Performers in Rex & Friends include Michael Gourzis and Crysten Craig (inset) and back from left, Alan Davis, Igor Zaninovich, Patrick Story, August McAdoo and Jonetta Ward with Rex Lewis-Clack at the keyboard.
By Steve Simmons- Posted 9:36 p.m., Dec. 14, 2020
People who turned into Culver City’s virtual Annual Tree Lighting Spectacular last Thursday saw and heard performances by many of the city’s leading arts organizations, including a holiday selection from members of Rex & Friends, a local music ensemble whose members have a variety of disabilities ranging from autism to cerebral palsy.
While the ceremony featured only the audio rendition, those who missed the city’s annual celebration, can still enjoy the complete slightly-more-than-two-minute jazzy holiday treat of a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL98-kA9SF8.
“We were stoked to be part of the virtual tree lighting ceremony,” says Bryan Caldwell, executive director of ArtsUP! LA, the umbrella performing arts group that includes Rex & Friends.
The invitation to join the festivities, which culminated in the lighting of a 22-foot artificial Rocky Mountain pine tree in Downtown Culver City, came about, Caldwell says, through Rex & Friends membership in the Culver City Arts Alliance. Fellow members The Actor’s Gang theatre company, with artistic director Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins, Invertigo Dance Theatre and singing ensemble VOX Femina-Los Angeles were also featured in the half-hour show.
The rollicking version of Jingle Bell Rock, helmed by Music & Program Director Laurie Grant, features Rex Lewis-Clack on piano and vocals; vocals by Patrick Storey, Crysten Craig, Alan Davis and August McAddo, with Michael Gourzis on guitar and vocals and Andrew Weitz, assistant musical director for Rex & Friends adding guitar, bass and drums. There’s also a guest appearance from Patrick’s father, Jim Storey.
“The production was labor intensive,” recounts Grant. Troupe members had to record their portions and then be shot on video. Video editor Moy Barba Jr. ended up mixing together 32 individual videos for the final result.
This latest video is proof that the organization is making it through the pandemic, says Greg Shane, ArtsUP! LA co-founder and artistic director. “Even though the door is shut, we’re still moving forward.” Adds Grant, “We’re moving forward with online rehearsals and videos (this is the group’s fifth one) to keep the group involved and doing something.”
Serving Its Community
Rex & Friends gives members all along the autism spectrum, many with vision issues, support and training in musical talents, plus performance opportunities in the organization’s own theater, The Blue Door in Culver City.
“We are not a school, but a performance-oriented group with regular rehearsals,” says Grant. Members audition and are invited into the group. “The caliber of musicianship is high,” says Shane. Members are paid $50 a performance and for transportation on rehearsal days. (These have moved to the Zoom platform during the pandemic.)
In groups of five to 10, the singers and musicians work in Weitz’s professional studio and collaborate with their peers on ensemble show pieces, learning a variety of musical genres: Classical, jazz, gospel, contemporary and rap.
The program promotes not only musical growth, but friendship and professional collaboration. Participants say they love the chance to perform and be with fellow singers at their level. “That’s what we do,” says Grant, “we help them connect with each other and society through music. And what would life be without music?”
Grant, with a background in music composition and arrangement, approaches the group as a professional theatre company. “I always have a goal,” she says, often it’s working on songs for shows Rex & Friends does in collaboration with Theatre By The Blind, another nonprofit under the ArtsUP! LA banner. “Often we do a show with them,” says Grant, “and the action freezes and we insert an original song. So you have a stage full of people with disabilities doing a show.”
Serving Its Mission
Meeting its mission of “bridging the gap between professional theater and overlooked communities” has its challenges, says Grant.
There are basic logistical issues of getting performers to rehearsal. These are people who can’t take public transportation, says Grant and depend on Access, the ADA Complementary Paratransit service for functionally disabled individuals in L.A. County, parents and aides.
Because of the pandemic, members who don’t have access to Zoom have to make arrangements for solos sessions at the studio or individual phone sessions with Grant. “It’s tragic that there’s no group contact,” says Shane, when it’s needed now more than ever.”
As former music educator at Performing Arts Studio West where she worked with adults with autism, and after nearly eight years with Rex & Friends, Grant has learned to work with personalities where memory may be an issue and “we do a lot of going over lyrics.” One young man has tendency to blurt out and go off subject.” I always make sure they’re feeling okay emotionally. Often, they’re very quiet, and I try to keep them happy and focused and we get a lot done.”
Then there’s the joy of working with a singer who stutters when he speaks, but not when he sings and another who sings in perfect Italian. “These are extremely talented singers and instrumentalists; music transcends the disability.”
“There’s also no way this opportunity would happen in people’s lives and give them a voice without the Rex & Friends staff and heavily involved parents,” says Grant. Adds Shane, “The program is a game changer, it’s made such an impact. We’ve had members who rarely spoke who through work with Laurie, hone their skills, come out of the shell and build confidence.”
A Collaboration That Was Meant To Be
Born blind, Rex Lewis-Clack was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, and then labeled a musical genius (piano) when he showed musicologists he could play back complex piano pieces he had heard only once, and then transpose them into other keys or improvise off themes with little effort. Considered a prodigious musical savant, Lewis-Clack was featured on 60 Minutes at age 7 and on numerous other shows.
In 2013, Rex and his mother Cathleen Lewis launched Rex &Friends with founder Matt Wolf. Grant soon joined as music director.
In 2006, Shane, who is blind in his right eye, was volunteering for an organization called Changing Perceptions, that gave visually impaired individuals the chance to share their stories. When the woman who ran the program died, Shane “felt the work was too important to let slip away.” With the idea of “using theater-based performance as a way for blind people to step into the role of being someone not blind,” he invented a “braille-for-feet”method for blind people to navigate the stage.
Out of that experience he created Theatre By The Blind. He decided to integrate musicians from Rex & Friends for an October 2016 production. “It was a smash, and I realized the blind community could learn from the musicians and vice versa,” says Shane “They saw each other as examples and pushed each other to the best of their abilities.”
Because of their similar missions of transforming lives through the arts, the two organizations saw profound results from that collaboration. By March 2017, the two organizations committed to a continued partnership, and Rex & Friends became an official program of ArtsUP! LA. Wolf continues his leadership of the program as a current member of the ArtsUP! LA Board of Directors.
In 2010, Shane along with Caldwell and Colin Simson, co-founded CRE Outreach (Create, Reflect and Empower) now known as ArtsUP! LA with the intention of providing the performing arts to underserved populations. The organization currently serves 2,700 individuals in the Los Angeles area through Creative Youth Theatre, Film By The Blind, Veterans Empowerment Theatre, along with Rex & Friends and Theatre By The Blind.
Moving On With The Braille Legacy
The next big project for Theatre By The Blind and Rex & Friends is their production of the musical The Braille Legacy, a musical that follows the life story of Louis Braille who invented the eponymous method of raised dots that can be read by touch. The show proved popular in London, but has never been performed by an all-blind cast.
“The management team of the play reached out to us,” said Shane. “They came to me and said they wanted to do the show with blind actors, and we thought it would be beautiful to add Rex & Friends, so they do all the music with Rex on the piano.”
“We started rehearsals in January and had to stop because of the pandemic,” says Grant. “It was really starting to go well with 30 actors and singers.”
Sébastien Lancrenon, who wrote the book and lyrics (Jean-Baptiste Saudray is the composer) flew from London with others of the creative time to attended three days of rehearsals. “He was involved and very supportive and happy we’re doing the show,” adds Grant. Lancrenon told several parents at rehearsals that the production was “beyond his expectations.”
In Lancrenon’s telling, Braille, blinded in an accident at an early age, is now about 15, and a pupil at the underfunded Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris where he stands out as being rather more intelligent than the other children and doesn’t want accept that his lot needs to be begging and basket-making.
The show has now been scheduled for next year, but after the holidays, the group plans to record a video of Paris, the “big song” in the show, to be posted in February as a teaser to the upcoming production. “The music is poppy-classical,” says Grant, “like Les Mis,” and also includes young Braille’s In These Words I See, sung in a library and The Vow, sung by Braille’s friend Gabriel.
