Art for Kid’s Sake
Jean Rolles’ passion for the arts leads her to bring a Kennedy Center production to Hawaii schoolkids. It was the first time the Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences has made it to Hawaii, and it all happened thanks to the purse and passion of local arts supporter Jean Rolles.
By Alice Keesing
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sion for the arts,” she says. “For all of it, the performing arts and the visual arts.”
At the same time, Rolles claims not to have an artistic bone in her own body. She tells an amusing story from her university days at Cornell, when she was asked to join a “wild” group of ladies called the Dischorders - the condition of membership being that you could not hold a note.
“You didn’t know if it was an insult to be asked to join, or if you were going to have the best few years of your life,” Rolles says with a chuckle.
Her involvement with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts began five years ago when President George W. Bush invited her to join the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts. Since 2004, she has served as Hawaii’s representative for the center, which is America’s national cultural center. Based in Washington, D.C., the Kennedy Center is a living memorial to JFK. It presents more than 3,000 performances every year, with a variety of theater and musicals, dance and ballet, orchestral, chamber, jazz, popular and folk music, and multi-media performances for all ages. The center also nurtures new works and young artists, and serves the nation as a leader in arts education.
Its education arm has a bus and truck that it uses to take the performing arts to schools all over the country. The buses obviously can’t make it to Hawaii so, for the last four years, Rolles has been looking for ways to bring the experience to students here. Many of the productions were too big and complex to ship, but when Blues Journey premiered, Rolles saw the chance. It’s a tight production with four cast members and a simple set that she was able to get built here, with the help of local company Martin Dorsch Productions.
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For one hour, students journeyed through the world of Willie the Bluesman, as he spins the history of the blues. Based on the book by award-winning author Walter Dean Myers, the play is set in the American South of cotton fields and open country crossroads. It’s far removed from Hawaii, but director Scot Reese notes that Hawaii has its own traditions of storytelling theatre. And the blues are universal.
“All the music you listen to - whether it’s rock ‘n’ roll, hip-hop, rap - it all has its birth in the blues; it all comes from those places of pain and happiness,” he says.
Certainly when the cast belts out B.B. King’s The Thrill is Gone, the students are getting the mojo.
“Their reaction has been very positive,” says Andres Libed, an educational specialist with the state Department of Education, who helped coordinate the logistics for the shows. “They seem to be really into the music. It’s not rap or Hawaiian, but the guitar is a universal instrument.
“A lot of the time, the students are limited to seeing things on electronic gadgets,” Libed adds. “But it’s a different experience to see a live performance because of the spontaneity and the interaction between the performers and the audience. That only happens in live theatre.”
It’s rare for many of these students to experience theatre of a national caliber, Libed says, let alone having someone step in to pay for it all.
“It’s a big deal,” he says of Rolles’ contribution.
Rolles doesn’t want to reveal how much she spent out of her own pocket to get this show on the road, but the price tag is considerable. She also explains that part of the honor of being a presidential appointee is that you must commit to a certain financial contribution. Paying for Blues Journey is part of that contribution, she says.
“For me, this was a way to demonstrate that there are lots of opportunities for organizations in Hawaii to tap the resources that are at the Kennedy Center,” she says.
Aside from its traveling education work, the center does everything from hosting teachers at the capital for workshops, providing assistance to those running arts nonprofits and supporting artists by commissioning all-original work, she says.
“The Kennedy Center is not just for the capital of the United States,” she says. “It’s there for all of the United States.”
There’s a new person in the White House these days, so Rolles’ appointment to the presidential advisory committee is drawing to a close, but that does-n’t mean she’s finished.
“I will always be involved with the arts,” she says. “This is a passion of mine.”
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