Deep in the Colorado mountains last week, 500 or so audience members got something many diehard Phish fans spend decades chasing: a full theatrical staging of the band’s rarely performed Gamehendge saga. There was one notable twist, though: Nederland, Jamestown, and Gold Hill Elementary Schools Present: The Helping Friendly Book was performed by kids from kindergarten through fifth grade, with a live band, handmade props, and a set list made entirely of Phish songs. (The schools’ pre-K kids sat this one out, except for one five-year-old entrusted with the serious late-show responsibility of bubble-blowing duty.)
The kids were backed by a five-piece band led by music teacher Kirk Kubicek, who — though he’s only a part-time employee — ends every year with a major production. The players: every enrolled student in the school district. Previous shows have included an ode to the Beatles and a tribute to the town’s famed Caribou Ranch, where U2, Elton John, and the Beach Boys all recorded. As that show was letting out last year, a student approached Kubicek. The educator recalls to Rolling Stone: “He said, ‘Mr. Kirk, are we gonna do a Phish show next year?’ Almost as if it was a rumor or something.”
The wheels were set in motion, and Kubicek started digging to find out whether anything like it had been done before. He came across a New Jersey elementary school that had used the Vermont band’s songs for an end-of-school production and reached out to the lead on that, music teacher Mark Filoramo. Kubicek got Filoramo’s blessing and materials to stage a revival of that show, but was instead inspired to write his own tale using even deeper Phish lore. Like all the shows he’s produced, he put together a live pit band to play the music. Rehearsals took four months, with Kubicek splitting his days between the three participating schools.
Brittany Wagner
Greeting audience members the night of the May 14 show were custom donut-themed T-shirts and a printed program outlining the sometimes-confusing story of King Wilson, McGrupp, Tela, the Lizards, and their trials and travails in the mythical land of Gamehendge. “The saga’s themes of community over isolation, knowledge sharing, and ‘surrendering to the flow’ have resonated with generations of fans,” read the playbill, so that uninitiated parents could at least attempt to follow along. Kubicek’s full script also called for fifth graders to play characters like the Unit Monster, Erin Wolfe, the Sloth, and of course, the Famous Mockingbird; though some of the most complicated Gamehendge numbers weren’t performed, the story was told in full — clocking in at around 75 minutes.
Among Gamehendge classics like “Wilson” and “The Lizards,” the production also worked in Phish staples like “Bouncing Around the Room,” which featured the aforementioned bubbles as well as balloons and three sizes of beach balls, and “Contact.” (And if you don’t think a couple dozen third graders singing “the tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road/the car is the thing on the road that takes you back to your abode” is the cutest thing ever, then you may need to get checked by a neurologist.)
Brittany Wagner
The totally free show was presented as you’d expect from any other elementary school production, with handmade props, costumes sewn by an art teacher, and inexact choreography led by Kubicek himself, dressed in a tuxedo T-shirt and suspenders, rapturously jumping in time with the kids.
Kirk Kubicek
The Helping Friendly Book production is made possible by donations, with the local PTA kicking in a bit of funding. It’s not lost on Mr. Kirk that advertising the show could have led to a horde of Phish fans descending on Nederland; he decided to keep the pre-hype to a minimum to maintain the organic, familial feel.
The grand finale fittingly included a fully participatory encore of “Tweezer Reprise,” among Phish’s most rudimentary (read: easy to sing along to) tunes. “I wanted to recreate what it feels like to be at a Phish show,” Kubicek says. “We had moving lights and a haze machine. I wanted to create a spectacle.”
He achieved all that he set out for, and more. “It was pure joy,” said special ed/literacy teacher Brian Schultz, a longtime Phish fan, the day after the show. “I was so happy. I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world besides right there.”
Set List
“The Wedge” (All students)
“Simple” (Kindergarten and Gold Hill)
“Sparkle” (1st Grade and Jamestown)
“Character Zero” (2nd Grade)
“Contact” (3rd Grade)
“Possum” (4th Grade)
“The Lizards” (5th Grade)
“Birds of a Feather” (5th Grade)
“Bouncing Around the Room” (All students)
“E: Tweezer Reprise” (All students)
