And though Juanita Hall (who appeared in the stage show as well) was actually African-American, two important Flower Drum Song roles that were played by Caucasians on stage were on film portrayed by Asian-Americans: 1) Ed Kenney, the original Wang Ta, was replaced by Shigeta. 2) In the role of his romantic rival Sammy Fong, Larry Storch was originally cast, though by the time the show opened in New York, the equally Caucasian Larry Blyden had succeeded him. On film, Japanese actor Jack Soo got his big break with the role.

Am I complaining about Flower Drum Song’s being chosen? I really can’t, for in my life, the film turned out to be “culturally significant,” too.

Here’s why: In 1961, when I was 15, I was just becoming aware of this wonderful thing called The Broadway Musical, so the moment Flower Drum Song came to the RKO Keith Memorial in downtown Boston, I rushed there and sat in the very first row. A few minutes after the film began, I heard two men settle in directly behind me in the second row. And for the next two-plus hours, I noticed that every time I laughed at a line, these two guys laughed just as hard; when I merely chuckled, they merely chuckled, too. Almost always, we started and stopped laughing to the precise second. We were all on the same page with this one, true soul-mates in humor.

The second the film ended, I spun around in my seat to say, “Wasn’t that great?!” – and was surprised to see that the two guys were African-American. Understand that I came from a lily-white suburb where there were simply no black people at all. I’d never met one. I’d never spoken to one. And while the nuns at the Catholic schools I’d attended had always taught us that “Everyone is the same,” this is where I learned it was true. And wouldn’t Oscar Hammerstein, of all people, have been utterly pleased to see that his lucky hit had carefully taught me this lesson? Wouldn’t he have also loved the irony that a Caucasian-American and African-Americans were responding to a story about Asian-Americans?

Coda: A week or so later, I was sitting in class, and as soon as school ended, Margaret Trometer came up to me to say she’d seen Flower Drum Song. My reputation as a lover of Broadway musicals was already spreading, so Margaret knew I’d give an eager ear to her opinions. So, while our teacher Sister Marillac was collecting her papers and getting ready to return to the convent, she overheard Margaret gush about this story of an Asian family in conflict.

And after Margaret said, “And, oh, that James Shigeta! Isn’t he handsome?” Sister Marillac’s eyes widened as she screeched, “Handsome? A Chinaman?!?!”

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com

For Broadway Playhouse isn’t for octogenarians who saw the original Where’s Charley? in 1948 or even the baby-boomers who caught the 1976 black revival of Guys and Dolls. Broadway Playhouse, as that second word implies, is for kids. They can attend alone or with their parents and learn about musical theater.

Hartley is the director of the theater wing for the Kaufman Center, which operates Merkin Concert Hall at 129 West 67th St. He hosts each event, too, but let’s him tell you what’s he’s been doing and what he’s planning.

Sean Hartley: When I came here in 1989 as an assistant in the education department, I thought we could start a classical musical series for children -- and soon found that there are a lot of those around town. But nobody was doing anything to get kids interested in my main interest, musical theater.

Peter Filichia: How did it become your main interest?

SH: When I was a kid, my father was always playing original cast albums – My Fair Lady and Oklahoma! When I found out that stories went along with these wonderful songs, I was utterly intrigued. So I thought that maybe other kids could get interested in musicals if they were introduced to the stories as well as the music. I also figured that lots of parents who may not even like classical music take their kids to classical music concerts because they think “it’s good for them” – but many more parents genuinely love musical theater and would love the chance to share that with their kids. So three times a year, we provide an experience for families that introduce kids to this in a child-centered way. The kids leave knowing that name of one writer, at least one show that the writer wrote, and one song, which we teach them. So last year, we introduced them to Sheldon Harnick and gave them a little bit of Fiddler. I’m hoping the kids left the show saying to their parents, “Oh, can we see the whole thing someday?”

PF: Do you worry that when you bring out an author who’s of an advanced age that the kids immediately turn off, because they can’t relate to that old man up there?

SH: I don’t think that kids necessarily dislike people for being old, but it is true that they tend to be focused on their peers. So we have young performers. Jason Robinson is our comic male; Kathryn Markey our character woman; Steve Pacek is our romantic lead and Erica Schroeder our sopranoey ingénue.

PF: Speaking of sopranos, I’ve found that young people who are exposed to musical theater find listening to sopranos very off-putting.

SH: Maybe that’s true because they haven’t heard much of it in their daily lives. Oh, they hear an aggravated high belt, but that’s something else. I’ll admit that soprano singing is something they think of as opera. But almost every good choral director cultivates a head sound, and kids don’t find it that hard to do, so we offer it.

PF: Tell me about the Loesser program that you’re doing this Sunday.

SH: An excellent writer named Bob Kolsby and I did the script. It starts with five or 10 minutes on the history of Frank Loesser himself. Then our performers do some songs he did for Hollywood before he came to Broadway. Then they do a medley of Where’s Charley, The Most Happy Fella, and How to Succeed before we center on Guys and Dolls.

PF: No Greenwillow?

SH: No, I thought about “Never Will I Marry,” but, great song though it is, I decided against it. We may do something from Hans Christian Andersen, too, and are trying to decide between “The Ugly Duckling” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” But it’ll mostly be Guys and Dolls. We’ll invite boys in the audience to come up and play gamblers, while the girls will have the chance to be missionaries and nightclub entertainers. Some kids will win prizes -- CDs or DVDs of some of the material they hear.

PF: You may have had Sheldon Harnick in attendance, but you can’t hope for Frank Loesser to show.

SH: Well, you never know who’s going to be there; when we did Rodgers and Hammerstein, an actress who played one of the king’s wives in The King and I was in the audience, and had a few things to say. But, no, we don’t expect Frank Loesser. That’s why we like to do at least one show a year that can feature a writer who’s alive. Besides, I don’t want all our shows to feature music that’s 50 years old, or that we’re just thought of as worshipping the past. So on April 5, we’ll do Ahrens and Flaherty, and they’ll be on stage with us to talk.

PF: And Ragtime will be the show on which you center?

SH: No, I’m not going to be explaining why a young woman buried her child in the backyard and why a young man becomes a terrorist who gets shot. No, I’m going with Seussical.

PF: Amazing, isn’t it, how that show roses from the ashes of its Broadway debacle to become one of the most household-name titles of the past decade.

SH: I find Seussical both modest and inventive. We’ll center on the Horton story, which kids know.

PF: And in between Loesser and Ahrens and Flaherty?

SH: We’ll do Jerry Herman on Sunday, February 1st. He wasn’t available, but his works certainly are. Of course we’ll d something from Dolly and Mame, but I may include something from Dear World, which I greatly admire. One day I’d love to do a genuine Dear World concert where a different performer would take each of Aurelia’s songs: Karen Akers doing one, Donna Murphy doing another ...

PF: In doing Broadway Playhouse, have you run into any artistic roadblocks?

SH: I did when we did Cole Porter, whom I wanted to do because he was such an extraordinary writer. Then I found that so many of his songs involve double entendres, or have a sophisticated spin on something that kids wouldn’t get. I was no different when I was their age. I heard “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” and not until years later did I learn that Mary Martin wasn’t talking about loving her father. So while we wound up giving the kids “You’re the Top” and the gangsters in Kiss Me, Kate, the sing-along song we wound up teaching them was the song Porter wrote while he was at Yale: “Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow-Wow-Wow.”

PF: How much outreach do you do?

SH: The Monday after our Sunday performances, we do a 10:15 matinee for school groups. Many people from the board of Ed have come and have highly recommended it.

PF: Has all this led to any other programs?

SH: Yes, we have a summer musical theater workshop each July. Each group of 15 kids writes and works on an original musical. What helps is that all the music directors are musical theater writers and all the directors are script writers, too. We create seven new musicals, from 10 to 30 minutes long.

PF: And maybe some day, one of those kids will write a show and be featured at a Broadway Playhouse.

SH: Sounds good to me!

Admission to each Broadway Playhouse is $20, but three-event subscriptions are available for $45. Call Faye Menken Schneier at 212-501-3357.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com

This is: In watching the games, I often saw the camera switch to shots of the fans, whose faces were filled with the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. I felt defeated, too, as I once again I realized why sports will always be entrenched in people’s souls in a way that theater never can.

It’s simple. No matter where you live, there’s almost sure to be a sports team that represents you, by a manner of association. Certainly that’s true if you live in one of the nation’s biggest cities, but even if you live in Malvern, Pennsylvania, you’re going to root for nearby Philadelphia. And if you reside Randolph, Vermont, that’s what the New England Patriots are for.

I once spoke to a guy from Oakes, North Dakota, who volunteered, “You know what’s big in our state? High school football!” Well, yeah, because you don’t have any other teams, so you root for the Oakes Owls (or whatever they’re called) -- because, again, they represent you.

That’s it, you know: The dynamic that sports has and that theater doesn’t: The geographic association, so you feel like a winner when the team from your neck of the woods wins. Richard Greenberg dryly noted the “We Won!” phenomenon in Take Me Out, where Mason Marzac, a money man who hadn’t know a walk from a balk suddenly became a rabid baseball fan. When Mason joyously exclaimed “We won!” in referring to the (fictitious) New York Empires, he stopped to notice the pronoun he’d just used, and laughed at himself in contempt. “We,” he said with a shrug, realizing and admitting that truly, there is no “we” -- only “they” who play the game and literally profit from it. (Though, paradoxically, fans say “They stink” -- not “We stink” -- when the team suffers a loss.)

Nevertheless, literally millions of people insist that “we” do win when “they” win, for “they” on the team represent us as our unofficial ambassadors. It’s a way of substantiating or even justifying where we live and who we are. Philadelphia has often been a punch line for New York comics who sneeringly put down the town with no brotherly love lost. But these days, many Philadelphians feel superior, because their Phillies won the World Series last fall while both the Mets and Yankees didn’t even come close. Take that, New York!

Theater simply doesn’t have a way of fostering the same geographical affinity. The Tonys and all the other theater awards almost exclusively involve pitting one New York show against another, and that does nothing for people in Philly, Boston, or Baltimo’.

Yeah, but what about regional theater, you ask. Sure, people in Minnesota are proud of their Guthrie Theater, just as citizens of Providence like to laud Trinity Repertory Company. But you’ll never see those troupes or any theatrical company emerge victorious in a World Series or Super Bowl of theater. Yes, a Tony is bestowed to a regional theater each year, but that decision is made by theater critics, so there’s no official contest that theatergoers can witness the way sports fans can. The winner is even announced in advance, so there’s no real suspense factor. For that matter, when a regional theater wins a Tony, no one is even saying that the organization just had its best season; it’s more for a body of work.

So could there be a World Series for theater? It’s a lovely idea but an impractical one. How could it possibly work? There are, at the moment, 77 LORT (League of Resident Theatres) in the country. Could all 77 bring a production to one of nation’s theaters and have judges assess them? Which theater would host all this? If it’s a proscenium house, and your show was staged on a thrust, you’d have to be reconfigure it, which means work. Even if you did, more likely than not, the production would lose something in the re-staging.

And which production would a theater bring? Let’s say that a theater did a great production of The Good Soldier Schweik in April, but the Theatrical World Series isn’t until November, when the production would have been long closed, and the actors had scattered to the four winds. So do you bring what you just happen to be doing that November, even if it’s a just-okay production of Noises Off? And would a play production be judged in the same category as a musical -- or should theaters bring in one of each? Now we’re up to 154 entries.

Too complicated, too complicated. And even if, by a hundred million miracles, 77 theaters were each simultaneously able to bring a production to a certain theater, no more than three shows a day could be scheduled, which would mean almost a month-long competition. That would mean plenty of food and shelter costs for everyone. Nope, as Sam Byck sings in Assassins, “It’s never gonna happen, is it?”

And let’s be frank: How much interest and civic pride would possibly be gained from a theater’s winning? I still recall a woman I spoke to nearly 16 years ago at the opening night party of The Who’s Tommy. She was from La Jolla, where the show originated, and was as proud as Gaston because her local theater had provided Broadway with this wonderful property. Sure, but how many Broadway theatergoers who attended the show ever knew that La Jolla got the ball rolling, or gave a thought to the show’s origins? Once it was co-opted by Broadway, it became a Broadway show. End of story.

So the civic pride that sports fans routinely have is missing in our art form. One company, though, should have had it: Theatresports, of which you may have heard, for there are franchises around the world. Theatresports specializes in improvisation, though founder Keith Johnstone had an additional and smart idea. Instead of just having one group of improvvers face an audience and say, “May I have a household object, please?” he’d pit two teams of improvvers against each other. Three judges would assess each team’s work, awarding them anywhere from one to 10 points, the way Olympic judges do. After the first team beat the second team, two new teams would come on stage; the winner of the second match would face the winner of the first, and a champion would be crowned.

Not a bad idea, but at least here in New York, our local edition of Theatresports chose to name its teams by arbitrary if fanciful names. One night, I remember “Prav Duh” played “Improv Imps.” At each performance, new team names were devised, and though many were clever, there was no continuity from one performance to the next, so audience members really didn’t have anyone for whom to root, and certainly no one with whom they could become emotionally involved, the way, say, Los Angeles fans are with their Dodgers.

I told the Theatresports New York powers-that-be that they were squandering an important opportunity. Instead of just having silly/witty names for each team, they could get their audience to bond with the teams if they named them after the places from which their customers hailed. Call the teams Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, or - even better - the Upper West Side, Chelsea, and SoHo. This way, everyone (save tourists) would automatically and immediately have a vested and rooting interest in a team.

Well, no one listened, and if the New York chapter of Theatresports is still in business, I haven’t heard about it in years. I’m very sorry they didn’t try the geographical gambit, for had they done it, at least we would have had, even in a small venue, the type of rooting that they routinely have in sports venues.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com