A Gender conversation….and Pirates: Creating a safe enviroment for youth in your theatre program

Episode 146: A Gender conversation….and Pirates

Steven is a long time Theatrefolk playwright, and in his latest play The Dread (Playwright) Pirate Sadie, the majority of characters are girl pirates. And in the world of the play, this is the norm. In this podcast we talk gender and how we can create a safe environment for students to own who they are, embrace who they are and stand up for who they are. Being human is challenging and uncomfortable at times. How do you create a communicative accepting community?

Show Notes

• The Dread (Playwright) Pirate Sadie
• The Bottom of the Lake
• Ashland Falls
• She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More

Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere.

I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk.

Hello! I hope you’re well. Thanks for listening! Ho ho ho!

This is Episode 146!

You can find any links for this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode146.

You know, sometimes, I throw those things in and I think I’m probably the only one laughing. I am the one laughing. I amuse myself. What can I say?

All right. Today, we’re talking gender and pirates, of course.

This is a lovely conversation with a lovely human being, Steven Stack.

Steven has a number of plays with us which I will put in the show notes and I’m going to mention them in the interview and I’m going to talk about them in THEATREFOLK NEWS so I’ve got you covered. You are covered talking about Steven.

Steven works at a studio where they do a summer camp and the participants are mostly girls so that’s who he writes for. What I think is just marvelous is that he doesn’t really worry about “these are the girl parts and then these are the guy parts.” It’s “these are the good parts.”

We start with pirates in this conversation and journey into things a lot deeper. So, won’t you join me? Let’s get into it.

LINDSAY: All right. I am thrilled and pleased as punch to be talking to Steven Stack. Hello, Steven!

STEVEN: Hi Lindsay!

LINDSAY: How are you today?

STEVEN: I am fantastic. How about you?

LINDSAY: I am also… I’m… I’m very… Fantastic! Let’s go there! Yes, I’m fantastic! I was pulling back from it and then I’m like, “No, no…”

STEVEN: I’m glad you committed to it.

LINDSAY: I committed.

STEVEN: I had some doubts for a while. I was like, “Wait! She’s going in a different direction.”

LINDSAY: Yeah, she was waffling and then, no, she went. She went for it!

STEVEN: Well done! You made a bold choice! Good stuff!

LINDSAY: I think we can end things now, can’t we? That was it. We’re both fantastic. That’s the end of the podcast. All right.

Steven, of course, is one of our lovely Theatrefolk playwrights. We have a number of plays – The Bottom of the Lake and She Wrote, Died, and Wrote Some More and we have a relatively new play which is lovely – the lovely playwright writing the lovely play – which is the Dread Pirate/Playwright Sadie.

The thing that is the most remarkable thing about this play, and the thing that was the thing that really enticed us about it and really made us excited about it is that it is a pirate play where the majority of the pirates are played by girls, right?

STEVEN: Absolutely!

LINDSAY: Absolutely.

STEVEN: And it was always intended that way, too.

LINDSAY: Let’s talk about that for a second. The thing we’re talking about today, we’re talking about gender and we’re talking about how we can maybe chill out about gender but pirates are something that are so stereotypically boys and I just love that you wrote it for girls. Tell me about that.

STEVEN: Well, first, when I had the idea for it, one of the main reasons they were girls was because the majority of my acting class at that point were all girls so I was like, “Well, it makes complete sense.”

LINDSAY: It makes sense.

STEVEN: But then, I had this idea that I would make it a message and that all the girls would have to be disguised as men so they could just commit to being pirates. I started writing that and it became this message-y thing that was so over-the-top it actually destroyed the message of it. Then, I started thinking and I said, “You know what, why don’t we just create a world where there happen to be girls that are pirates and it’s normal and it’s accepted and no one cares?” Once I made that decision, what happened is the play took off and it made a statement without beating the statement over the head.

LINDSAY: Yeah, the play itself was the statement. We didn’t have to have any characters stand up and say, “Hey! I’m a pirate and I’m a girl and it’s okay!”

STEVEN: Yeah, and gender was never an issue at all. These were people first. Their gender didn’t matter at all.

LINDSAY: And that’s very clear in the play. They’re just fabulously fun roles – gender or not.

STEVEN: Yeah, exactly, and that’s what I wanted. I wanted to create characters that anyone could play but people would like to play because they were real.

LINDSAY: Because you put this up with your students. What was their reaction? What were the girls’ reactions that they get to play these parts?

STEVEN: They loved it because, so many times, they’re stuck in these roles – these traditional type roles – that are written quite well but they’re stereotypical roles. This time, it was, “You’re pirates. You happen to be great pirates,” – well, some of them. They were so excited because all my female actors were constantly talking about, “I wish we could play that role. I wish we could play that role. I guess we’re stuck here.” One of my things, since I get to write these, is, “No, you don’t have to! We can write whatever you want because you’re people and we can do it and we can create the universe the way we want to in this world and that’s just the reality that we create and it’s fantastic.” They were so excited. They loved the sword-fighting and we went through that first version of this. We must have gone through sixty swords. It was ridiculous. I pretty much was spending all my money. I’d have to come home and go, “Maggie,” which is my wife, “I’ve got to buy more swords.” That was almost a nightly occurrence so I found out how to make PVC pipe swords now so it’s much better.

LINDSAY: That, in a nutshell, is sort of what makes theatre remarkable. You can say the sentence – “We’re going to put whatever world we want onstage and that’s what’s going to happen.” You know – surprise, surprise – everyone buys into the world and everybody is happy and they can play those parts and the audience will buy them in those parts. If the actors believes the audience always believes.

STEVEN: Absolutely. Here’s the thing too with students; in the adult world, you know, the adults have been beaten down to accept certain stereotypes and some of them have grown into that, but students are begging, demanding almost to be recognized as individuals – not to be thrown into those boxes that so long society has demanded. You see it on TV, you see it in books, you see it everywhere, and you see it for guys and girls, too – both genders – that they want to be recognized as people. That should be celebrated. Instead of defining them how we typically define them, let them define themselves and we celebrate who they are. Theatre does allow for that. You can just say, “This is what’s real,” and you can almost see the relief come over their face because I get so many times where we’re talking in class – like, my summer camp we’re working at – where these students are at home – that they embrace who they are without fear of someone saying, “No, that’s not who you are. You’re a boy. You’re a girl.” No one there to say, “You know, this is who you are.” One thing I tell my students all the time is like, “Whoever you are, own it and be proud of it and keep discovering that all along the way in your entire life.”

LINDSAY: Well, isn’t that a wonderful thing? That there is a place where they feel comfortable to do that because that’s not always the case.

STEVEN: It’s not. You know, part of it is just society. They’re put in a culture where these things are expected and some of the teenagers themselves feel the pressure to conform to be something they’re not so then they put that pressure on other people. But, more and more, you’re seeing the teenagers of today and young adults are standing up and saying, “You know what, that’s not real anymore. This is what’s going to be real and we’re going to evolve.” I mean, the greatest thing about life is that you continue to evolve. You continue to learn new things. what used to be true, you can look and go, “Wait, that’s not true anymore,” and then you can embrace it and just go, “Awesome! Let’s own it!”

LINDSAY: It really sounds like you’re having gender conversations with the teenagers that you come in contact with. Did you expect that to happen? Did you expect to have that kind of open conversation or is it something that you’re really welcoming?

STEVEN: Well, I love this happening because the reason I teach theatre is not actually to put on plays. I love putting on plays but I enjoy the process of rehearsal and the process of discovery, and one thing we do before we begin any kind of rehearsal, I believe that the first thing you have to do is connect with who you are. We spend more time doing that and trying to figure out the parts that make us “us” so we can create that community. We spend a couple of days just really going, “Okay, let’s start defining who we are as people,” and it’s such a huge question but what happens is they define, they reveal their truth to other people, and you create that community of trust where people go, “You know what, I can be who I am,” and we spend a lot of time.

I always jump into that because I don’t feel that the most important job I do is direct a play. My most important job is to help develop teenagers that are going to have a successful life because they get one chance at this place – one chance at this existence – and I want to do everything in my power so that they can get the most of it because you see so much talent, you see so much hope, and I just see them as like, when they were three, and you know when you’re three years old, you believe everything is possible, and then life starts beating you down. I don’t want them to lose that hope so I push them in that direction and they’re so eager for it.

They’re eager for some little flicker of hope just to make you go, “You know what? Maybe I can do it,” and it’s whatever. You know, maybe it’s theatre, maybe it’s not. Whatever they’re passionate about, whatever they want their life to be, it starts with owning who they are and being comfortable with who they are.

LINDSAY: What kind of exercises do you do to explore that?

STEVEN: Well, the first moments, we play a bunch of team-building games where they have to work together and the whole thing is, with certain games, like, one thing we do is a play in a day where I just give them a script and they have to stage it all by themselves. They have to off-book, they have to put it together, and they have a time limit. That builds the community and I let them fail, if need be. Once they start working together and they talk, then we do an exercise called “Who are you?”

The gist of it is that we talk about how society defines us – tells us, “You’re this way, you’re a guy so you must hold in your emotions. You must be tough, strong, blah blah blah. You can’t like this. Well, girls, if you speak up, you’re bossy, so remember that.” And then, I say, “Now, we’re going to get rid of all that. you’re going to walk around the room an d you’re going to think about everything that makes you ‘you.’ And, when you have an answer or something you’re willing to share, you stop.”

And so, I have the actors walk around and then, one by one, they stop. I never force them to share but what happens is, one by one, they start sharing what they like about themselves, how they’re different, their fears, what they wish people knew, and they’re sharing all of this and what all the teenagers are finding is, “Wait, I’m not alone. That’s the same thing I think.”

It’s so cool to watch because the one thing in this world, especially as teenagers, sometimes, you feel like you’re the only one that feels something. In reality, you’re not because all humans have similar feelings about our place in this world. By the end of that, sometimes there’s tears, sometimes there’s anger, there’s really giddiness, but, at the end, every single one of them exists in a world like a community of one and it’s really beautiful.

After that, the show takes care of itself because they’ve invested in one another because they’re invested in themselves and they’re happy with themselves. It’s like, “This is who I am.” I know, in a lot of situations, you can’t offer that, but theatre is world that that should be the expectation because I always think the show, if you take care of the process, you take care of the actors, create that community, the show always takes care of itself, you know?

LINDSAY: Well, it really is you have to decide for yourself what’s the most important thing – is it process or product? If it is process, then what is the takeaway and what’s the learning? I think that it has to be community. That is one of the most important things that you can teach a group of youngsters, right?

STEVEN: Yeah.

LINDSAY: Or oldsters! You know, it’s something that never, never stops.

STEVEN: Absolutely because, as long as you’re breathing, you can evolve, and that’s the beautiful thing!

I had one of my students I worked with recently, she was very product-based because all her life has been, “How do I make 100 on a test?” When she came into my class, that’s what it was. “How do I ace this?” So, I started guiding her because I saw it instantly and I kept pushing her past that. It was like, “You know, life isn’t a test. You go through it day by day, you focus on the process of the day of improving. That way, you can gain enjoyment. But, when you focus on the process, the product is always going to be better. The cool thing is you enjoy it more and you get more out of it,” because I used to be the director that all I cared about was the performance – that we had to be awesome. But I evolved when I realized that that was stupid. I really did!

LINDSAY: No, it’s not stupid. It’s just… it’s a choice.

STEVEN: Well, right, in my world, it totally was because I was neglecting these students. Whether the play or not is perfect or anything like that, life goes on! I was so – well, first, I wasn’t even bothered by it. I was just like, “Oh, my gosh, that’s awful!” And then, I focused on the process and the coolest thing happened. The actors were happier, I was happier, and the plays were always better because they were committed and they didn’t worry about the show because they were creating these characters and they worked so hard creating the world that, by show time, they were game. It was like, “Let’s bring it. Come on! This is ours!”

LINDSAY: Okay. Let’s back up a little bit and get back into this knowing who you are because that exercise sounds very powerful. But I imagine that there has to have been times where somebody said something and somebody laughed because they were uncomfortable or somebody, you know, rejected what somebody else said.

STEVEN: Absolutely.

LINDSAY: How do you handle? Because there’s the idyllic world where everybody shares and they all become better human beings but there’s a journey to get to that point, always.

STEVEN: Absolutely.

LINDSAY: How have you dealt with that?

STEVEN: Well, first off, I see them all as individuals. I don’t expect everybody to be in the same place and we talk about sometimes people laugh because that’s their response to being uncomfortable and sometimes people do say something inappropriate or they don’t say anything at all. What I’ve always done – what I think you should always do – is deal with things directly and ask students. “So, you said this, why? What were you thinking there?” and not be afraid to have the tough conversations because what happens normally, it’s tough, of course, there’s a reason why, you know, it’s a tough conversation, but there’s an opportunity to help someone grow and not to get angry with them because we were talking recently in class about the way you help evolve people’s opinions is not to get angry, not to yell at them. It’s to communicate and to talk and discuss.

The goal is not to change their opinion; the goal is to bring understanding and then they can evolve their opinion because they have new information. That’s one of the things. I don’t enjoy it necessarily but, if the objective is to help make the students better, to help them understand who they are, those moments have to happen and, usually, those moments are the ones where the most change happens. It’s challenging at times but it’s beautiful, too.

LINDSAY: Well, being a human being is uncomfortable.

STEVEN: Absolutely!

LINDSAY: When you get right down to it, there is nothing in the movie, TV, being a teenager, you know, “being a teenager rocks!”

STEVEN: No.

LINDSAY: There really is none of that. It’s a very uncomfortable place to be.

STEVEN: Right. If the main thing you can give is to know it’s okay to be who you are and, also, one of the things I always say to my students, I go, “I just want you to know that you’re all messed up.” Then, they look at me and I say, “And here’s the secret – so are all the adults, too. We’re all messed up together in different ways. Adults just try to pretend they’re not.” I go, “But have you seen the news?” And then, it’s this community to go, “Oh!”

LINDSAY: I was dead certain that, when I was, I guess eighteen, I was dead certain that there would be a time where I would become an adult. I don’t know when that was but then everything would change. It would be like a light switch and then I would be like, no longer a goof or a dork or anything and I’d just become this amazing grown-up and I’m like, well, I’m 45 now and no light switch has happened yet.

STEVEN: There’s not going to be a light switch!

LINDSAY: It’s not happening. I’m never going to be an adult and I think that that is the secret – that we’re all just faking it.

STEVEN: Right! I think the key thing is just owning it – not trying to live in denial that you’re not messed up, that you don’t have these insecurities, that you don’t wish that sometimes you could just go on a playground and play by yourself and just have a ball and not worry about what anyone thinks of you or that anyone’s trying to, well, let’s say this is the way Steven is and this is the way Lindsay is and you go, “You know what?” because, when you’re three, you don’t care at all! I tell my actors before they go on, “Remember what it’s like to be three and then you can do anything.”

LINDSAY: Majoritively – majoritively? In the majority…

STEVEN: It sounds good.

LINDSAY: I’m making it up. That’s what Shakespeare did.

If you’re into theatre and you’re coming into a theatre class, your thoughts on gender and all that kind of stuff are probably more open than a normal civilian, but what happens? Do you ever have the thing where somebody is pretty stuck in a gender role and they have very specific ideas? Have you ever had that experience where you’ve sort of had to negotiate someone’s strict adherence to certain gender lines?

STEVEN: Well, I mean, we’ve had times where things have come up. For instance, recently, we had two students that, one, I worked with last year identified as a girl and then came up to me and said, “Hey, I’m identifying as a guy.”

LINDSAY: Wow.

STEVEN: And then, another one was, “Wasn’t sure,” and wanted to be referred to as “they” and things like that. I was game for it because I get it. I have never saw gender being just this black or white issue – you’re either a boy or a girl – because, if you look around the world and you talk to people and you see their personalities, it amazes me that anyone would believe that anyone is 100 percent anything. And so, when these students came up, they told me and I said, “Absolutely.”

And then, the students, the other students, they told them, too. At first, they were a little awkward but I just think, for the most part, teenagers adjust way more than adults because they’ve had less time to be set in their ways. It didn’t happen this time but, if there was a moment that it came up, I would pull that student aside and talk to them directly. “You have your set beliefs but this is this person’s life. This is who this person is. It’s not for you to tell them they can’t be that way – they can’t be who they are.”

LINDSAY: That just says a lot about the atmosphere that you create in your working environment with kids.

STEVEN: It was the best thing. That was my best experience as an instructor and I’ve been doing this now for about 223 years and it was the most moving experience – watching them. If they ever said the wrong pronoun or something or it was, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and then the people, the two students were like, “Oh, it’s okay.”

LINDSAY: Because they know that they’re trying.

STEVEN: Right. Just the fact that they were willing. It’s so beautiful that they were willing to say, “This is who I am.” They weren’t sitting there quietly pretending to be something they’re not and I just think the world should be that way because we would be so much happier. Everyone would be happier if people could just be who they were without fear of mocking or fear of somebody saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, you can’t do that.”

LINDSAY: Or following guidelines like, “Girls do this, boys do this.”

I was doing research for a play and I came across, I’m not sure if it’s true or not but it’s an awesome story that, like, a hundred years ago, in the late 1800’s, boys and girls wore dresses until they were three years old and they were white because it was easy and it was just that. Also, boys used to be dressed in pink and boys – wait, did I say it right? Boys used to be dressed in pink and girls used to be in blue because blue was a more delicate color and pink was a stronger color and it’s like, “Isn’t that fascinating?” That this thing that we have now which is so strict – like, pink is for girls, pink is for girls, pink is for girls – but what if pink wasn’t for girls?

STEVEN: Right. With our girls too, because I have two daughters – nine and three – we never put them in pink. Now, the nine-year-old likes pink, that’s awesome, but we always got them different colors because, to be fair, the pajamas in the boys’ sections are always way cooler! Dinosaurs, trucks, and here’s a story about the gender thing. I was at a wedding and my nine-year-old who was four at the time loves to climb things – trees, everything, just and everything. I was standing by a relative and we were looking and watching her play. He said, “Oh, well, she’s a tomboy.” I looked at him and I was like, “Why is she a tomboy? What does that mean?” It’s like, “This is who she is. Can girls not climb trees?”

LINDSAY: No.

STEVEN: It was so weird to me because I’m surrounded by women at home and they’re not strong women, they’re strong people, you know?

LINDSAY: Yeah.

STEVEN: But society is determined that girls have to do this and I love when girls just go, “Nope! I’m not going to do it anymore.”

LINDSAY: Do you ever have an issue when you’re rehearsing a show where, if you are swapping genders, where boys decide they have to play girls and it’s always at a very annoying high voice or girls who are trying to play boys and they try to do the deep voice? Do they have that stereotype come up?

STEVEN: When it does, I stop it instantly – even in improv. I’m like, “No.” Very few women that I know talk in a high-pitched voice and very few guys I know are very masculine – or the defined masculine anyway, the deep voice – so I was like, “No, no, no, just play them as people. It’s fine!” Because one of the plays I wrote recently, there was an acting scene in it and one of the characters is playing the Queen and she’s playing the Queen very feminine and the other actor goes, “What are you doing?” It’s like, “Oh, I’m playing the Queen, she’s a female.” It was like, “She’s not that girly. What are you doing? Stop it,” and they ended up getting in a fight but that’s a different thing because that’s the way you can make that point. But I just talked to them. Like, “Stop it.”

LINDSAY: So, we’re sort of wrapping up here. The gender discussion is something that I think is pretty vital for the drama classroom.

STEVEN: Absolutely.

LINDSAY: I’m just thinking about how to phrase this because I think it’s an important one to have. What are your suggestions? What’s your advice for anyone who might be going, “Eh, I can’t talk about this in my classroom”? What’s your advice for someone who might be shying away from this topic?

STEVEN: Well, the first thing to know is that teenagers are already talking about it all the time. By bringing it up in conversation, the key thing is, when I bring it up, I already stress to them, like, “This is your view on life. You have to own your opinion. We’re talking.” Have a conversation and see where they’re at because, in the end, you’re going to be surprised that most teenagers that move in that direction are going to go, “I get it,” you know? But they have to be allowed to talk about it – even if it’s scary. The problem, unfortunately, sometimes – in public schools, especially – people are very sensitive to that. but it’s worth the risk by actually addressing it and saying, “What about gender stereotypes annoy you?” Or even classify and say, “Boys, let’s define boys in typical stereotypical ways,” and then make a list and then say, “Okay, let’s define girls the same way,” and then make a list of all that. And then, you can say, “What’s the reality?” and then make a list of the realities where they just go, “Well, this is true, this is true.” And then, what happens – I would imagine – is that you would see that those lists, the realities for both genders apply to both genders and it’s not just separate, I would imagine. Making lists is always a cool thing but they’re talking about it all the time.

LINDSAY: It’s a good point to bring up though that, again, teenagers are talking about it and there’s sometimes those adults who don’t like it when teenagers talk.

STEVEN: But then you wonder, “Why are you in education?”

LINDSAY: Oh, let’s not even go down that road.

STEVEN: Right?!

LINDSAY: But that is an important point to bring up – that, sometimes, the conversations that are most necessary are the ones that administrators don’t want to have. But I really like this notion of listing it out and really going from the outside in. You know, start with the stereotypes, now start with the realities, and then that leads to, instead of going, “you know…” and getting too “all right, tell me about your life!”

STEVEN: In the end, I think you have to talk about these things until you don’t have to talk about these things anymore, in the end.

LINDSAY: Yeah. Unfortunately, I think that’s the only way that these things become into the past, right?

STEVEN: Right, exactly.

LINDSAY: Where, hopefully, they will look back in a hundred years and go, “What were those people thinking? That the girls had to wear pink and the boys had to wear blue.”

STEVEN: And the cool thing is that they will because we’re making that progress. It’s happening and maybe it’s at a slow pace but, if you look at the entire history of the world…

LINDSAY: It’s pretty rapid, actually.

STEVEN: Right, actually!

LINDSAY: We’re rocking it, actually. When you look at what life was like a hundred years ago in terms of gender and in terms of being able to be yourself and being able to be a teenager who feels comfortable enough to say, “You know, I like to identify as this,” that just wasn’t happening. Furthermore, you might even go to jail for that. I think we’re very lucky and I think that, being in the arts and being in theatre, we have a responsibility to help our students and this is one way we can do it.

STEVEN: And you can always teach them, too. You teach them to remember where they came from and to let them be able to always look back and what we were just talking about about how far we’ve come. Teaching students to look back at themselves, to see the progess they’ve made as people or as actors too but just as people. If they can see the growth, that growth continues. As society, it’s the same way.

LINDSAY: Yes, absolutely. Love it!

Steven, as always, a real fantastic conversation. When we started talking about it’s really interesting, you know, we started talking about A Dread Pirate Sadie and the thing that just came right to my mind when I was reading that play is, “Isn’t this a wonderful experience for girls?”

STEVEN: Who doesn’t want to be a pirate?

LINDSAY: Well, hopefully, someday I don’t have to say, “Oh, isn’t this a great experience for girls?” but “Hey, isn’t this a great experience for actors and for people?”

STEVEN: Exactly.

LINDSAY: We’re going to end this note on that we are all people and – oh, my god – the Depeche Mode song just came into my head. I’m not singing it so, if you know what it is, then that means you’re old just like me.

STEVEN: I just started channeling “Never Going to Give You Up” in my mind so there.

LINDSAY: Ah, awesome! See? We could bring this all back to something funny. Now, I don’t feel weird at all about saying, “Steven Stack, you guys should read his plays.” We have The Bottom of the Lake; Ashland Falls is the one that I did not remember – actually, what I love, Steve, is that there’s always a little something something; and She Wrote, Died, and then Wrote Some More; and, of course – oh, you know what, I’ve been saying this all wrong – it’s The Dread Playwright Pirate Sadie.” Oh, my god, Steven, I got your play title wrong. I just have it up here. Okay, it’s the Dread Pirate Sadie. I’m going to have it in the show notes.

Have a wonderful day and thank you very much for talking to me.

STEVEN: You, too. Thank you! This was fun!

LINDSAY: As always! Thanks much!

STEVEN: Bye!

LINDSAY: Thank you, Steven!

Ah, I love having Steven on the podcast. The conversation is always fascinating.

Before we go, let’s do some THEATREFOLK NEWS.

It’s a play feature! It’s a play feature! It’s time to feature one or multiple plays!

I’m going to feature Steven’s plays here. They are amazing for student performers. They’re easy to stage. They are fun to stage. So, here we go!

We have The Bottom of the Lake – great ghost story and more. It is an awesome combination of urban legends, teen issues, romance, absurd comedy, film noir, and, of course, ghost story.

Also a ghost story – Ashland Falls. It’s a full-length dealing with ghosts – only, this time, they’re not so friendly. A fantastic challenge for student actors because they have to play teens rehearing a show and they have to play the characters inside the story – complete with British accents. They have to be funny and bring on those spine-tingling chills. It’s these kinds of combinations that I think Steven is fantastic at.

Then, we have She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More, a one-act melodrama mystery that covers betrayals, broken hearts, and an odd but beautiful love story. You want unique characters? This play has a bounty of them but – be warned! – most of them end up dead – or appearing dead because of a rare fainting-when-frightened disorder.

Last but not least, The Dread Playwright Pirate Sadie. Sadie wishes to leave her life on the high seas to pursue her true passion – theatre. But there’s a problem. She’s not just Sadie; she’s the dread pirate Sadie, the most feared pirate in all the land. Arrr! And there’s another problem – she is a horrible pirate.

You can check out all these plays on our website at theatrefolk.com. You can also find links in the show notes – theatrefolk.com/episode146.

And, finally, where, oh, where can you find this podcast? We post new episodes every second Tuesday at theatrefolk.com and on our Facebook page and Twitter. You can find us on youtube.com/theatrefolk and you can find us on the Stitcher app. You can also subscribe to TFP on iTunes. All you have to do is search for the word: “Theatrefolk.”

And that’s where we’re going to end.

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! However you celebrate, I wish the absolute best for you and your loved ones and, with all my heart, take care, my friends. Take care.

Music credit:”Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.