Jana Beck, High School Drama Teacher

Episode 67: Teachers Talk: Interview with High School Drama Teacher Jana Beck

Shout! is Theatrefolk’s a cappella musical. It’s both a challenge and a reward. This week Lindsay talks with Jana Beck about her experience directing this musical and her tips for other school productions.

Show Notes

• Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
• Shout! An A Cappella Musical
• Photos from her production

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP, the Theatrefolk podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you’re well, thanks for listening.

So in this conversation with teacher Jana Beck, I pretty much cry not once but twice. Jana recently directed my musical SHOUT but this conversation is so much more than that. Jana does not have a theatre at her school, she in fact has nothing she can use as theatre space. This does not deter her. I’m not sure anything does. And her story of how she is able to find space, the community spirit she lives by and encourages her students to live by, and how she works with students the class room is inspiring for any teacher to hear.

And there’s more than that here, a lot more. Let’s get to the interview.

Jana Beck

Lindsay: So hello podcast listeners, hello my friends. I hope that you are well. And today we have a very special treat – I am going to talk to a high school teacher from Texas, Jana Beck. And she recently had great success with our a cappella musical Shout!, so I asked her if she would come on the podcast and talk about it and her process, since I think you would agree, Jana, that Shout! is not your normal musical.

Jana: I would definitely agree.

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: [Laughs]

Lindsay: So how are you?

Jana: I am great, and I’m going to try really hard not to say y’all too much while I’m talking to you so that everyone will understand me. [Laughs]

Lindsay: That’s okay. I’ll try not to say eh too much.

Jana: Okay. [Laughs]

Lindsay: We’re both in the same boat. I never realize how much I say eh until I come to the States and everyone points and laughs and goes…and then I go, “Well, I guess I am Canadian.” [Laughs]

Jana: Well, I like that you sign off your emails with cheers.

Lindsay: Yeah, little British.

Jana: Yeah. [Laughs]

Lindsay: I own it well. I’ll own it well.

Jana: Good, good.

Lindsay: So the first thing I want to know is I want you to just sort of talk about what’s your theatre background. Did you always love theatre?

Jana: My background is, um, I was an incredibly shy kid that wasn’t sure where I fit in in the world because I found more things I wasn’t good at than that I was good at. But I had a seventh grade literature teacher who would let us read aloud in class when we were setting poetry, and she called me aside one day and said, “Do you know that you are really great at oral reading?” And I said, “What’s that?” And she said, “Reading out loud.” And I said, “No.” And she convinced me to try participating in some competitions with prose and poetry, and there I met other kids and saw duet acting and one-act plays, and I discovered it that way and haven’t ever looked back.

Lindsay: Isn’t it amazing when someone just says the words, “You know, you’re really good at something?” [Laughs]

Jana: Yes, it is amazing. It is. It’s very powerful.

Lindsay: Oh, I imagine. I imagine. So did you ever want to be a professional? Did you always know you wanted to be a teacher?

Jana: You know, I was intrigued by the idea of having a career in theatre but I never felt myself wanting to run off to Broadway and try and make a go of it, but I also wasn’t sure that I wanted to teach. I don’t mean any disrespect by this that my mother was a high school English teacher and I saw her working so hard I was like, “I am never…”

Lindsay: Ah.

Jana: “I’m getting a real job where I go to it and I come home and I have a life,” you know? So I found myself in college getting a theatre degree and I didn’t really know why because I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I knew I didn’t want to take any other classes. The catalogue was unappealing on every other page.

And I lucked into a position at the Abilene Community Theatre. They were looking for a children’s theatre director and they heard that I was a fresh new graduate with a degree and my husband was in school here so I was stuck here for two years in Abilene, and I was like, “Great! It pays more than what I’m making at Subway!”

Lindsay: [Laughs] When has that ever happened that something in theatre pays more than a normal job?

Jana: I know. It was amazing.

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: So I went over there and I felt very ill-equipped because I had not done the whole education route, but I found out that I was a born teacher, that teaching makes me feel alive, and being able to combine my love of people with my love of performance was absolutely the way to go, and so I kind of got a second chance to discover that and it’s been fabulous ever since.

Lindsay: How long have you been a teacher?

Jana: Well, I’ve kind of got two little stints sort of before mom and then after mom.

Lindsay: Right.

Jana: I taught for six years, two at the community theatre and then two at a private school in Dallas – that was actually my alma mater. I went back and was the drama teacher where I went to high school, so that was cool. And then I took a couple of years off and became a mom, and then I went back part-time here in Abilene back in 1998 and worked for a few years there. And then when I had the second baby I was like, “I don’t know how to do theatre with two babies. Hmm.”

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: [Laughs] And so I stopped for several years, and now the baby is in seventh grade and his brother is in tenth grade and I actually teach at their school and they have been in both of…both have been in my productions and it’s amazing. And that’s how you do it with two kids, is you put them in your shows. [Laughs]

Lindsay: So you know exactly where they are.

Jana: I know exactly where they are at all times, yeah.

Lindsay: What’s the most rewarding part about being a teacher?

Jana: Hmm. Um, kind of like what happened for me when I was a kid is when I see in somebody’s eyes that they don’t think they’re worth anything, and when they either go through my classroom or go through a production with me and I see that change and I see their eyes shine with worth because of interacting with me and with performance, and I just…I’m addicted to that.

Lindsay: Isn’t it amazing how drama can do that?

Jana: Yes, it is.

Lindsay: Like it happens all the time.

Jana: Yes. I have story after story after story of that happening, and the circumstances can be very different and they can be very similar, but feeling like you’re worth something is…it works for every single person in the world, and I love to be paid to make that happen.

Lindsay: Do you got one off the cuff, one story that you could tell?

Jana: Oh, um, goodness, I guess I need to know who’s going to be hearing this. [Laughs]

Lindsay: No worries, no worries. I put you on the spot. It’s okay.

Jana: That’s right. No, I would say most recently, probably—well, you know what? I’m going to dig back a little bit. Let’s go back into the nineties. I’m thinking of a student that wasn’t even sure that they wanted to be alive. They were struggling with really serious issues and thought about taking their own life, and I found them in my class. And they really struggled with belonging in my classroom, but throughout the semester started participating a little bit more. I try to make my classroom a safe place where people feel free to take risks, because you can’t do theatre if you don’t feel that way. And it started to make a difference and he actually auditioned for a spring show, and by the end of that show had completely decided that life was worth doing and wanted to know if we were going to have another show in the fall. And I said, “Yeah, we are, and you better be there to audition.” And that’s not real specific, but it was very impactful for me.

Lindsay: Absolutely. Okay, now what’s the most frustrating part about being a teacher?

Jana: [Laughs] Um, probably…well, let’s see. Teacher or director? Are they interchangeable here do you really want me to go with teacher?

Lindsay: Well, our customers are drama teachers, mostly, so let’s talk about director.

Jana: Okay. Okay. That for me personally, at the risk of sounding like a whiner or a complainer, is not having anything to do my craft with. We don’t have a stage or an auditorium. I have a classroom and that’s it, and it’s really, really challenging to find places to perform and places to make the kids feel like they’re doing a real show. And I find myself spending a lot of time trying to make connections in the community and churches and different places around that would host us, and it’s very challenging to just find a venue. And I always felt like if I just had an auditorium that was mine and I knew where I was doing my show, that would just be so incredible.

And it’s not that I don’t have a supportive school, because I have an enormous amount of support. It’s just that facility doesn’t exist and I don’t happen to have millions of dollars, so you know. [Laughs]

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: If you want something that might be more…the people might be able to relate to…

Lindsay: Oh, actually I think a lot of our teachers are in the same boat as you. They don’t have a space to perform. So what do you do? Is getting to know your community really the most important when you’re trying to find a space to perform? How do you handle it?

Jana: Well, I have handled it a couple of different ways at different times in my life. The most important thing that I say to anybody about this is, “Be nice to everyone you meet no matter how bad of a mood you’re in because they might have a space that they would share with you.” [Laughs]

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: You never know who you’re talking to.

Lindsay: Oh, spoken like a true director. [Laughs] Always looking for the space.

Jana: [Laughs] I went for personal connections because I happen to teach in the same town that I went to college in, and I started there to see if there were any spaces on the campus that I went to school, and unfortunately the theatre spaces are so frequently in use that they couldn’t share them even though they would love to. But sometimes there are other auditorium-stage-like spaces, recital halls, things like that on a college campus if you happen to live in a town with a school like that.

Churches are often very willing to work with people even if you don’t have any connection inside of there because, typically, if it’s a church that’s working the way a church is meant to work, they’re open to all people. And you can find sometimes not necessarily the sanctuary but sometimes a fellowship hall or a place that’s meant for large groups of people to just gather. I can find spaces there.

My most recent and my greatest find in the history of all of searching for a venue is the Abilene Community Theatre. The people who gave me my first job, the ones who robbed me from Subway and put me in their [laughs]…

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: …their classroom, they are the perfect-size space for us because the house seats about 240 and our high school has around 150 people in it. So it’s a small school…

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jana: And when you go to a cavernous space to perform, you feel unsupported, there’s not a lot of electricity or energy in the room. You could have 500 people at your show and it feels like nobody’s in there. And so it’s really important to me to try to find spaces that are a tight enough fit that you feel some energy when you’re in a space, and this was just perfect.

And because back when I worked there when I was 22 years old I left in good standing, we moved to Dallas and I made great relationships there and formed some lifelong friends, and when I went back and thought, “I wonder if they possibly would ever be open to letting us use this space,” I wasn’t ashamed to return or embarrassed about the way I’d acted or, you know. It was just, I always tell my kids, “You never know when you’re going to need to work with somebody in the future. Just always be professional and kind and respectful.” And I told them that, they’re sick of hearing it, because I’m like, “We’re using this space because I didn’t burn any bridges!” you know? [Laughs]

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: And they’re like, “Okay, we know! We know!”

Lindsay: It’s a good lesson to learn though, just as a human being, you know?

Jana: That’s right.

Lindsay: Be kind.

Jana: It is, it is. Just be kind. And it’s just the perfect space for us. They were very confused about how I thought I could make that work, because they have kind of a revolving door where when one show closes the other one’s already in audition, they’re building a set, they’re already in rehearsal, and there’s not ever any open space. But a desperate director can find all kinds of things, and I looked through their season and I saw that on occasion they had five weeks between productions whereas many times they only had four.

And so I said to them, “What do you think about if I come in here for a week in the fall and a week in the spring when you have five weeks in between shows instead of four and we use your space and we will work out some kind of mutually edifying financial experience for both of our programs?” And they didn’t run me out…

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: [Laughs] Which was good.

Lindsay: Oh good.

Jana: And so I proceeded to write three different styles of proposals to have presented to the board of directors to see what they might like, because we were setting a precedent there and I wanted to be really thoughtful about what they would be sacrificing if they let us the space and I wanted to be really thoughtful about what they could gain if they let us use the space. And so I thought a lot about how they could receive more notoriety in the community. Perhaps my parents weren’t even familiar with their facility. That would be, you know, community theatre always wants to be known as serving the community. This would be a great way if they were trying to write grants or gain moneys for themselves to show that they were serving us, you know? I mean, I thought about it from every possible angle.

Lindsay: That’s awesome.

Jana: And it really has been absolutely amazing how they have partnered with us.

Lindsay: Oh, that’s really fantastic, and I think that’s really…oh, what a great thing. Wow, there’s just lots of good lessons there, you know? Like [laughs] be kind and don’t burn your bridges.

Jana: Yeah. Yeah. [Laughs]

Lindsay: And reach out, you know?

Jana: Yes.

Lindsay: Community is everything. I mean, the whole nature of being in a play is a community. Why not teach students that it’s not just the community between, you know, within your school walls, but also your audience and then your other potential…who you can potentially work with.

Jana: It’s really been an amazing thing. I’ve actually thought about writing some kind of letter to the editor or some kind of article or something talking about the partnership, because it really has been…it’s been so amazing that people need to recognize how special it is. The sad thing right now is the theatre is what they’re calling as temporarily gone dark.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jana: They have gone dark for a season, just one season. They’ve been in operation I believe for 59 years and have decided that they needed to take some time to do some fundraising. The facility is no longer up to code for the standards of our time and they need to make some improvements, and if they do that then things will be exposed that’ll cause problems for insuring it because of standards, you know, from what they are now, back in the fifties, and they just had to just close. And that means it’s closed to me as well, and so I’m back…

Lindsay: You’re back at square one.

Jana: I’m back at square one for that little school show in the spring, so [laughs] yeah, here we are.

Lindsay: Somehow I think you’ll find a way.

Jana: [Laughs] If I have to do it in my own bedroom, we’ll have a show.

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: [Laughs]

Lindsay: Just ignore the sheets and push the laundry to the side.

Jana: Oh, can you see this room that I’m sitting in now?

Lindsay: [Laughs] Maybe I’m just talking about my own room. [Laughs]

Jana: Yeah.

Lindsay: Okay, so let’s talk about Shout!

Jana: Okay.

Lindsay: So Shout!, for those few listening who don’t know, is an a cappella musical that was written specifically for students to perform. And because it’s a cappella that means there is no orchestration. It’s just the voices of students singing, which is a very daunting and challenging task. But every production I’ve ever seen and heard, it’s just been really rewarding. Would you say that that’s maybe how—what was your first impression?

Jana: Well, rewarding is definitely a word that I would use at the end of the project. On the front end, that’s what I was hoping for. I felt like I saw the potential for that kind of feeling when I saw the YouTube clips on your website, from the first production I think that you had.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jana: And I still remember the moment that I first saw that clip, and my heart started beating quickly and I recognized that there was something really special going on there and I wanted that for my kids too.

Lindsay: What was your students’ first impression of the whole project?

Jana: They thought I was nuts. [Laughs]

Lindsay: [Laughs] You’re not alone. You’re not alone.

Jana: Let me tell you this, though. I could sell sand to a beach and…

Lindsay: I am not surprised. I am not surprised at all.

Jana: [Laughs] I started working, working my mojo as we say, and I really presented it in a way that… Well, I’ll tell you really what I did, and I have never done this. I was counting off the other day because I thought, “What if she asks me how many shows I’ve directed? I better find out.”

Lindsay: How many shows have you directed?

Jana: [Laughs] Well, I think it’s either 47 or 48.

Lindsay: Really? Wow.

Jana: I’m not sure if Shout! was 47 or 48, so there’s a little bit of, “hmm, maybe,” in there, but 40-something. But I have never, ever, ever done this, but I felt like this was the way to handle it. I called…when I was looking at really seriously doing this show, after I called the person that I wanted to do the music with me because I knew I needed a partner—I typically have to work alone because I don’t have an option, but I didn’t feel like Shout! was an option for me to do alone. And so I got a buy-in from the high school choir director, and as soon as she said yes to me, which that was a sell job in and of itself, I called one of my seniors and one of my incoming freshmen, both of whom are die-hard-through-and-through theatre kids, and I had them go to the website and look at the YouTube clip, and I shared with them the story of the show. We did just the one-act version.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jana: It was a better fit for our rehearsal schedule and the size of my department. But I had them look at it and I said, “What do you think?” And I don’t typically do that because typically I make my choices based on things that are what I know about what I can do, what my needs are, what my money is, what kids I’ve got, the time I have, all kinds of stuff that kids wouldn’t know. But I thought, “I need to know what these two people…what do they think when they see this?”

Lindsay: Why did you think it was important for students’ input here?

Jana: Because I knew if those two young ladies were pumped about it that I wasn’t off my rocker being excited and that they would be able to sell it with me. Because the one that’s a senior was basically one of the main leaders of the high school program and the one that was an incoming freshman had a reputation for being an amazing performer already in middle school, and I knew if they were excited about it, one, that it had the kind of credibility with teenagers that I expected it would have but I didn’t know until I saw a real live teenager look at it, because I’m almost 44 so I’m getting more and more removed [laughs] from the teenage mind, even though I have some young kids. So that helps. But I wanted to see if they felt like it was as relevant and as exciting as I did, and I also wanted them to be able to say in their own personal words to people who might be fearful or hesitant to audition…

So I called the young lady who was going to be a freshman in my program and I asked her to take a look at the YouTube clip and look at the website and read what the story was about and see if she felt a connection with it, if she was excited about it, if she thought, “Eh, I don’t really want to do it.” And I was like, “Take a couple of days, just look at it, see what you think, and just let me know.” And I had no idea what she was going to say.

And apparently she hung up the phone and went and looked at it like that second because she kept saying, “I’m so honored that you would ask me! I can’t believe you would ask me!” She was so pleased to be included. And she called me right back and her voice sounded kind of small and she sounded kind of a little shaky, and I thought, “Oh no. This isn’t going to be a go.” And she’s like, “Mrs. Beck?” And I said, “Yes?” And she said, “Well, I watched it and, um, here’s what I think.” And I was like, “Oh, here it comes.”

And she said, “I think it would be incredibly risky and we’d feel more vulnerable onstage than we might ever have felt before in our lives…” And I was waiting for the, “And so there’s no way I would ever do this,” and she said, “But isn’t that what theatre’s supposed to be about?” And I just sat there, I think I really like almost held my breath for a couple of seconds and I said, “Yes. Yes, that is what it’s supposed to be about.” And she said, “Well, then let’s do it!” And, embarrassingly, I think I actually squealed. [Laughs]

Lindsay: I would have squealed. I think that’s the most amazing 13-year-old like in the world.

Jana: Yeah.

Lindsay: Like what a wonderful thing for her to say.

Jana: She’s pretty amazing. And that kind of just set the whole experience in motion because as soon as she said that, it’s what I knew but hearing it from her 13-year-old mouth made me think, “Okay, I’ve got to grab this experience for these people because this could be some life-changing realization about the importance of taking risks and making a beautiful life, not just a beautiful show.”

Lindsay: So that was your awesome experience in terms of choosing a play.

Jana: Yeah.

Lindsay: So what was your process in directing something that was so unfamiliar?

Jana: Yes. I share my students, like most of us do I’m sure, with many, many other programs at school. and at our school we don’t have something like just theatre kids or just whatever because I have football players and cheerleaders and people on the swim team and everybody, and we’re all trying to meld these schedules together, and I can usually only cobble out about two nights a week for a rehearsal process over a couple of months. Well, I only had one month to do this show in because…

Lindsay: Holy smokes.

Jana: Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes, I am that crazy.

Lindsay: You are crazy.

Jana: The community theatre was going dark on October 7th. My show was October 4th and 5th. They couldn’t give me any more time, and they were like, “If you want to do it here, this is it.”

And so what I did was I had to tell some people that they couldn’t audition. Like I couldn’t work with the volleyball schedule. I just couldn’t, and it broke my heart because I had a lot of girls in there that were really devastated. So I cut who could audition. You had to be a little bit more available than usual. And we had rehearsals on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for four weeks, and Saturdays we had marathon rehearsals, and we basically spent the first—this was very scary—we spent about the first week learning Shout! and Shout reprise.

Lindsay: [Laughs] Oh no. And then you went, “There’s no way we can do this.” [Laughs]

Jana: It couldn’t happen! Okay, so well…you know. And I’m thinking, “Okay, you all told me that you would not be able to refund my money if I didn’t have enough people audition, but that I could use it for another time.” [Laughs] Some people would just use this for another time. I mean, I really was thinking that first. But they had to learn how to do it, you know what I’m saying?

Lindsay: Yes.

Jana: I mean, it was such a hurdle to master that first piece, and then as soon as they sort of felt it, then everything else was like, “Oh, okay.” And Fine was an enormous challenge because of the length of the song. It ended up being a very big moment for them when they mastered that piece. Their very, very favorite I think was Head Will Explode.

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: They love singing that. Oh my goodness, they love singing that. And I wish you could have just been in the audience to hear the people laughing and enjoying. But I just decided rather than taking a little bite out of a lot of pieces, we would master something. And I still remember standing in the band hall the very first time they sang the Shout reprise with no notes being played on the piano, just purely a cappella, the very first time they did that and it sounded good. Now, the first time they tried it, it didn’t sound good. But the first time they did it that it sounded good, I remember the moment after it was over and they all kind of held their breaths, and then they looked at each other with wide eyes, and then they started smiling and then they started jumping up and down and a couple of them started crying, because they knew that they had done it and they knew what they sounded like. And it was like, you know, and I started as you can imagine jumping up and down and screaming, and I started saying, “That’s why I wanted you to do this show so that you could know what that feels like!” and it was just amazing. It was good.

Lindsay: Sorry, I’m sitting here, I’m like, “Wow!” Like, what a…just what a wonderful experience about why…and why we shouldn’t be shying away from hard things.

Jana: Yeah. Yeah. There was a book that I kept quoting, it’s called Daring Greatly, and it’s by an author named Brené Brown, and she has done a lot of research on shame and vulnerability and she wants people to dare greatly in their lives. And so I kept telling them quotes from the book and talking to them about that and telling them that in this show they were daring greatly, and really by the end of it they truly began to believe that they could…to dare greatly in all things, not just onstage.

Lindsay: Oh yeah. The first production of this show I remember sitting and talking with a girl and I said, “How is it that you believed you could do it?” And she said, “Well, our teacher believed in us, and if she can believe in us in this impossible task that we’ve been given, then maybe we can do it.” And it sounds like that you’re that teacher too where you just push and believe and let them do something great.

Jana: I say to them all the time, I don’t know why I latch on to this phrase, I just keep saying, “I want this for you. I want this for you.” And that does something to them because they feel…I don’t know why that’s so powerful for them, but it’s like they’re almost humbled that someone else would want something for them and not just something for themselves. It’s like they take kind of a pride or an honor in accomplishing it because you want that for them. And I don’t know, it’s not been a phrase I’ve ever used before until this show, but it was really…I found myself saying it a lot.

Lindsay: Did you have any tools? It sounds like it was mostly like the music person, your music choir director, was there helping, which is a really great tool to have. Is there any like one specific tool that you had your students use to learn this music, to ground it in them?

Jana: We recorded…I had a person that played all of the piano parts except for…and then one person would sing the… Like let’s just say we were doing the baritone. We recorded a person singing the baritone part with all the other parts being played on the piano for the baritone people, if they were having a hard time learning how to sing with the other parts.

Lindsay: Right.

Jana: And so we went ahead and spent a lot of time making those recordings so that they could practice singing with the harmonies, and that ended up…actually, it ended up kind of almost saving the show for us because there was a point—we actually did it out of desperation—there were just a couple of people that just weren’t getting it, and you know, as you know with a cappella, all it takes is one person to be off and it’s over. [Laughs] And so we really spent a lot of time creating those, and they took those and they started being able to hear it, and that helped a lot. I’d recommend that.

Lindsay: So lastly, before we end off, tell me about your audience response.

Jana: Oh my goodness. I have never done a show that seemed more poignant for people in the now. Maybe you do All My Sons from Arthur Miller – obviously that’s poignant. But this, I kept telling the kids, “I don’t want anybody in the audience to be able to hide behind this show. I want them to be able to see themselves all over it, and I mean the grownups, and I mean the kids, and I mean the little sisters and the little brothers that are out there.” And that’s what happened because you could see it in their eyes. They saw themselves, particularly in the musical number Fine…

Lindsay: That’s my favorite song.

Jana: Yeah. It’s mine too.

Lindsay: It’s amazing how often you say that word.

Jana: Oh, you hear it all over the place, and the way you echo it in the scenes just following the song, I’m assuming that happens in the full length as well…

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jana: …really, really points it out. But people of all ages came up to me repeatedly talking about that song in particular and how it impacted them. And I also had a grandfather write me a really, really long letter. Usually, when you get a really long letter from a grandfather it’s kind of scary because [laughs] you’re like “Oh no.” But he was amazed and he was thanking me for doing a show that had such meaning but also was so much fun to watch, and it went on and on. I’ll have to copy it for you.

Lindsay: I would love that.

Jana: It was really precious. But I had people…I had a grown man come up to me the day after. He saw me somewhere and he started crying, thanking me for the show. And he didn’t even have any kids in it.

Lindsay: [Laughs]

Jana: He brought his daughters because their fifth grade teacher’s daughter was Kate, and so he brought them because they wanted to see Hailey in the show, and he was like, “That was amazing.”

A football coach and his wife, have two sons, and they were elementary, middle school age, and they were driving home from the show and they were like, “Did you like that?” They thought they were going to be like, “eh,” and they were like, “We loved it!” I said, “Well, do you even know what it was about?” And she said all the way home they talked about how important it was to be real with people and to really be friends with people and understand that everybody has problems. And she said, “They basically told me the meaning of the show all the way home.” She was like, “How can I thank you for giving me the opportunity to have that kind of conversation with my kids?” She said it was priceless. And so it was good.

Lindsay: Oh, you’re making me cry.

Jana: [Laughs]

Lindsay: Well, it’s what every playwright wants to hear, that a conversation happened on the way home.

Jana: Yeah.

Lindsay: And with kids, like are you kidding me? Like it just makes me like…you made my day.

Jana: Mm-hmm.

Lindsay: So we’re going to end it there because what I was…well, my last question was going to be, what advice would you give to a director who shies away from difficult material? But I think you’ve just said it. It’s because it lives.

Jana: It does. It lives.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jana: It matters. It matters later.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jana: It just keeps mattering. And for us, at our school, one of the ways that kept mattering is about a little over a week after we closed our show a student of mine—she wasn’t in the show but she’s in my theatre class, she’s a ninth grader—and her brother died from a tragic accident of hitting his head on the ground. And she hasn’t come back to school yet, but when she does some of the kids who saw this show and some of the kids who were in this show are going to think a little bit differently when they ask her how she’s doing and she says, “Fine.”

Lindsay: Oh, [laughs] now you’re really making me cry.

Jana: I’m really thankful. At first I thought it was horrible that that happened at the same time. I thought, “It’s awful.” And then I thought, “No, it’s perfect. It’s perfect.”

Lindsay: I’m going to be so cheesy here but it’s like theatre in life, you know?

Jana: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I have to be cheesy all the time. It’s like a role. [Laughs]

Lindsay: Well, I love it. I think it’s wonderful and I am so thrilled that we have this moment to talk. And I know you have to run – theatre is your life, you’re taking kids to see Les Miz, and I know you have to run, and I’m just intensely thrilled to have heard your stories and to hear about the way you find a space, you know?

Jana: Yeah. [Laughs]

Lindsay: And you keep at it. And I know that we’re going to talk soon.

Jana: Thanks. I can’t wait to send you pictures. You’re going to love them.

Lindsay: Yes. Thanks.

Jana: Thanks.

Before we go let’s do some THEATREFOLK NEWS: I want to talk about Stereotype High by Jeffrey Harr. You know the stereotype groups that happen in high school. The geek. The freak. The stoner. The dumb jock. The mean girl. The thespian. The slut. The lonely girl. High school is full of stereotypes – or is it? Told in a series of interlaced vignettes, these “stereotypical” teens fight tooth and nail to reinvent themselves. There’s nothing more powerful than the teen who stands alone, proud of who they are.

SKYE: Hi. I’m Skye, and I’m… done being a stereotypical… I don’t even want to say the word. (pauses) I’m tired. Tired of the rumors, some of which are true. And I’m tired of not being able

to just go out with someone without having to worry about his expectations. It’s like the whole time we’re together I’m waiting for him to go, “So, uh, why don’t we go someplace a little more private,” which is code for, “Isn’t it about time we get down to business?” Which is about the only type of guy I end up going out with because the really nice guys won’t have anything to do with me, even if I tried. Reputations are funny that way—mine pushes nice guys away and attracts the scumbags. Almost every guy I’ve gone out with has been a jerk to me. The ones who stuck around long enough to be a jerk to me. And that’s when I figured I needed to start swimming in a different pool, ya know what I mean? A less public pool. A pool fewer people are peeing in. So then, this guy on one of my blogs—the kind of guy I would never, in a million years, even think of dating in any way whatsoever—starts talking about this cosplay convention at the Hilton downtown, and I start thinking about it. I could dress up, no one would know me, and I could meet… well… a whole different kind of guy. (pauses) And that’s how I met Ron.

This play contains real situations, real feelings, and real thoughts about all the mature topics. Yes, that means sex, drugs and retainers. Go to www.theatrefolk.com and read Sample pages from Stereotype High.

Lastly, where oh where can you find this podcast? We post new episodes every Wednesday at theatrefolk.com and on our facebook page and twitter. You can find us on youtube.com/theatrefolk. You can find us on the stitcher app, AND you can subscribe to TFP on itunes. All you have to do is search on the word Theatrefolk.

And that’s where we’re going to end. Take care my friends. Take care.

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