Teen Summer Musical 'Snow Whyte & The Seven' Is a Soulful, Magical Take on the Classic Story

by Troy Landrum Jr.

I recently got a chance to walk into the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute and get a sneak peek of the behind-the-scenes action as 70 young people rehearsed for Snow Whyte & The Seven, happening at Benaroya Hall Aug. 23—25. The Teen Summer Musical — managed by Acts on Stage in partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation — has brought magical work to Seattle for over 25 years, and Snow Whyte & The Seven will keep that tradition and magic alive.

The sight of young people productively running around brought me a jolt of joy. It was a sight to see — productive chaos in beautiful, musical motion. Each room I entered was humming with excitement as young people practiced their dance steps in the dance studio, centered their singing voices to the right pitch, and practiced lines on the main stage, all in hopes of capturing the very essence of what director Isiah Anderson Jr. envisioned when he took to writing this play.

"We have always taken traditional productions, musicals, and 'chocolatized' them, if you will," Anderson said. "And Snow Whyte & The Seven was no different. It was a God-given idea to write it, and when I wrote it, it was nonstop. And we performed it for the first time in 2008, and all the music was originally written by Michelle Lang-Raymond, and it's just a journey about a young girl who is going back home for the first time since she was 2 years old, now she's 18, and visiting family. She falls asleep at the airport and dreams about what this journey would be. And again, a lot of it ties into the traditional but a culturally sound piece where all the names of the seven are the seven principles of Kwanzaa."

Anderson and Lang-Raymond, the executive director and co-music director, serve as the anchors for Snow Whyte & The Seven. These two pillars, prior to leading their promotional tour, have been hard at work getting all 70 young people ready for a production that will shake up the end of summer and send us all into the Seattle fall, inspired.

"This particular production of the Teen Summer Musical was an idea to write because of some friends of mine I worked with," said Anderson. "One who was from South Africa and the other who has dedicated her life to teaching and playing the marimbas. Two Black females who live here in Seattle, who have done some awesome work. And I wanted to do a story around one of their particular journeys to America."

Anderson has been with Teen Summer Musical since its inception about 33 years ago. His vision aligned with the founding fathers of the program, Steve Sneed, Reco Bembry, and others, who envisioned a program at Langston centering young folks of color in Seattle. This was during a time when young folks of color were seeing rejection after rejection of their hopes of playing principal characters and taking lead roles in Seattle-area theaters. Their vision was to make space for these young people and change the narrative. Leaders such as Anderson and Raymond have continued to carry on that powerful vision, which has continued to change the lives of young people in Seattle. They are cultivating a space that not only gets youth involved but can also be a space for family involvement during the 10-week process of producing the musical.

As I toured the building during their rehearsal, I stepped quietly into the music room of Lang-Raymond. The vocals instantly transported me back to my childhood home in the Midwest, where gospel music rang through the house during family cleanup days and swayed your body on Sunday mornings at church. I felt what Lang-Raymond described wanting people to feel after the final curtain closed.

"I want the music to sound like us. As much as I want it to sound like musical theater, I want it to sound like the range of Black musical theater. I want it to have all the pizzazz of Broadway, but I want people to feel like they had a good soul food meal of music … a little bit of Jerk Shack, a little bit of Island Soul, and they had a little bit of Communion by the time it's all over, and a little Ezell's thrown in there, too. I want them to feel like they had a little bit of all that Black culture when they hear it. And I want them to be blown away by the fact that it was true to the musical theater genre."

The synergy between the story and the music was so evident as I walked through each space. These powerful teachers were bringing something out of these 70 cast members that would be hard to replicate outside of this program. To think that so many young people would be willing to give up 10 weeks of their summer, including promoting the show at Umoja Fest and the Lake City Summer Festival and Parade, to cultivate their personal artistic cravings. To choose a form of artistic expression that is rigorous, demanding, and so far from what society boxes them up to be. It was evident that these young people were committed to themselves as artists and to the vision of the Teen Summer Musical.

They trusted themselves and the adults who were going to lead them throughout the entire 10-week process. And they trusted that these adults had the skills, the historical knowledge, and the vision to help them reach their goals. Whether that be simply finishing up the 10 weeks or walking the same path as the students before them, claiming themselves as artists to the world, and going after it wholeheartedly.

"I feel like we are inviting an audience to see the outcome of a process," Raymond said. "I don't think we are just inviting an audience to come see a show. We are inviting an audience to see the culmination of 75 processes."

As you prepare yourself for a performance of Snow Whyte & The Seven, understand the history that you are stepping into and watch the magical brilliance of these processes unfold before your eyes.

Grab your tickets at the Seattle Symphony website before they sell out!

Featured Image: Arionna Charles (front row), (Back row) (Left to Right) Nyrell Davis (back row, left), Jaylah Cage (back row, middle), and Jaime Michele-Charles (back row, right) rehearse a scene from "Snow Whyte & The Seven." (Photo courtesy of Michelle Lang-Raymond.)