STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
It’s a good thing Bea the Bee lives by the motto “busy as a bee.” Without her and others like her, the world would be a very different place.
And 600-plus pint-sized students learned just why this week as Company of Fools presented the world debut of “Inside, Outside, Upside Down!” a mini-musical commissioned by the Company of Fools and Sun Valley Center for the Arts to go with its new BIG IDEA project “Bees.”
The musical was commissioned as a way to get the current BIG IDEA into the schools, said The Center's Courtney Gilbert.
Free showings of the half-hour musical will take the stage for the public at 6 tonight and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 22, at The Liberty Theatre in Hailey.
The musical, fully of catchy, tongue twisting tunes, stars Melodie Taylor-Mauldin as Bea, and a host of other pollinators. And it stars high school student Annabelle Lewis as Kimi, a teenager who has a lot to learn when it comes to what she considers pests.
“With you, it’s all about ‘me, me, me’ Bea tells her. “I’m going to turn your world upside down.”
Over the course of the next half-hour, Calliope Hummingbird introduces Kimi to a sunflower.
“It’s all mine—a lot of sweet, sweet nectar,” the hummingbird tells her.
“The flower gives me what I need, and I give the flower what it needs,” Calliope says as she launches into a song touting a life designed to “dip, dip and pollinate.”
A Sphinx moth complains that she gets no love, as humans are crazy about “butterflies, butterflies, butterflies.”
“We come from the more elegant side of the family,” she adds, describing how she is nocturnal, which means she rests during the day and comes out to eat at night.
Then she does it.
She unveils her proboscis—a slender tubular feeding and sucking mouth part—and the kids go wild.
“Minute by minute a moth and flower…we’re in it together,” she sings.
Finally, Mari, a monarch butterfly shows up, having caught a 2,000-mile flight on air currents from Mexico to Idaho.
The bilingual butterfly describes how she likes to drink nectar from flowers that are beautiful. And she laments how milkweed is dying out due to pesticides and other human practices.
“But humans look outside and they don’t see a home for insects like me,” she says.
Eventually, Bea—whose real name is Beatrice—buzzes back into the picture. As she tells Kimi that bees are the biggest pollinators of all.
“Bee-cause you like honey?” Kimi asks.
“But also because…” Bea rattles off other foods that would not grow if not for bees.
“Do you like chocolate,” Bea asks? “Well, thank a bee.”
By the end of the show, the kids have learned that humans and pollinators need to work together to stay alive. And they’ve learned some ways they can help our pollinator friends.
“We can plant more flowers and help take care of them!” said one youngster.
“We can help bees not be endangered,” said another.
“We can be careful of our surroundings,” said a third.
Director Ilana Becker encouraged the youngsters to think of one action they can do to help out a pollinator.
“I love the idea that you’re paying attention to what’s around us and taking care of it,” she told the students.
Though the musical is free, theatergoers can stake out a reservation if they wish at www.sunvalleycenter.org. And, yes, the Fools will be happy to accept donations.