Eastbluff becomes River City

Michael Miller

In “The Music Man,” Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey’s Broadway

classic, musical- instrument salesman Harold Hill has to start a

small-town band from scratch. June Elsten, the drama advisor at

Eastbluff Elementary School, had a similar task in assembling her

school’s annual spring musical.

Granted, her intention was never to swindle the town, as Hill

attempts to do in the play before conscience and authorities

intervene. But she did have a mere four weeks to transform a class

full of modern sixth-graders into the inhabitants of River City,

Iowa, circa 1912. The cast and crew rehearsed two to four hours a

day, four days a week, leading up to the first show on Thursday.

“I was a theater arts major in college, always thinking I was

going to Broadway, but I realized that teaching is what I was looking

for,” Elsten said. “You really are working from a different script

each year.”

Elsten, who teaches sixth grade at Eastbluff, has led the school’s

theater productions for the last five years. This spring, she and her

colleagues tackled a period piece, with sets and costumes to recreate

the America of nearly 100 years ago. During the three performances of

“The Music Man” at Eastbluff last week, overalls and shorts gave way

to suspenders, foot-length dresses and fancy sun hats.

In the play, characters wait excitedly for the Wells Fargo wagon

to bring their mail. In 2005, Eastbluff had easier means of accessing

period costumes and props. Pam Coulter, whose daughter was in the

play, acquired most of the material from eBay and Goodwill. Estancia

High School also donated the marching band uniforms for the final

scene of the play.

The musical made a perfect history lesson, and it proved

educational in other ways as well.

“It gives kids who are creative and talented in other areas an

outlet,” said sixth-grade teacher Juliet Hilde, who had 19 of her

students in the production. “We spend a lot of time just working on

standards in the classroom.”

Contributing to the musical were a number of Eastbluff residents.

Several of Elsten’s former students served as stage crew, while

Corona del Mar High sophomore Kimberly Bui, the sister of a cast

member, played piano. Elsten, who led the students in “Bye Bye

Birdie” and “The Wizard of Oz” the last two years, said she chose

“The Music Man” in part because of school demographics.

“This class has twice as many boys as girls,” she noted. “So we

wanted a play with a heavily male cast.”

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot

education writer Michael Miller visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa

area and writes about his experience.