Boys turn ‘a regular day’ into musical fundraiser

March 19, 2009

By Frances Kraft

TORONTO — Five Grade 12 students at the Anne and Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto have taken a play that four of them wrote as a Grade 11 drama project and expanded it into an 80-minute musical about teenagers dealing with issues including romance and drugs. They will present it as a fundraiser March 23 and 24.

Cast members of Just a Regular Day are TanenbaumCHAT students, on floor, Gillian Singer and Noam Tomaschoff; seated from left, Ryan Peters, Jeremy Chad with Danyse Golick behind him, Ben Deverett and Baylee Shurman; and standing at back, Russell Citron and Ashley Gould.

Cast members of Just a Regular Day are TanenbaumCHAT students, on
floor, Gillian Singer and Noam Tomaschoff; seated from left, Ryan
Peters, Jeremy Chad with Danyse Golick behind him, Ben Deverett and
Baylee Shurman; and standing at back, Russell Citron and Ashley Gould.

The five 17-year-olds, who coalesced into a group of best friends almost two years ago, are “extremely – I repeat extremely – talented students,” Josh Sable, director of student activities at the school’s Wallenberg campus, wrote to The CJN in an e-mail.

Ryan Peters, Jeremy Chad, Ben Deverett and Noam Tomaschoff wrote the original 40-minute play, for which they received a mark of 100 per cent.

Their friend Russell Citron, who enjoys writing and public speaking, didn’t take drama last year, but “naturally, we wanted him to be part of it,” said Chad in a joint interview with four of the five last week at the Wilmington Avenue school.

Tomaschoff – who has studied at Toronto’s Randolph Academy for the Performing Arts and taken part in a summer program at the Lee Strasberg Institute of New York University, where he has been accepted to study acting next year –was home sick.

The play, titled Just a Regular Day, includes 13 original songs, and features the five boys as well as four female students. Most of the cast members also appeared in the school’s annual musical, said Chad, who is student council president and plans to study engineering at university next year.

A CD of the music will be sold at the show.

Peters, who plays piano and has acted in community theatre, wrote the music, and the lyrics were a collaborative effort.

Deverett – whose main academic interest is science, but who enjoys acting and singing and has appeared on the children’s television show Ricky’s Room – used a software application to make the music sound as if it were being played by a live band.

“I like catchy music,” said Peters, citing show tunes and the works of Elton John and Billy Joel.

The boys credited their Grade 11 drama teacher, Brad Mittelman, for encouraging them to go ahead with the project, although it didn’t fit the parameters of the “anthology” he had assigned them. “Ithink some stricter teachers would have said no,” Peters said.

The play is “totally slice of life,” Deverett said. The students denied, however, that it reflected their real-life experiences.

“In our [real] lives it’s us huddled around a piano,” Citron said.

The play is infused with more drama than their own lives: Tomaschoff plays a “confused adolescent” who is interested in a girl, but she has changed over the summer and become “cool.” When he tries to approach her at a party, everything backfires, Deverett explained.

Everything begins on “just a regular day,” Chad said.

Without revealing the plot twists – and there are several – the play’s lesson is, “Be yourself,” Deverett said.

Tickets are $12 in advance, $18 at the door. The show will be held at the Crescent School Theatre, 2365 Bayview Ave.

The students plan to donate the profits to the performing and visual arts fund at TanenbaumCHAT, as well as to JACS, the organization that deals with suffering caused by drugs and alcohol in Toronto’s Jewish community.

For tickets to the show or for more information, call Wendy Peters at 416-315-1118, or e-mail [email protected].