Not-so-tall tale David Gonzalez’s magical Frog Bride BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ
	Gateway into summer FirstWorksKids offers a wide world of diversions in the heart of the city In its second year, the FirstWorksKids International Performance Festival has grown in several ways: more performers, more sponsors/partners, and an additional day. The fest starts on Friday, June 24 at 7:30 pm at Waterplace Park with Los Pleneros de la 21, featuring three generations of New York City-based Puerto Rican musicians, and Rhode Island’s exuberant Yoruba 2 dancers, led by Lydia Perez. "The Waterplace concert is part of the city’s Concert Series, celebrating the Fiesta del Pueblo on the actual day," said FirstWorksKids director Kathleen Pletcher. "It’s a special kid/adult concert, and we see this whole festival as a gateway into the summer. "One thing that’s very exciting is the different people that want to get involved with us and the way it’s growing and gaining momentum," she continued. "It’s great to really have a festival in Providence that kids and adults can enjoy together." On June 25, the RISD Museum’s Free-for-All Saturday (1 to 4 pm) will feature banner-making, sun-print workshops, and a gallery quest. On Saturday afternoon in Market Square and along the River Walkway, Donald Knaack will return with JunkJam™, making music from cast-off metal pieces. This year, however, he will be working the week before the festival building a sound sculpture with ¡CityArts! kids and the sculpture will be installed at the Children’s Museum. "One of our goals is to not just plop down performances," Pletcher stressed, "but to have a whole experience of the arts that takes place downtown. Plus we want people to come and participate, to be part of the performance, whether watching or helping to make it." A good example is Chris Turner’s Big Harmonica orchestra project. The first 100 people who register at the festival box office for the 4 pm event will be given a harmonica, and several conductors will teach one of Turner’s compositions, which will be performed at the end of the hour. Other music will come from the New York-based CASYM (Caribbean-American Sports and Cultural Youth Movement) steel drum orchestra, who have performed with Lionel Hampton and the Harlem Boys Choir, and from the dances performed by local young people, representing the cultural traditions of Bolivia, Cambodia, India, and Mexico. Big Nazo will keep kids and adults amused with its fast-talking creatures; the Boston-based Taipei Economic and Cultural Office will present Chinese Lion Dances, yo-yo performances, dough art, and a 50-foot-long traditional dragon leading the River Procession; there will be a robotic river serpent and, at 3 pm, the Galapagos Puppet Theater’s Fire Cloud Cave will be presented in the RISD Illustration Gallery. The latter are Chinese hand puppets, with the movements so refined that the puppets can spin plates and do martial arts. At 6 pm the Peruvian group Inca Son will perform at Waterplace Park, celebrating the festival of Inti Raymi, the winter solstice of the southern hemisphere. Wrapping up the day at 7:30 pm will be "Tales by Torchlight," with storytellers David Gonzalez, Teju Ologboni, and Valerie Tutson, plus a full WaterFire, beginning at 8:20 pm. "We’re doing this as a completely free festival," Pletcher emphasized. "We wanted to reach out so people could have this experience, and we are working closely with the city’s Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism." All FirstWorksKids Festival events are free, but advance reservations for free tickets to The Frog Bride are recommended; call 401.621.6123 or e-mail info@arttixri.com. You can also reserve seats for the Galapagos Puppet Theater and participation in the Big Harmonica Orchestra. The FirstWorksKids Box Office at the RISD Auditorium opens on Saturday, June 25 at noon. For the latest information, visit www.firstworksprov.org. Program handouts will be available at the festival. — J.R.

The first time I saw David Gonzalez perform, he was telling about a proud young man, Orpheus, making a difficult journey into the Underworld to retrieve his true love. Gonzalez held his audience, both young and old, in the proverbial palm of his hand, as variations in his voice, facial expressions, and gestures conveyed changes in mood, emotional content, and narrative flow. Eventually Gonzalez was to enhance that story with music and take it to Broadway as Mytholojazz in 1999.

In a similar progression, he discovered the Russian folktale of The Frog Bride through Robert Bly and started telling his own version, based on the original sources. After performing it solo for a couple of years, Gonzalez decided this story also needed music — Prokofiev — and visual art — Kandinsky. He’ll bring his multi-media "Russian triple threat" to the RISD Auditorium this Saturday, June 25 at 1 and 4 pm (recommended for children over six) as part of the second annual FirstWorksKids International Performance Festival (see sidebar).

"I’m on this kind of track to marry beautiful stories with great music," Gonzalez reflected, in a recent phone conversation from his home in New York. "I love classical music — I wanted to bring high art to short people — and I love Prokofiev, but I needed a piece that wasn’t too intense and that could be done in small segments. So I chose ‘Five Melodies for Violin and Piano,’ which he actually wrote in the ‘20s when he was in the States."

Mass MOCA, who had once booked Mytholojazz, gave Gonzalez a grant to help incubate The Frog Bride in 2002. There in North Adams, Massachusetts, Gonzalez, with pianist/composer Daniel Kelly and violinist Christian Howe, was able to determine where the music fit into the story and where he wanted to compose new music. The Prokofiev is played on acoustic instruments and the new music switches into the electronic sounds of synthesizers, tape loops, samplers, and even the distortion on an electric violin.

"The musicians lay down a thick mantle of groove-based structures," explained Gonzalez, who spins his yarn in syncopation with the funky beats pouring out around him but doesn’t speak during the short Prokofiev sections.

The third element in the show is the visual art: Kandinsky’s paintings used in video sets. One is an outline of St. Basil’s Cathedral filled in with kinetic elements from a Kandinsky painting. Another is the Versailles-like interior of a castle whose windows swirl with Kandinsky’s rich palette and his lyrical brushstrokes.

"We’re trying to bring that art throughout the whole thing," Gonzalez emphasized, "but everything is treated with a sort of modernist touch: the music is reinterpreted electronically and the Kandinsky is made into movies that are then manipulated to become part of the video environment."

The Frog Bride begins with an aging king whose three sons each shoot an arrow into the air, intending to marry whomever brings it back, after she proves her sewing and cooking skills and is judged the most beautiful. And though Ivon, the youngest son, has his arrow returned by a slimy frog, she delivers on all three counts, even appearing at the king’s ball as a graceful young woman. When Ivon burns her frog skin, however, she disappears, and he must descend into a dark world, similar to Orpheus, to search for his own true love.

"To embody that transformation from innocence to boastful pride into longing and then into compassion — as a performer, that’s a thrill," noted Gonzalez, who portrays all of the characters in the story.

Gonzalez has performed at hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schools across North America, and he has presented his one-man shows in England (the Royal National Theater), and at US venues such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian Institution, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2002, he released City of Dreams, a Latin jazz/spoken word project with the Poetic License Band.

Gonzalez’s other shows include Double-Crossed: The Saga of the St. Louis, a ship of 900 Jewish refugees refused entry to the US who were sent back from Havana to Hitler’s Europe; The Secret of the Ceiba Tree, based on interviews with Latino immigrants; and Finding North, about the Underground Railroad into Ohio. The Cincinnati Opera has commissioned him to write the libretto for a 2007 opera based on John Parker, an African American hero in the Underground Railroad. And in March 2006, The Frog Bride moves to Broadway.

So catch it while it’s in town!