Answering the musical question

When it comes to stage shows, why are some things sung, not spoken? 24th Street Theatre investigates that question in its 10th annual Saturday Explorer Series, a festival of quirky family works.

With a different bill of fare each weekend, the series runs through May 17 at 24th Street Theatre in Los Angeles with an eclectic lineup: theater artist Ayana Hampton, actor-writer-NPR commentator Sandra Tsing Loh, interdisciplinary theater artist Juli Crockett and cabaret veterans Alan Chapman and Karen Benjamin.

Each piece explores the connection between theater and music differently, says Debbie Devine, 24th Street’s co-artistic director, and how “sometimes it’s not enough to say it -- you just have to sing it.”

The work, Devine says, is meant to entertain both adults and children, who “receive it differently but experience and share it together.”

Saturday’s show: “The Pickle,” Hampton’s comic, fast-moving solo take on musical theater and the funny side of frustration. In one vignette, doomed lovers Mimi and Roger, from Jonathan Larson’s “La Boheme”-inspired musical “Rent,” sing about why they don’t simply decide to get a day job offering healthcare, “and maybe no one has to die by Act 2,” Hampton says.

She laughs. “That was one of my first conflicts when I really started to love theater. I would say, ‘Well, why die?’ ”

Hampton’s “cabaret for children” is “a chair, a performer and a story.” She hopes that some young audience members will be inspired to create their own cabaret, sing their homework, perhaps, and see if it turns into a routine.

Coming up: “Gone in 60 Seconds,” Loh’s improvised sing-along with the “Blue People Group” (April 26, ages 4 and up); “The History of Water,” a “magical, musical mystery tour” by Crockett and Jeremy Zuckerman (May 10, ages 7 and up); and “When Words Are Not Enough: The How and Why of Musical Theatre Songs,” a trip through American musical theater with Chapman and Benjamin (May 17, all ages).

-- Lynne Heffley