Team of teachers behind 'SpeeDating'

The team of collaborators behind "SpeeDating … The Musical," is not some group of hip singles, drawing on their own experiences, navigating the dating scene.

Instead, it was a group of Northwest suburban junior high school teachers who created the new musical -- thinking outside the classroom.

Playwright Scott Woldman and composer John Stoesser both teach language arts to eighth-graders at Carl Sandburg Junior High School, while arranger Loren Freeman teaches band at Plum Grove Junior High, both in Rolling Meadows, and fellow composer Sandi Stoesser works as a teacher's aide at Friendship Junior High School in Des Plaines.

For all of them, except Woldman, it was their first experience in mounting a musical, and the opening night on Saturday comes nearly a year after they began writing it.

"We started writing it last summer, and then had read-throughs during the fall," says director Brad Dunn, also a staff member at Metropolis. "We had to modify and tweak certain numbers to fit our staging."

Woldman is the resident playwright at Metropolis, but in trying to compose a musical, he turned to Stoesser and his wife, whom he knew wrote and performed jazz and rhythm and blues charts.

"I knew I didn't want the typical songs you hear in musicals," Woldman says. "I wanted them to be different, and memorable, with a more contemporary sound."

Stoesser concedes he was intrigued.

"He told me he wanted a certain pop orientation to the score, or songs that could stand on their own," Stoesser says.

Holed up in his home studio, Stoesser spent the summer, composing melodies, and working with his wife, Sandi, a vocalist, to give each song its identity, crafted around Woldman's lyrics.

The only problem? Stoesser is a self-taught musician, and while he could compose songs, he couldn't write them out on sheet music.

That's when Woldman and Stoesser turned to fellow teacher Freeman, who arranged the music for each of the four instruments in the pit.

Stoesser says he's thrilled to hear those same songs he plucked out at home on his keyboard, now sung with a full cast, accompanied by musicians and even forming the background for elaborate dances.

"I'm just tickled to see what has happened to our music," Stoesser says, "with the full cast and band. It's just so intriguing to hear all these different voices and harmonies."