi@aol.com.