One Day More: UNSUNG Looks at Life in a Show Choir

It’s an interesting time to be an arts student.

For years in North America, academics and athletics were first and foremost what identified a high school. The top schools in any given city, the ones students wanted to attend and the one parents wanted their children enrolled in, were defined by what opportunities they offered in the classroom or on the field (or in some cases, both). Programs like drama, band, and vocal? Maybe if it’s in the budget. As time has gone on though, the role of the arts has begun to grow. Not only are arts programs seen in a higher regard than they were in the past, but whole schools are dedicated to teaching high school students enriched arts programs.

In Greater Toronto, there are several such schools, and two of them are the focus of the documentary UNSUNG: BEHIND THE GLEE, which debuts on TVO tonight at 9pm EST.

The film goes to great lengths to look at the show choirs of the two rival schools.

In the east end of the city is Wexford Collegiate School for The Arts, home of The Wexford Gleeks. They are a massive show choir (60 strong), who seem capable of doing any style of music they feel like doing on a given day. They have an unpolished dynamic that suits them well, and enthusiasm to spare.

In the west end of the city is Etobicoke School of the Arts, home of SPLASH Ensemble. They are about half the size of The Gleeks, and lean harder on traditional music theatre (read: Fosse and Sondheim). While their selection of material comes with more rigidity, they attack it with a high degree of precision…

…and once upon a time, I was one of them.

Etobicoke School of the Arts was a place I called home many moons ago. I went there to study visual art, but through a weird series of events, it got out that I could sing. By the time my final two years rolled around, I found myself a part of SPLASH Ensemble. My experience was slightly different from what these students experience (specifically, we didn’t compete), but much of what is on-screen in UNSUNG rang true in my memory.

The easy comparison for a film like UNSUNG is “Glee”. The show’s success has had a heavy influence on the popularity of music amongst teenagers. With every passing year, it seems like more and more girls and boys want to pick up a microphone. Likewise, the show’s message of individuality and finding one’s identity through music is ringing true for much of its audience. Teenagers who in the past may not have, pardon the pun, “found their voice”, are building confidence, work ethic, and discipline through rehearsing and performing.

But that’s where the comparison ends.

What UNSUNG does so very much better than “Glee” is illustrate the dedication and hard work that goes into one of these performances for ESA or Wexford. There is no such thing as coming into a rehearsal room week after week and singing songs that revolve around a different theme. There is no such thing as a twenty song repertoire being built up, and cherry-picked a few weeks before showtime. What these show choirs do is more like football practice: they have set plays which are run, and rerun, and rerun, until every minute detail has been established. At that point it gets picked apart, until it is finally re-established. The directors – Paul Aikins at ESA and Ann Merriam at Wexford – formulate a single vision for their choirs, visions built on the talent they have before them. If the judges don’t share that vision, if the students can’t execute that vision, or if the vision itself is cloudy…”better luck next year”.

What these teachers and these students give in the name of their art is tremendous, and as the film shows, their art can often give back. It can provide purpose, experience, and great strength. It can be a fixed point on the horizon, guiding those who embrace it through some truly difficult times. It can even create legacies that will touch so many lives long after the curtain has come down.

Watching UNSUNG, I was warmed by how many of these students I knew. I mean, I’ve never met any of them, but I know them. They have the same personalities of performers who attended my high school before me, and likewise those who were there with me. If you’ve been around a teenager, you know they have a certain way of speaking, and if you’ve been around a performer you know they too have a certain way of speaking. When it comes to teenage performers, there’s a whole other way entirely. They come with personalities that are huge, full of ambition and drama. They’ve already been knocked around, and they will get knocked around a lot more as the years pass. For now though, none of that matters – they’ll take on the world.

The students who performed with me saw things that way, and these students do too. It’s the great reward that comes with getting on stage and singing, and UNSUNG underlines that well.

As UNSUNG ended, I wondered what the future will hold for the students it introduced me to. If my own experience is a model, some of them will perform in some of Canada’s best theatres. Some of them will record albums and play to sizeable crowds. Others will take unglamorous office jobs that fuel fulfilling lives. Others still may change their minds once or twice about what they want to do with their life.

No matter what happens, the experience of being an arts student will stay with them and serve them well. It will allow them to better handle the challenges life hands them, and hear a higher harmonic in the world around them.