This is the Schneider-Farris Family's Blog. Keep up with what we are doing by logging into this site regularly!
(The reason this site is called "Tragedy and Triumph" is that when I first founded this site, my husband, Dan, had been in a horrible accident, and he recovered. His recovery was a miracle! Go back to the 2005 archives to read our story.)
On Wednesday evening, October 28, 2015, my husband, Dan, and I, and my daughter, Annabelle, went to the invited preview and dress rehearsal for Born Blue, the musical my daughter Rebekah had been working so hard on.
The Schneider-Farris Family was so excited to see Rebekah in a lead role in Born Blue! - Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Rebekah's heart was broken, and left Colorado Springs the next day to begin a new life in southern California.
The show did go on as planned the following day, 11-6-15, (and continued through most of November, 2015), but three other members of the cast were also removed from the cast a day later. I've heard they were so very disappointed since they all had worked so very hard and also expected to be paid.
The photos in this blog post will help my family remember the happiness and excitement and anticipation we (and the cast members who were removed) felt the night of that Born Blue Musical preview performance.
Four out of six people in this Born Blue group cast photo were removed from the cast before the 11-6-15 weekend performances. I've heard they were so, so sad and disappointed since they'd put their "hearts and souls" into Born Blue. (Rumors have circulated that it has something to do with The Mezzanine not wanting to pay them after they were promsed to be paid?)
I lived in Colorado Springs in the 1970s and then I returned in 1991 and never left.
I've made an observation that our city is run like a small town (but we are a fairly large city now) and there are very powerful people here that run the city and it is hard to make changes when something is wrong or needs to be changed.
About 20 years ago, I went before the Colorado Springs City Council and asked that a beautiful chalet type ice rink stay open in the downtown area. I was on the news and wrote articles.
There were other skating related things that happened after that in Colorado Springs. I went on to "fight city hall" and fought for the rights of skaters and skating coaches in my city. I was on the TV news and a group of us were on a 3 hour radio talk show.
Nothing changed at the time, but I think about 10 years later, my efforts paid off. We have a wonderful skating community in Colorado Springs now that is open to everyone.
It is now my hope that something eventually will change in the performing arts community in our beautiful city too.
Since then, I've heard from other former Conservatory parents and students, and their children were hurt in the same way. Teachers and employees have shared stories too.
I am so, so sad, since The Colorado Springs Conservatory was my daughter's entire world. The next day she left Colorado Springs for good and her heart was breaking. I worry she will never sing, dance, act, or play music again.
Read this Colorado Spring Gazette Article Published Tuesday, 11-17-15:
This is a photo of my Uncle Norman Kadison when he was a baby. He was my mom's Edith Kadison Schneider's older and only brother and the father of my cousins Cheri and Loren. I am not sure exactly when he was born but I'm guessing 1912 or 1913. Cheri can tell me for sure...
Also, below is Uncle Norman in World War Two. He served as a musician that entertained the troops.
My husband Dan with his siblings in 1960: Top row: Dan, Jack, Mike Bottom row: Sandy, Penny, Pat ...Mike and Pat are identical twins...Dan is the 5th of 6 kids...Doesn't this photo look like it came right out of "Father Knows Best" or the "The Brady Bunch" ?!
This is a photo of the inside of my locker in the coaches room at Sertich Ice Center. I've had that locker since 1994! Take a look at the memories inside. I taught skating while I was pregnant and until the day before each of my children were born. I may miss looking inside this locker at these happy memories if my family really does move away from Colorado Springs.
Also....
I look so tall!
I realized today how much I like teaching hockey skating skills...I think I may like teaching hockey better than figure skating....and...the boys listen to me and like my teaching style and when they are little kids, they are even shorter than me! I've taught hockey skills and power skating since 1998 and I began teaching figure skating in 1983.
Before I begin this blog post, I must first mention that Linda Weise and the Colorado Springs Conservatory gave so much to my daughter Rebekah and Linda went over and above for Rebekah.
I may still be suffering from shock as I write this post. The Colorado Springs Conservatory had become Rebekah's "entire world." Everything that was important to her in the life she had in Colorado Springs is gone.
I am just so, so sad.
I do think it is best for me to now write down about our experience with the Colorado Springs Conservatory so I no longer have to think about what is now so very painful.
Here's our story:
In 2003-04 my three children went to a drama-music-dance school called Attitudes. It was located in the same shopping center as the Conservatory.
One day I stepped into the Conservatory's offices and picked up a brochure. The prices were too high for me to even consider since Attitudes was inexpensive, but also it was thought that Attitudes' program was no where as high quality as the Conservatory's program. I wished so much I could get my children in The Colorado Springs Conservatory's program, but due to the cost of the program, I accepted the fact that it was not an option for us.
I was so excited and cried tears of excitement and joy knowing that something wonderful would come from this opportunity.
We were not disappointed. My children were exposed to wonderful learning because of The Conservatory's outstanding program and instruction.
On Father's Day 2011, I heard that my favorite musical Gypsy was going to be in Colorado Springs and the musical included the Conservatory's staff and students. Our family went to the production that day and it was AMAZING! I felt that it was just as good as a professional Broadway show.
When the show ended, my dad asked Linda Weise and some of the Conservatory staff how his grandchildren could be in similar events, but sadly, we were told those opportunities were only for the Conservatory students who paid regular tuition, not the Mountain Vista Homeschool Academy kids.
But...
When the summer of 2012 came along, The Conservatory needed extra cast members in the ensemble for the production Fiddler on the Roof, and sent out an invitation to all Mountain Vista Homeschool Academy students to join the cast!
Wow, I was excited and Joel and Rebekah began an amazing adventure that included hours and hours of rehearsals. Annabelle was in only the wedding scene, but also was in a most outstanding musical!
It was so, so wonderful to see my kids in that production. Linda mentioned how especially talented Rebekah was after that experience.
Time passed again.
In 2014, Joel and Rebekah began to prepare for auditions for the Disney On Ice professional ice show and the audition included acting. I contacted Linda Weise asking if she'd be able to give my kids some acting private lessons to prepare and Linda set up lessons with Stephen, a talented Conservatory graduate. Stephen was amazing and brought the kids, especially Rebekah, to a new performing level.
During the time with Stephen, we learned that another classical musical, Oklahoma, was planned for the summer. I contacted Linda and she worked it out for Joel to be in the ensemble and Rebekah to be in a supplemental music group that would promote the show. Both kids again had a tremendous experience and their acting and singing skills grew.
Stephen put on a week long Conservatory improvisational workshop and both Rebekah and Joel participated. Joel was very busy preparing for a skating test that week, but Rebekah "ate up" all that she learned from Stephen and when the final performance of that week came, where the parents were invited, I was so, so proud to see Rebekah perform! She stood out!
When the 2014-15 school year began, Rebekah auditioned for the Conservatory's Senior Musical Theatre company and was accepted! I still remember how excited she was when she called me to tell me she'd been accepted! A new and wonderful adventure was about to begin for her!
What followed was a very, very busy year for Rebekah. She had a leading role in The Pirates of Penzance, did tons of volunteering with the Conservatory, learned to do stage managing, learned to teach little kids, danced, sang, and completed the adventure with a major role in the summer musical Working. She performed in recitals during the year and in jazz nites. Every time I saw Rebekah perform, I'd cry tears of joy.
The Colorado Springs Conservatory and Linda Weise had given her an amazing chance to excel. She'd discovered she was talented and loved to perform and learn and Rebekah's singing voice was just so beautiful!
At the final Senior Recital I thanked Linda Weise for giving my Rebekah so much.
During the summer, Linda Weise offered Rebekah a week long job stage managing a kids play. Rebekah was paid $300 and had a wonderful and busy week. I recall also Rebekah managed another play called Seamarks with her friend Carelyn at the Mezzanine during the 2014-15 school year. Seamarks was an unpaid job which took up hours and hours, but Rebekah gained much through that experience too.
In August of 2015, when Rebekah realized that the college she'd chosen in Gunnison was wrong for her, she contacted Linda Weise and Linda offered Rebekah something incredible: A full scholarship to take classes at the Conservatory for an additional school year, volunteer and paid work experience at the school, and paid major roles in productions at The Mezzanine!
It was like a "Silver Platter" had been given to Rebekah. Rebekah told me that Linda Weise believed in her talent and wanted to help her find the right college where she could go on to study musical theater. It was wonderful to learn that Linda believed so much in my Rebekah.
Quickly Rebekah became so, so very busy. It seemed as if she was always at the Conservatory, but when she was home, I'd hear her singing and playing the piano constantly. She also played the Ukelele! It was beautiful to hear music in the house all the time.
Rehearsals for The Mezzanine's production of Born Blue began. I saw little of Rebekah, but knew she was busy and happy.
Rebekah told me she was going to be paid for her work in Born Blue and it opened on Friday, October 30, 2015. Rebekah was gone the whole weekend and there was a show on Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday afternoon. I asked Rebekah how the performances went, and she said they just kept getting better and better and she was so happy.
Then....
Wednesday, November 4, 2015 came. It will be the day I always remember because on that day our family received a letter stating that Rebekah and our entire family were banned from ever having anything to do with the Colorado Springs Conservatory or The Mezzanine ever again.
What led up to the above decision is not completely clear, but that decision has changed our lives. All that was Rebekah's world was ripped from her on that day. I am so, so very sad. I just don't understand this decision at all and I've asked Linda for an explanation but have not received one. In addition, it seems that Rebekah has been cut off from all the people that were so close to her that are associated with the Colorado Springs Conservatory. I have been told that there has been no response to her texts or phone calls.
On Thursday, November 5, 2015, Rebekah left Colorado Springs for good and will stay with extended family in California. Her heart was breaking when she packed The sadness I feel is so huge that I plan to move our family away from Colorado Springs as soon as we can.
The Colorado Springs Conservatory changed my family's life with this decision because it made us realize that Colorado Springs can no longer be our home. We are no longer welcome here.
So much sadness and bad things have happened to us in Colorado Springs and doors have closed and new opportunities have not opened. This was and is the "last straw." It is time to leave the city my husband and I came to with such excitement and anticipation in 1991. It is time to leave the place where my three children were born and raised.
My daughter Rebekah is "talented." She can sing and dance and act and play the piano and play the guitar and Ukelele. I'm "one proud mom."
What I didn't know when I began to encourage my child to develop her musical and acting talents, that sometimes she would be exposed to issues and people and language and situations that I believe are "too adult" for a minor.
My Daughter Rebekah in Born Blue - Photo Used WITHOUT Permission
I've been told that I've "lived in Colorado Springs too long" by a liberal thinking friend, and that may be the case, but when it comes down to it, I think liberal thoughts, I'm supportive of liberal and non-traditional values, but when it comes to my own children, I'm "old fashioned." I want my children to be cast in old fashioned musicals like Oklahoma, Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, and Mary Poppins, not in the "modern" theatre that seems to be what is approved of today.
Rebekah invited us to the premiere of Born Blue on Wednesday, October 28, 2015 which took place at The Mezzanine, a "nightclub" which is now part of the Colorado Springs Conservatory's numerous programs. (The Conservatory has given my daughter many opportunities and believes in Rebekah's talent, and I'm very grateful for that.)
At least this time Rebekah "warned me in advance" that what I was going to see might bother me. During the summer of 2015, she played the part of a prostitute in The Conservatory's summer musical, Working. I was not told in advance that Rebekah was cast in that role, and it upset me greatly and made me very uncomfortable to see her dressed as a prostitute and acting out that role.
Back to "Born Blue" and my thoughts:
Remember the fairy tale "The Emporer's New Clothes?" If you recall, no one wanted to admit that they could not see that the Emporer was naked, wearing nothing, since they'd seem "dumb." They were told that the Emporer was dressed in the most beautiful cloth and that those who saw the clothes were people who were smart.
Well....that is what happens with "Born Blue." It's so intellectual, that only those who aren't "with it" would admit that they can't understand "what in the heck is going on."
Below is a summary of the musical's plot:
The musical takes place at "The Atomic Bar & Chill" which is a purgatorial dive bar in another plane of existence which is also a place of transition and retrospection.
Those present are becoming raceless and sexless, which is indicated by grey and blue skin tones, but the more Blue a soul is, the more highly evolved it is. When a soul in the "Bar & Chill" evolves to the enlightened state of being entirely Blue, they're ready to move on.
There is one beverage served at "The Atomic Bar & Chill" called Blue Brew.
This is a special night at the Bar & Chill since the Earthly apocalypse has occurred and an overwhelming mass of souls is coming there. The narrator Infinity leads those present through a musical exploration of three life stories that occur in three different time periods:
The Salem Witch Trials, 1692
American Slavery, 1864
Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux Reservation, 1969
My daughter Rebekah is one of the main characters in this musical and has a huge role (she is almost in every scene), but her main role is in the 1969 reservation scene. She plays Catori, a young activist and folk singer who gets involved in a relationship with another woman, named Ophelia. During a "love-in/rally" Catori also conceived a child.
Catori's and Ophelia's relationship is kept secret from Catori's father, Dell, who gave up on life after seeing his wife murdered in a federal raid when Catori was a child. Catori and Ophelia want Dell to accept them and Catori chooses love and her relationship with Ophelia over what her father might think or approve of. Catori leaves and continues the relationship with Ophelia and births a baby boy which she names Blioux.
By the end of the evening's events, the cast significantly becomes more Blue than when they arrived.
The Born Blue musical includes the audience and is an interactive experience, and it is intended for the audience to leave with questions and the audience may wonder about what took place.
I left the premiere puzzled. What did I just see? I heard the most incredible music (which I didn't understand one word of), and I saw a musical that I didn't understand. I heard my daughter use "language" I don't approve of, and I saw her do some things that were "too much" for me as a parent. Yet, I was very proud of my daughter and was amazed at her performance.
While I was in New York City for the About.com Expert Event annual conference, I decided to take the time to seek out the grave of my great-grandfather (my father Arthur Schneider's grandfather and his mother, my Grandma Fannie's father).
Adolph Regenstreich
Until recently, all I knew about Adolph Regenstreich was that he was the father who came from Romania of my Grandma Fannie Ragin Schneider.
My Grandma Fannie was one of the youngest of 8 children The names of Adolph's children were Rachel (always called Ray), Theodore (nickname was Teddy), Molly, Dorothy, Clara, David (Dave), Fannie, and Sidney
The oldest sister was named Ray (short for Rachel) and Ray was actually Grandma's half sister since Adolf's first wife, Golde, died when she was very young. Adolf remarried Esther after Golde died and Esther, like Adolph, died of tuberculosis when she was very young. I seem to remember Grandma telling me that her older sister Ray and her other older sister Molly did most of the cooking!
When the siblings (with the exception of Teddy) moved to California, they changed and shortened their last name to Ragin. (My uncle Bobby told my husband that Adolph Regenstreich real name had been Abraham Jacob Levine, but to protect his family, he changed his name to Adolph Regenstreich so he could somehow avoid having to serve in the Romanian-Austrian army since men with Jewish sounding names were drafted first.)
Fannie Ragin (Regenstreich)
Ray's grandaughter, Luci Rollins Janssen, connected with me and my father recently. She found us after searching through ancestory search websites!
Ray (Rachel) Regenstreich Rollins
During a very recent trip to Luci's home, I was shown a photo of my great-grandfather's gravestone and also given a copy of his death certificate. He died in 1914 in New York City.
So....early on Friday morning, October 16, 2015, I made a call to find out exactly where in the Acacia Cemetery Adolph Regenstreich was buried.
First I was told abruptly, "Call back Monday," but when I told the person that answered the phone that I would not be in NYC Monday, I received a call from Susan (on her day off) who ran the office at Acacia Cemetery. Susan "bent over backwards" to help me find my great-grandfather by asking someone named Marcia who was answering the office phones to search for my great-grandfather on the microfiche records. Susan then gave me detailed directions over the phone on how exactly to find Adolf in the very huge cemetery which is the largest Jewish cemetery in New York City!
After I talked to Susan, I got on a subway train in mid-town Manhattan and took a hour plus long subway ride to Ozone Park, Queens. When I got off the train, I met and linked up with my study partner, Dena Leff, from Partners in Torah (Dena lives about 30 minutes from the Acacia Park cemetery), and together we found Yassir 41 where Adolph Regenstreich was burried. Dena explained that that area was a section of the Acacia cemetary that was for a certain synagogue.
We stepped into a huge space and began searching for Adolph's gravestone. It seemed like a hopeless thing to do, since there were so many graves in that space.
For a moment, I thought I found the gravestone, but realized the grave I found was for someone named Harry Regenstreich, not Adolph. (Was Harry a relative? Maybe...I took a photo of Harry's gravestone which said he was 25 years old when he died in 1902. My father says that Grandma Fannie's oldest brother Teddy stayed in NYC to take care of a relative or brother...was Harry Regenstreich related to that person?)
I just kept searching and searching and walked by gravestone after gravestone. I was about to give up, but finally, I found Adolph Regenstreich's stone! It was huge and was in the very center of Yassir 41, on the left and only 13 spots from the center entry!
I shook when I saw his stone and grave.
Jo Ann and Her Study Partner From Parners in Torah Dena Leff at Jo Ann's Great Grandfather's Grave
After taking many, many photos, Dena read some Hebrew prayers outloud and then she told me that I was supposed to talk to my great-grandfather and tell him about his family, so I began to talk and talk and told my great-grandfather about my Grandma Fannie and I told him all about his other children, Grandma's brothers and sisters, who I got to know well when I lived with Grandma in the late 1970s.
This was a very memorable experience, and was made even "more memorable" because Dena was there. In the approximately 14 years I've studied with Dena and Partners in Torah, Dena and I have only met face to face three times: In 2007 when she organized a "Spur of the Moment Bar Mitzvah" for my son Joel, in 2014 when my daughter Annabelle and I attended her daughter Shira's wedding, and on Friday, October 16, 2015 when I visited my great-grandfather's gravesite. Dena and Partners in Torah made that experience so, so meaningful! And...all three experiences were the best learning experiences ever!
Before we left, Dena instructed me to put a rock on top of my great-grandfather's gravestone to show that he had been visited.
For as long as I remember, since I was a child, our family has been used to my dad misplacing things and always finding them.
For my entire life, it seemed like my mom, my dad's secretary, me, my sister, my brother, my kids, my grandmother, my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law, my nieces and nephews, my cousins, and my husband and friends have helped my dad find keys, pens, phones, even cars!, important papers, phone numbers, passwords, electronic devices, books, jackets, .....etc...the list goes on and on.....we are used to it...
Of course, my dad always finds everything he temporarily misplaces...
Today was the BEST Lost and Found Story EVER!
My dad misplaced his Kindle reader and looked in what he described as
"All the Usual Places." It seemed to be gone, but he was determined to
find the device and retraced his steps over and over again.
Finally, he went to a bench in a public place where he'd been reading
and didn't see the device when he arrived there, but thought he'd ask
the man that was now sitting on the bench if he'd seen the reader.
The man promptly pulled the device out of his bag and told my dad he'd
just put the device in his bag hoping that the rightful owner would
return to the bench and ask if he'd found it. The man who was sitting
on the bench explained he had decided to wait at the bench protecting
the device rather than leave the reader out in the open for someone to
take.
What an amazing story and also this proves there are still
honest people in this world! And...my dad has his reader tonight and
continues to enjoy reading the books on it!
