Here are some important dates and times to remember: Nov. 6, 7, 12, 13 and 14 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 8 at 2 p.m.

On those dates, the Uncommoners of James-town Community College will perform their fall of 2015 production: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s masterpiece show, ”South Pacific.”

There was a time, not long ago, when those two words would bring forth in every reader’s mind, melodies about ”Some Enchanted Evening,” and ”I’m Going to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair,” and ”There is Nothing Like a Dame.” It would be these, and many more.

But, as often happens, the show became so familiar, audiences began to search for diversity. The story of the show was dramatic and wonderful. The music could make a person’s heart sing. So, what have you done for us lately?

Now, we’ve arrived at a situation that when Robert L. Schlick, the director of the forthcoming production, announced that he would be staging ”South Pacific,” he actually encountered questions about what she show was about, had it ever been famous, and more of the like.

So, this week, I’m going to tell you what the show is about and how famous it has been, and in the hearts of those of us who have more experience with life, I’m hoping to kindle a glowing memory which will illumine the rest of the year.

SOUTH PACIFIC (STORY)

In December of 1941, Japanese forces bombed the American navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and a number of other, smaller bases, scattered around the Pacific Ocean. The attack plunged our country into World War II. Draft notices began arriving in American homes, drawing young men by the hundreds of thousands away from their plans and launching them on a path through training for war, to actual participation in war. Nearly half a million of those young men would never return.

More than 60,000 women joined the armed forces voluntarily, although the wisdom of 1941 was that women couldn’t and shouldn’t be part of the fighting. Instead, most of them were trained as nurses, and sent near the battlefields, to nurse the sick and wounded men. The majority of women contributing to the war effort went to work in the factories in our own country, to help produce the guns and bombs and tanks and other equipment needed to fight the war.

The vast majority of Americans in 1941 had never left the country before. Only a tiny percentage spoke any language other than English. They soon found themselves living in a world where their ability to deal with unfamiliar customs and often to speak a different language, might make the difference between survival and death, not only for themselves but for their friends and colleagues, who – in the heat of battle – had become as close as their own families.

The war ended in 1945, and millions of young Americans returned home, trying to grasp how the war had changed them, and how it had changed everyone around them. They remembered the conflicts they had fought within themselves, needing to re-evaluate their understandings of what the world is like and what it might be able to become, if they could only make the right choices. In situations of such uncertainty, people have always turned to the arts for help, throughout all of history.

Only four years later, a young American author wrote a series of 19 short stories which he collected into a book with the title ”Tales of the South Pacific.” The stories recount some of the events he had seen while serving in the Navy, on a wide variety of islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. Each story was capable of being understood, entirely on its own, but all 19 have to do with a plan by the U.S. Navy, based on one small island, to invade and dislodge a troop of Japanese soldiers, who were based on a neighboring island.

The stories followed a distinct pattern. The first and last stories were reflective of past events. Number two and number 18 describe battles. Number three and number 17 deal with the preparation for battle and the taut nerves and worry and anguish which come before battle.

The twin effect continues through the central story, #10, which bears the title ”Fo’ Dollah.” It is a love story, of sorts, between a native island girl named Liat, and a young American military officer named Joseph Cable.

That central story was the one which won the attention of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and it became the core of the musical ”South Pacific.” The rest of the show is drawn from parts of the remaining 18 stories.

The island where the stories take place is the island Espiritu Santu, whose name means ”Holy Spirit.” The island was one of the many which had been colonized by France, in which the native population was forced to work for French masters, to produce products useful for the French economy. Most of the island’s inhabitants were not Polynesians, but Tonkinese. They were the people of North Vietnam, which was also a French colony, and they wanted desperately to return to their homeland, but were prevented by anyone’s refusal to transport them the thousands of miles to Vietnam.

In ”Fo’ Dollah,” Lt. Cable is a graduate of Princeton University, who comes from a socially prominent and wealthy family in Philadelphia. He spends the story, wrestling in his own mind with the difference between the racism which he has learned from his entire life, and the reality of his own experiences. He understands Liat is a warm, kind, loving and wonderful person, and he is able to overcome his racial prejudice enough to love her, but he cannot bring himself to take her back to Philadelphia and deal with the racism of his family and friends.

Story number 8 is called ”Our Heroine,” and it tells of a lively and spirited Navy nurse, who comes from rural Arkansas, which was one of the 11 slave states which joined the Confederacy. Her name is Nellie Forbush, and she has learned to deal with the loneliness and the rarity of women among the many sailors on the island, by teasing and playing the spunky little sister their personalities have been trained to protect.

This works for her until she meets a French planter, who has been living on the island since before the war began. His name is Emile De Becque, and he is cosmopolitan and charming and very handsome. But, one day, he invites her to visit his plantation home. There, she meets his children. Her wonderful guy has been married to a Tonkinese woman, and he has two children who are half white and half Asian. De Becque is now widowed, but Nellie understands that he comes with baggage: two young children.

She loves the children. Like Cable, she is capable of realizing that these children are not defined by their race. They are fine human beings. But the thought of trying to explain them to the folks back in Arkansas is terrifying to her.

So all these people,preparing for an invasion in which any or all of them might be killed, are simultaneously dealing with a war between their training and education, versus their own eyes and ears and hearts. By the end, which will win?

SOUTH PACIFIC (SHOW)

Rodgers and Hammerstein bought the rights to Michener’s stories by offering him one percent of the profits from the show. He considered holding out for $500, but ended up being very happy, indeed with his one percent. He made millions.

Hammerstein had never served in the military, and found the scenes involving the sailors didn’t sound or feel right to him. He enlisted the help of the man they had hired to direct the musical show, Josh Logan. Logan was ex-military, and happily advised on whether a sailor on a south sea island would do or think what had been written, or not.

Logan is given credit as co-writer of the show’s book, for his efforts. He would wrangle with Rodgers and Hammerstein for the rest of his life over how much he should have been paid. He claimed to have written 30 to 40 percent of the book, which they both denied.

By 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein were moving on in a new direction from their earlier work. They had begun to hunger for more than light comedy, in their shows. Their first collaboration, ”Oklahoma!” is usually credited as the first show in which the story is told with spoken words, and the emotions of the characters are expressed in song. They began to think of their works as bridges between the power of the straight stage play, and the vastly expanded, emotional qualities of opera.

They selected two characters out of Michener’s stories, who they thought had the capacity for a lot of humor. There was a seaman named Luther Billis who had a gift for being willing to sell anything to anyone he could get to pay for it. There was a loud, foul-mouthed native woman who had been taught to speak English by the sailors, in the colorful style of speaking in which sailors are famed for speaking. Michener had named her Bloody Mary, and she was presented as Liat’s mother, charming everyone she could, while pushing for someone who could be convinced to take care of her beloved daughter.

While the songwriting pair was putting together their show, they learned that one of the principal bass singers from the Metropolitan Opera Company was tired of singing the either silly or villainous roles which opera saves for bass voices. Ezio Pinza wanted to do musical theater, but he worried that singing eight times per week, as performers in Broadway shows usually must do, could damage his voice.

Pinza agreed to play the role of De Becque, but he insisted that he not have to sing more than 15 minutes per performance. Pleased to acquire the respect which came from a star of the Met, they agreed. Even so, he found the stress on his voice forced him to leave the show, when his contract expired.

The songwriters had become familiar with a young singing actress named Mary Martin. She had auditioned for the lead in ”Oklahoma!” but they had chosen another actress, but then Rodgers heard her perform the lead in ”Annie Get Your Gun,” and decided she had the charm and the spunk to play Nellie Forbush. She told the pair she wanted to work with them, but she worried that her gentle soprano would be drowned in the giant voice of Ezio Pinza. Rodgers promised her that although the two were cast as lovers, he would arrange the music so that they never sang together.

And, he sort-of did that. They do a bit of overlap, but it isn’t musically prominent.

Director Logan found that the play was going on too long. He sat back, one day and decided that the time spent changing scenery between settings was slowing down the story. To counter that, he invented what is called a lap change, in which, as a scene draws to its end, the lights go down on one side of the stage, and the actors who will be performing next come onto the stage in the darkened section.

When the departing actors finish their scene, their lights go out and the lights for the next scene come up, to find actors already beginning the business of the new scene. It worked.

The show opened on April 7, 1949 and soon had record breaking lines, waiting to buy advance tickets. The show had run for two years when Mary Martin decided to leave the New York cast and travel to London to introduce the show to the English. She was still playing in it when King George VI decided to attend a performance, which he did, with his daughter, Princess Elizabeth joining him.

The day after her theater experience, the princess headed off on an African tour. While she was away, her father died, and she became Queen Elizabeth II. ”South Pacific” was the last performance he ever attended.

The American national tour began at Cleveland, and continued travelling around our country for seven years, before it stopped selling out.

THE DIRECTOR

We talked with Director Robert Schlick in his office, at JCC.

He said he came to decide to do ”South Pacific,” because he was looking for a show to follow 2014 huge success with ”Les Miserables.”

”After the power of that production, I felt we needed to do something of depth. We needed a story which really meant something, and not just some song and dance,” he said.

When he floated a few suggestions in discussion with his students, the director was shocked to hear that a number of them had never heard of ”South Pacific.”

”No matter which show we decide to do,” he said, ”It’s inevitable that a number of students will announce that we’ve chosen one which is certain to be a flop. They refuse to audition, and they’re going to advise all their friends not to try out, either.”

So, he soldiered on, made some early choices for roles, and soon the nay-sayers were hanging around rehearsals, listening to their friends, humming the songs and talking about how exciting the show is. And now, he has one of the largest casts he has ever directed.

Schlick admitted that one problem for the show is that Jamestown is not rife with Asian actors of the age and ability level to perform the major Asian roles. ”I decided that the important thing, in this script is not how the people in those roles are different from the rest of the cast, but the fact that they are, noticeably different. We’ve cast African Americans in some of those roles, and found that it’s working out very well,” he said.

He said that at the time of our interview, he had reached the place at which he has staged and rehearsed the most difficult parts of the entire show, and then he was in the process of connecting the big scenes to one another, producing a forward motion which will pull the audience’s attention through the action.

”I grew up with audiences who couldn’t wait to see ‘South Pacific,’ ” he said. ”One of the first records my family owned was the show’s original cast recording. The show is working the same magic now. When it’s good, it’s good.”

I hope you’ll plan to stop by the Robert L. Scharmann Theatre on the Jamestown campus of JCC, between Nov. 6 and 14. There is something wonderful about to happen there.