[420 Girl]

The scene inside Lynchburg College’s Helen Wood Recital Hall looks and sounds as if it could be a gospel concert.

About 13 high school and college students are standing in a circle, clapping their hands and singing. A few don long, white robes.

“Listen to Jesus, Jimmy,” the group harmonizes. “Just say no to the marijuana.”

Gospel this is not.

The performers are area students who have performed together for several years and only just recently gave themselves a name: the Ivy Mountain Players.

They’re rehearsing a song from the musical “Reefer Madness,” a satire of a 1936 propaganda film made to warn parents about the dangers of drug use. In it, a group of clean-cut, well-behaved kids descend into madness after they’re coerced into trying marijuana. Ivy Mountain is staging a production of it this weekend (see box).

“It was supposed to scare the youth off of using drugs,” says James Ballard, who is directing and starring in the play. “It was intended to be totally serious. (But) it’s just hilarious how terrible it actually is.

“It’s so bad it’s good.”

The film never really garnered much attention until the 1970s, when it became a cult hit.

In 1998, the musical version opened in a theater in Los Angeles and later debuted off-Broadway in 2001. It has recently found a following on college campuses, says Dana Ballard, James’ mother and Ivy Mountain’s musical director.

“It’s really sort of poking fun at the 1930s, 1940s paranoia, anti-everything propaganda,” says James Ballard. “It completely lampoons that mindset of ‘Everything needs to be censored.’”

But he’s quick to point out that it does not glorify drug use either.

“It lampoons both censorship and drug use at the same time,” he says. “It takes a controversial issue and makes both sides of it look stupid.”

The result is a play within a play, set in 1936. It begins with a lecturer — “sort of Stephen Colbert in a musical,” Ballard says — who emerges to tell the audience about a show he’s written outlining the dangers of the “demon weed.”

The lecturer’s play then begins, cutting to the wholesome Jimmy Harper, played by Ballard, and his girlfriend Mary Lane.

“He starts out as the good, all-American boy, takes one puff and goes crazy,” Ballard says.

Prior to their foray into “Reefer Madness,” the Ivy Mountain Players acted together mostly in church productions during the summer. Separately, most of them also participate in their high school and college theater programs.

This summer, they ventured out on their own with the goal of doing something a little different.

“The big issue we were faced with every time was censorship,” Ballard says. “It had to be family-friendly, which is fine. But it was always frustrating that we never could do what we wanted.”

The production is entirely student-run, save for Dana Ballard’s role as musical director.

James Ballard says they’ve been having fun with it.

“It’s a funny show,” he says. “The songs are really, really catchy. It’s a legitimately good musical.”

“When we’re (rehearsing),” he adds with a laugh, “it’s like, ‘I can’t believe we can actually do this now.’”

If you’re going
WHAT: ‘Reefer Madness’
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: Lynchburg College’s Helen Wood Recital Hall
TICKETS: $8 for adults and $5 for students. Tickets can be purchased at the door, and only cash will be accepted.
INFO: (434) 610-8645

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