Why Your Theatrical Education Matters

The theater should never be seen as an extra part of our lives.  It is through the performing arts that we tell the story of our past and express our hopes for the future.  Dramatic performances challenge our assumptions about life; they expand our understanding, and push us to view our world in new and imaginative ways.

It is through the actor-audience exchange- the process of give and take, of creating a new and vicarious reality- that we educate, and inspire, each other.  We experience the richness of our common existence, one on one, up close and personal.

People who don't speak the same language, who have few shared experiences, can still be drawn together when their minds are stirred by a vision on a stage.  That is the power of the theater- to remind us what we each have to offer, what we have in common- to help us understand our history and imagine our future, to give us hope in the moments of struggle, and to bring us together when nothing else will.

What Will Your Scene Be? An Open Letter to the SERIOUS Broadway Knights, from Yoda

"Promise, I did, if a white board, I had, a lesson, in Latin, on Saturday.  And deliver, I did not.  Do this, now, I do, because, about the serious Broadway Knight Theatre Academy students, a great deal, I do care."  Put another way . . .

Now let me dispel a few rumors so they don't fester into facts.  Yes, I have taught drama in Indian River School District on and off for quite some time.  And no, at the beginning, I was not the theatrical giant you see before you at Georgetown Middle School.  In the beginning, I was the dramatic equivalent of a ninety-eight pound weakling.  I would go to the beach and people would kick Shakepearean plays in my face.

As an educator, as far as I'm concerned, teaching you is a battle, a war.  And if I fail, the casualties could be your hearts and souls . . . your minds.  Robert Herrick wrote, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a flying, and this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying."  The Latin term for that sentiment, my young Jedis and Padawan Learners, is Carpe Diem . . . put another way: seize the day.

Consider the great actors when they were in school.  They weren't that different from you.  Filled with hormones, just like you.  Invincible, just like you feel.  The world was their oyster.  They believed they were destined for great things, just like many of you.  Their eyes were full of hope, just like you.  Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable?  They seized the day.  They made their lives extraordinary.

I appreciate the sacrifices, the difficult choices many of you make to come to Enrichment, to get up early for Saturday school when you don't feel like it, to memorize pages and pages of lines, to sit impatiently by while students of less ability are being instructed, to allow yourselves to be publicly critiqued.  It takes courage.  It proves that you understand the concept of Carpe Diem.

Those of us who are serious about the theater don't study drama because it's always fun.  We invest ourselves because we are members of the human race.  And the human race is filled with passion.  Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, romance, love, drama, are not idle entertainments, these are the things for which we stay alive.  To paraphrase Walt Whitman: "O me, o life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish.  What good amid these, o me, o life?  Answer: that you are here.  That life exists, and identity.  That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a scene.  That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a scene."  What will your scene be?

PS: Only a SERIOUS academy student will have bothered to read this far.  And to you I say, studying drama is worth it.  Not for the applause which fades as soon as the house lights come up.  But for the life experience you gain, for the expansion of your imagination, for the opportunity to become better human beings- people willing to offer their lives as a gift to those too afraid to live life, too scared to seize the day for themselves.

Expand Your Imagination

Jedis Rogers, Shinn, and Spaccarelli have suggested that the Broadway Knights Theatre Academy needs to get t-shirts.  What a great idea!  A royal blue shirt with a nice yellow line drawing of the logo developed for the BKTA Facebook page . . . but what should it say?

Do, or do not, there is no try?  Acting is doing?  Can't means won't?  Broadway Knights . . . we are very ver-sa-tile?  BKTA: we can sing, we can rap, we can dance, we can juggle . . . okay, okay, okay, so we can't juggle?  Nyaah?

"An idea, I have, for an academy slogan," Yoda said, smiling, "apertis tuam diripiunt doctrina Glossarium."  After a moment's reflection, he laughed and added in the clearest American English he could muster, "And on the back, we could write: 'If I have to explain it . . . you wouldn't understand."

Think OUTSIDE the Box!

Proscenium, end, thrust, arena . . . the type of stage you're acting on matters!  "Harder, it is, than you think, to act," Yoda told the Broadway Knights, "when, surrounded, on all sides, by an audience, you are."

With the BKTA-sponsored dance looming, and Yoda wanting the theatre academy to do a performance, it was time to act on a different kind of stage . . . a dance floor.  Oddly, the geometrically challenged Broadway Knights- who typically couldn't form a pattern, even if aliens landed, and flattened acres of crops- immediately formed a circle, thus cutting off their audience from the action.  After two hours, a lot of sweat, and some serious Jedi intervention, the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time Padawan Learners finally got it!  And the Obi-Wan goes to:

• Allie Spaccarelli- Best Actress in a Glee-esque Musical
• KeVona Morgan- Best Contact with the ENTIRE Audience
• Tiffany Raeuber- Best Mime of a Cell Phone Call
• Candace Banister- Best Dancer
• Joanie Shinn- Best Director of a Moving Circle

A special thanks goes to the GMS girls' soccer coach, Mr. Kevin Cash, for allowing his athletes to participate in the second half of the rehearsal.  Now, if Yoda can persuade Candace Banister to wear matching shoes- "Think, I do, Miss Banister, in the dark, dressed, Saturday!"- and the Broadway Knights performance might be a hit.

It Must Be the Haircut

What is it about Matt Rogers that causes the female actors in the Broadway Knights Theatre Academy to turn and run for the wings?  He's got good looks, a Marlon Brando stage presence, and tan cargo shorts.  What more could a girl want?

When Yoda asked Rebecca Wilson to understudy the role of Cheyenne in Market Street Blues, she was very excited . . . until she realized that she would have to perform the second scene of Act I . . . the dreaded first-kiss scene.  Like many of her peers, Jedi Wilson tried to use her hair as a curtain: "If I can't see Matt, maybe he really isn't there!"  But Jedi Rogers is a resourceful actor.  He brushed her hair from her face, and planted a kiss on Rebecca's cheek.

"You're not going to put this on GMSTV, are you?" she asked Yoda, blushing.  "On YouTube," he answered, smiling.  Rebecca's sigh of relief at being spared the eyes of her five hundred school-mates is wonderfully ironic.

But that wasn't the sole irony.  "The Jedis should know, when speak on the stage, they do, that hear them, I can," Yoda said.  "Yes, Jedi Shinn, your favorite teacher, to her classroom, tomorrow, will return.  For the love, thank you, I do!"

Nyaah!

Okay.  So Matt Rogers doesn't have the measles.  We know this because Alyson Tober made it to school this morning, although Ciara Jacobi, the recipient of Matt's kiss did not!  But this morning, during the announcements, we learned that Matt does have a disease.  And apparently it is communicable.

There's little doubt that the Broadway Knights Theatre Academy students do a fine job presenting the Friday morning announcements on GMSTV.  Cold-reading copy on live TV, sometimes hand-written, is not an easy thing to do.  The fact that the students do the news so seamlessly is a credit to the things they are learning in the academy.

Things were going along wonderfully, this morning.  Sure, when the Jedis started the skit for the BKTA dance, they knocked the American flag off the wall, but, all-in-all, the skit was going well . . . until Joanie Shinn came on screen, stuck out her tongue, and said, "Nyahh!"

"That line, in the script, was NOT!" said Yoda.  "Jedi Shinn, Jedi Rogers' disease, must have caught."

On the bright side, Alyson Tober arrived at the GMSTV studio just in time to read Ciara Jacobi's lines.  In doing so, Alyson proved, without question, that she is a very ver-SA-TILE star!

At Last, a Real Kiss!

Finally . . . at long last . . . a real kiss!  Well, kinda.  Now, if only our star-crossed lovers, Matt and Ciara, would look into each others' eyes, they might actually convince the audience that they at least like each other.

What is it about Matt Rogers that makes the female members of the cast of Market Street Blues avoid him like he's got the measles?  Is it his Peter Brady haircut?  Is it his plaid Bermuda shorts?  Is it his inability to deliver his lines without sticking out his tongue, and going, "Nyaaah"?  Is it the fact that he's so afraid of a stage relationship that when the script calls for him to kiss his stage girlfriend on the cheek, he kisses the air about three inches from her ear?

Apparently Alyson Tober- that slender home-wrecker- doesn't fear him, though.  When push came to tango, Alyson proved that she knows how to take the lead!  If, however, she happens to be absent from school tomorrow, we'll know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there might just be something to that whole measle thing.

Crying Over You

So you want to be a star in a Broadway Knights production?  Try remembering how important it is to be engaged in every scene, whether you're in the spotlight, or just sitting in the set.  Some actors try to get attention by upstaging other actors . . . and then there's Allie Spaccarelli.

Sure, Allie could just be a wallflower during Jack's emotional scene in Tinsel, sitting in a folding chair upstage, staring at the audience while Jack gets all the attention.  But Allie chose to break Yoda's heart, by bringing such emotion to her role, that it appeared she would burst into tears at any moment.

"Jedi Spaccarelli, a good mentor, is," Yoda said.  "Understand, she does, that modeling, louder speaks, than words."

Emotional Reverberations

The first session of Saturday school ended with a bang!  After two and a half hours of physicality exercises, improvisation, and theater games . . . the Broadway Knights achieved an emotional breakthrough.

"Up in the house, standing I was, when, happened, suddenly, it did," Yoda told Mrs. Erskine after the students left for the day.  "Like an emotional lightning bolt, it was, flashing through the theater!"

What "it" was, was an improvised scene performed to the Glee version of "Dream On."  What "it" was, was an emotional sunami that rolled from the stage with such intensity that it caused the students watching the scene to recoil, simultaneously.  And the Obi-Wans for the first session of Saturday school go to:

• Best Actor: Matt Rogers- for having the courage to establish a character and stick to it.
• Best Actress: KeVona Morgan- for getting her facial expression just right, pulling her hood over her head thus cutting off the audience and her fellow actors, and throwing the paper bad at Matt.
• Best Supporting Actress: Danielle Hudson- the catalyst that raised KeVona's ire.