Music and theatre can change a child's life, says Kevin Oliver

I remember being entranced fifteen years ago by the foot-tapping nostalgia of Kevin Oliver's school production of Saturday Night Fever in Dubai, my first encounter with his remarkable talent. Some time later, I was fortunate enough to catch his slickly produced, uplifting tale of self-discovery, Clowns.
After witnessing Oliver's creative brilliance once more in the original pop opera The Lost, performed at GEMS Modern Academy a few weeks ago, and finally getting to meet the man himself for a long chat at the Khaleej Times office, I realised doing justice to this teacher-mentor-musician-playwright and his impressive body of work that includes the musicals Starlight Express, Cats and Shakuntala, in even a three-page tabloid story, wasn't going to be easy.
From this dilemma stemmed the decision to extract some favourite excerpts from my conversation with Oliver, who was excited to inform City Times that the cast of The Lost have been invited to perform at next year's Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. "We are invited to the Fringe Festival and we have every intention of going; we're keeping our fingers crossed that we succeed. It would be our second venture into the festival, after Shakuntala in 2015," he said.

'I make everyone audition'
Oliver, who is Group Cultural Co-ordinator, GEMS Dubai, dropped into our office exuding an aura not unlike Robin Williams' inspiring character John Keating in Dead Poets Society - who can forget how this unconventional English teacher finally dragged shy Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) out of his shell ("Todd, I would like you to give us a demonstration of a barbaric yawp")?
"I make everyone audition," began a smiling Oliver, eliciting surprise and not a little shock from his audience, which was, at this time, just a photographer and myself, in Khaleej Times' rather large conference room. I couldn't help imagining the effect that calm yet stern insistence might have had on a gaggle of unsuspecting kids.
"Everyone?" I repeat, not quite sure if I heard right, to which he replied, cheerfully, "Yes! For The Lost, I had a major, open audition from grades 8-12. Everyone had to line up and try! And I opened up the auditions to some of the younger students too."
Semi-painful school-time memories of 'favourites' being scouted for extra-curricular programmes came to mind, and with no recollection of 'everyone' ever auditioning for anything, I couldn't help asking, but why everyone, why not just ask those who were interested?
"The belief that a person should develop at their own time and their own place, would sweep a lot of people under the rug, for various reasons - shyness, peer pressure, and more. When I was growing up I always thought there were people around me who could do something, but their potential never came out because no one pushed or encouraged them," he said.
So do kids nowadays need that little extra 'push'? Yes, Oliver emphasised.
"I insist that every child in the age group that I am looking at, has to meet me. And I want to see whether you have it. Because a lot of people don't even realise they can sing or dance or perform or act. And when they meet me, at first they're very skeptical, they laugh, they think it's very amusing, and they're like 'oh God, he is wasting my time', some even get angry, some are upset, saying, 'why do I have to do it'. And I have this really strict image, and then they come to me and I say 'you can sing.'
"When they hear someone who knows what they are talking about tell them they can sing, and who says, 'why don't you push yourself a little bit and see where I can take you, let's take a journey together', it makes a big difference in a child's world. Music and theatre can change a child's life completely."

'I interfere in everything'
The first word that comes to mind when describing The Lost, the story of two boys searching for answers to some existential questions amidst the tidal sands of Arabia, is 'professional.' This production surpassed anything I had ever seen on a school level, and Oliver revealed he was personally involved with every part of the show. "I always aim for a professional production. I want people to come thinking they're going to see a school show and let them leave feeling 'wow I want more' and how seamless the production is. That's important - how blackouts happen, how you melt off the stage, and you recreate another thing without using a single prop. The best compliment I got for The Lost was from some friends that were not connected with education at all - they felt 'why couldn't there have been at least ten minutes more?'"
"Sadly to everyone's misery, I interfere in everything from makeup to even drawing a eyeliner because it's not correctly done by XYZ, to the hair, to research on it, to a mood board, to a colour board, a costume board - every little detail matters to me. Because it's all in my mind and it has to be translated on paper."
All this painstaking detail had its desired effect, no doubt, as the show I attended ended in a rousing round of applause, and a standing ovation for Oliver.

' I love working a harmony'
In The Lost, the audience heard some breathtaking vocal performances from the two leads - teenagers Rebanta Banerjee and Anirudh Rakesh - who played Ahmad Shafeek Khan and Kabir Khan, respectively, Rishika George - who played Miriam; and Sydney Atkins, who played Mohammed the Bedouin, as well as the rest of the cast and choir. This was the kind of music that stayed with you for a long time after you'd left your concert-hall seat.
Fourteen original songs made up The Lost, and Oliver described the process of seeing them through to their final stages. "I am such a pain to work with because the music is so clearly in my brain that I know which instrument comes in at what time, on which bar of music, and that is part of my amazing trip because I pick a song which I write in ten minutes on piano and then translate it into orchestration. Then I take that orchestration to a studio to actually make them mix it correctly so that I can understand it and love it even more.
"Then we come down to casting - finding the correct voices, and mixing those voices to the voices in my brain. So I don't go conventionally with tenor, alto, soprano, bass... I love finding each child's voice, each individual's voice, studying their range and working a harmony to suit that person, but always keeping in mind that there is that stretchability factor. I don't let anyone indulge in a song, and bring a key down to suit them. I always like to push them to find my song."

'I've never conformed'
In his Director's Note, Oliver spoke of the opera as being about modern life issues - unrest, fights, insecurity, loss, impatience, hurry, questions and solutions. As an audience member, I could relate to this description and found The Lost to be an insight into the human condition, the troubles that plague the modern world, and the quest to find yourself. Or was it a metaphor for many different stories of struggle and triumph? What did Oliver intend the audience to take away from The Lost?
"I was asked to do something that would have a local connect, so I thought I would base it in an Arabian country, with two Muslim boys. As I took it through, a lot of me started coming into it. The song that Ahmad sings about growing up being confused, very lost in his own way, having no direction, having a grandfather only - that was of course all make-believe - but all the confusion that I went through came into that section of it. My whole beef with the political world right now came into it. My whole idea of people questioning freedom came into it."
"The last song in The Lost, Freedom, is about how I want to say everything that I want to say, whether you listen to it or not, just give me the right to say it. Or to wear what I want to wear, or to look the way I want to look. To speak the way I want to speak. You have to be the person you are, you can't let peer pressure and this whole image of school put you into a box. I have found it very difficult, right through my life, to conform - I've never conformed, even when I did my Trinity College of Music exams, I always questioned, my mother was a music teacher, and I always asked her 'why do they want me to play this piece of music exactly the way it's written'?"
"To come back to your question, of course, there is a message from the show: I really want people to take a breath, and love your neighbour. For me that's so important - you have to have love for people because the world is drying up with that kind of thing."
'I've grown with Dubai'
Kevin Oliver, who has lived in Dubai since the mid-80s, spoke about the changes he has witnessed in the city's creative scene over the past three decades.
"I came into a situation where no one understood where I was going, what spotlights were, what was a mixer for music. So I had to educate and put my shows together. The first times we started with Dubai Modern High School (as it was known at that time) were difficult but it was such an amazing challenge!
"For me being here has been the birth of a city basically. And I've grown with the city too. The changes in the creative scene are wonderful. When I came here there was nothing. No one even knew what I was talking about. And now they have DUCTAC and all these theatres, a lot of smaller theatres that encourage talent, a lot of dance schools. And there's Dubai Opera, who I am hoping to tie up with one of these days!"
Does he ever get nostalgic for 'old Dubai'? "Strangely enough, though I love the progress, I also love the fact that they have still retained the Satwa markets, the Naif road markets, the Karama atmosphere. And I'm hoping that they don't lose that. I love Naif road.
"I love the bargains. When I'm looking for props for a play, I love doing it myself, like spending two or three days in those markets, finding little things in those lovely spice-scented areas. I love the abras! This is all part of a special Dubai for me."
'Michael Jackson was a huge influence'
Kevin Oliver spoke about his musical favourites which included the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Queen, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Cat Stevens, and the Bread. "This is really dated (laughs). When I want to be inspired, and I'm drained of all energy I just go back to listening to Simon & Garfunkel doing The Sound of Silence or Queen doing Bohemian Rhapsody," he said.
"I just feel that those harmonies, and that structure of music, I've not seen in modern music. Michael Jackson was a huge influence in my life. In fact when I was doing The Lost I didn't want to be dated in my style of music so I listened to a lot of Jackson, Justin Bieber, a lot of new tracks - what's currently the Top Ten. Just so I could feel the beats, the structure of music, what their hook lines were. I think, personally, education in any form is neverending. You have to keep on researching. I feel it's so important - I can't even choreograph a sequence without going on to the net and seeing what's currently being done, and then pulling just a few themes and ideas so that it colours what I'm doing."
Shakuntala with Danny Boyle?
Kevin Oliver also spoke about his plans for Shakuntala, the first full-length rock opera he wrote, which was staged at the Fringe Festival in 2015: "My dream is to have Shakuntala as a film. I would ideally love to shoot it in India, with Indian talent, but with someone like Danny Boyle at the helm. I think that interpretation would be amazing. Someone like that would inspire me to even write more, and fill the gaps that I'm sure there are in Shakuntala. I'd love to see what would come of it - it would be edgy, it would be new, it would be fresh; it's a really old fairytale but to see it through someone else's eyes would be wonderful."
'Life is like a celebration'
As our time drew to an end and I shifted, rather reluctantly, to turn off my tape recorder, Oliver revealed some final thoughts on creativity and life that will no doubt resonate with a lot of people in these fast-paced times, where one gets bored at the drop of a hat and we sometimes find that making a little extra effort to push ourselves out of our comfort zones is too much of a chore.
"I love every moment right now. I find life is like a celebration for me, every moment is like something amazing happening, you know, creatively. I just love it. After I finished The Lost, for two days I slept. And then the next day I was like, 'oh my God, I'm bored, what do I do now' (laughs). I need something and that's why I'm indulging in photography now, and film. I want to shoot a short film on one of my songs with an interpretative background. My mind is channelling different creative pursuits already so that I'm not bored with myself. Even though I have a really full calendar right now, up to next August, but still, it's those day-to-day creative urges that I want satisfied."
You can't help but be inspired by that kind of positive, vibrant attitude, both in work and in life. (enid@khaleejtimes.com)