On The Many Jims: Life-Long Learning

The Many Jims

We have had some really informative feedback about this show, through Facebook, word of mouth and the blog. We are so grateful, because this helps us continue our mission of learning even as we teach at LLCC Theatre! Thank you so very much! And thank you to our international friends and readers in Ireland, France, Iran, Portugal and Germany for joining us these last few weeks!

The comment we have gotten most is confusion in the beginning about the number of Jims. In total, there are four. You can see our clip of an introduction and invitation! Today’s post is partly describing why Director Hardiman felt it was important to have so many Jims.

Treasure Island is almost always described as a coming-of-age story. What better way to illustrate that than to have Jims from varying ages experience the story for the first time, return to it, and then pass it on? This is not only a symbol of raising children, but also of teaching, inspiring and connecting person to person. Theatre would be nothing without a story inspiring interconnections that cause us to grow and learn as actors, students, directors and people.

In the year 2016, women still face many obstacles to equality, especially in the arts. Historically, women were, at times and in various cultures, forbidden from being on stage at all. The dynamic, however, has changed. We wanted to illustrate this changing dynamic by including female narrators. Mother Jim reads to Young Girl Jim, passing the story on to her. As Young Girl Jim matures and becomes Young Woman Jim, she reads the story again, and sees it in a new light. Identifying with the Squire, Young Woman Jim casts herself in that role and sees herself in a position of authority. In this way, we bridged the gap between a time when women were barred from powerful positions and now, when we are continually striving for equality for all peoples in all career positions, creating role model opportunities as well as generating diverse casting opportunities within the show.  

Not only are we dealing with role models, but we are dealing with how there is not one coming of age, but many. As the Youngest Jims discover the story for the first time because Mother and Father Jim read to them, Mother and Father Jim are rediscovering how they learned from the story, perhaps learning something entirely new from it. The Young Woman and Young Man Jims are rediscovering it at a younger age, with a particular fondness for connecting with the story and their parents, remembering how they knew it the story first and learning something new again with their maturing perspective. They remember fondly a world in their minds which did not bar them from fulfilling their passion for adventure and learning--a world which emerges on our stage.

Each re-connection made by the narrators in this show is a bold example of what each of our cast and crew are trying to achieve in theatre: connecting something or someone we know to a new idea, thought, feeling, perspective and image. This is really how the arts serve humanity, and what each of us complex human beings desires in connecting to one another. In turn, each of these amazing interactions drives LLCC to keep working with local art communities to create more exchanges of humanity.

Hopefully this has helped you see our story in a new light, and maybe with this in mind you will come back and see it one last time before it is done! Thanks for reading!