Teen Tour Theatre with Aviva Wolman-Wener
Episode 77: Teen Tour Theatre with Aviva Wolman-Wener
Lindsay talks with Aviva Wolman-Wener of Teen Tour Theatre. Aviva has been using Theatrefolk plays for close to ten years.
If you tour shows (or are thinking about taking your show on tour) listen in to learn why it’s important for students to perform for strangers and to learn the skills of taking a show on the road. Aviva also talks about the necessary skills students need to perform in a touring show, and the top three things a teacher needs to do when planning a tour.
Show Notes
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.
Today, I’m talking with Aviva Wolman-Wener of Teen Tour Theatre. Now, Aviva is one of our oldest customers. She’s been using Theatrefolk plays for close to ten years and she started Teen Tour Theatre because she wanted to think of a way to really push and challenge her acting students, and one of those ways was providing an opportunity to get her kids to perform for audiences other than loved ones, which I think is a pretty unique thing for teens and pre-teens to do.
So, if you are a teacher and you’re doing a touring show currently with your students, or you’re thinking about touring a show, take a seat, have a listen, there’s lots a great information here, including the top three things a teacher needs to think about when doing a tour. So, let’s get to the interview.
Lindsay: Hello everybody! I am here today, I’m very happy to be talking to a long-time Theatrefolk customer, Aviva Wolman-Wener. Hello, Aviva!
Aviva: Hi!
Lindsay: How are you?
Aviva: I’m okay. How are you?
Lindsay: I’m awesome. I’m looking out my window at some more snow. I’m sure you have lots of snow where you are in Montreal. Aviva, you run Teen Tour Theatre, yeah? So, we know you because you’re generous. How many years have you been using Theatrefolk plays? It’s been a while.
Aviva: Maybe, like, eight or nine. Maybe more?
Lindsay: Yeah, no, I don’t know. It’s just been one of those things that every year we see that order come through for you and for Teen Tours. So, let’s start off with what that is. What is Teen Tour Theatre?
Aviva: Teen Tour Theatre is a theatre school slash tour group that I started eleven years ago. I began it because I was teaching at another local school here. I had been teaching for ten years at another school in Montreal and was trying to think of a way to challenge some of my students who had been with me forever. I had kids who were in their late teens and had started with me when they were nine and ten and even younger. And I wanted to think of a way to push them further, especially the ones who wanted to take acting much further.
And so, I created two concepts at this other theatre school. One was touring so that they were performing for people other than their loved ones which was a very different experience and trying to create a workshop program for kids who wanted to take it further than just doing theatre for the obvious reasons that we think theatre is phenomenal – like, self-confidence and learning how to handle yourself in any kind of interview situation and learning how to speak in front of people and all of those other things. This was for the kids who were really, really focused on taking theatre to the next level in their life.
And so, I did that for a year there. I was really happy with how it went and then decided to launch it as a program that was unique to everything else, and that’s how it became Teen Tours. So, basically, the concept of the school is that the older students – and, when I first began, we had only teenagers and I only had two classes and basically those groups, we had our junior tour group and our senior tour group which are the ones you’ve heard of because those are the ones mostly that I’ve used the plays for, although the last one we used School Daze in my younger group which is not a tour show – that’s just a younger group doing training. I started that the first year, only the seniors tour. I think I had eight or ten students in the class.
The tour basically is a show that the kids work on. Now, we do high schools as well. Then, it was just elementary school material that they rehearsed this show. The seniors are the most advanced group in the school so they’ve already gone through all the lessons that I’ve given them from the beginning and most of them had started with me when they were quite young at that point. And so, this was just a show and we went into the rehearsal process and sometimes I would bring in other professionals from the industry here in Montreal to work with them on different things – puppetry, movement, mime, whatever we were using in the show that year. And then, we went out and we performed at local libraries, elementary schools, even the Saturday morning program for children that runs in the lobby of one of our theatres here in Montreal which is the Centaur.
And so, it began from there and then grew. And then, we had the junior tour group which does less performances and has the first part of the year, they don’t touch their play. It’s all about learning the skills until January. And then, as the years went on, I started getting phone calls from people asking if I would do classes for younger children, and that grew. So, now we have classes for seven-year-olds right up to young twenty-something, and we have our workshop program which I started as well that first year which we started with one workshop a year and now we are up to, oh, roughly seven or eight for the fourteen to thirty-year-old group, and usually we do four for the eight to thirteen-year-old group.
Those are co-taught by me or not even taught by me, although I’m always there. We bring in professionals from the field in Montreal. So, for example, we just finished one with Simon Peacock who is a director for voice for video games which is a huge industry here.
Lindsay: Oh, wow.
Aviva: And so, we just went to Harmony Studios and Simon came in and worked with twelve of my students ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-seven on how to work in the studio on voice for video games. A month before that, we had one with Terence Gammil who does voice for animation and we went into the studios and did dubbing, and taught them how to use the rythmo band. So, we go really far with the ones who are interested in that.
That’s not the only focus of the school. The school really is about learning those skills – voice, movement, compartment, how to approach a scene, how to approach character, how to approach monologue, things like that. That was a mouthful I just gave.
Lindsay: Ah, that’s okay! So, let’s talk about the teens and touring aspect. Why do you think it’s important to have teens perform before, you know, maybe aren’t their loved ones and to have this process of taking a show on the road?
Aviva: There’s a few reasons. First and foremost, it’s an amazing thing to perform for your family and your friends because they love you. But it’s an even better thing, sometimes, that those parents, the family, and friends still come – they sit at the back. But it’s an amazing thing to be able to perform for and basically control, you know, get a reaction from your audience of people that don’t know you. So, they’re not coming in and they don’t automatically think you’re wonderful because they love you; they actually think you’re wonderful because of the story that you’re telling them on the stage and that’s the primary reason why I started with the tour.
Lindsay: How many shows do the teens usually do?
Aviva: Depends on the group. It depends on the year. This coming year, we’re not doing as many because I have a very, very busy group of seniors. Most of the students, workshops go right up into the twenties, but for the most part, the junior tour and the senior tour, they range in age from about thirteen years old to twenty-two. So, most of them are either in high school – CEGEP which you don’t have in Ontario which is kind of a college, two-year college program before you go to university that’s mandatory here – or university itself. And so, those students are super busy. They have crazy schedules. So, some years, we manage to do it and we can get as many as ten shows – doesn’t happen very often.
Usually, we go somewhere between four and seven. This year, we’re doing four, possibly five, for the seniors. And the juniors have just started arranging their schedule so I don’t know how many they’re going to do. But we do have years, a couple of years ago, we had a student who had studied with me from a young age and he just graduated from university in playwriting and he wrote a wonderful show called Exposure and that one we actually did as many as we could. It was for high school audiences and the kids were so determined. They had helped him through the process of writing the piece. And so, because of that, they really wanted to get it out there so we went to as many high schools as we could. I think in the end we did seven. But, of course, they’re always missing school so it’s kind of hard. The norm is four or five.
Lindsay: Is there any different skills that you teach these teens specific to touring that you maybe wouldn’t do?
Aviva: Well, one, especially with shows for young audiences, we try to make the shows interactive if we possibly can so that means that, very often, they’re controlling the audience – they’re getting the audience to participate in the show. Obviously, that’s not something we do when we’ve done shows that you’ve done. Most of the shows we’ve chosen from you are high school audiences which are a little bit different – we don’t have them as interactive.
One of the skills that they do when they work on a show that is aimed at young audiences is to ask the audience to participate – ask them questions, to control them, to be able to get them in and out of the story is an amazing skill.
At the same time, it’s also a touring show so they have to change the way they stage the show each and every time, depending on the school, or library, or theatre that they’re in because no two stages look exactly the same. In fact, sometimes we’ll go to locations that don’t even have a stage and they’ll have to adapt the show to be able to work so that the audience can see everybody all the time and that they don’t miss out on anything.
Lindsay: Those are some pretty amazing well-rounding skills. You know, like, how do you adapt to a situation? How do you think on your feet to take your product and still make it the best that it can be regardless of where you are and what’s happening around you?
Aviva: Exactly. And, I mean, even if you want to really want to go into skills, it also teaches you how to behave. Never mind all the acting and theatre stuff but, you know, we have a big discussion before we go in about how you behave in the halls of the school, how you talk to the teachers and the students that pass you when you’re going off, you’re leaving the stage area to go to the washroom while you’re setting up, because we arrive at every venue about an hour or two before we perform so that they can walk through the space and, you know, make the changes that they need to change and be prepared because they still are kids.
It’s great to watch them come in as a group, really quietly and respectfully, and greet the principal or the secretary or whoever is walking us into the building. It’s quite an interesting thing. I really, really enjoy what I do and it’s really fun to watch them all grow and we have so many students that are working professionally now and, you know, not all – some of them have gone off and are studying pre-med now which is amazing. Hopefully, they’re using that skill in that way. Those students stay in touch less often than the ones who are still really in this. I have two students who started with me when I just opened Teen Tour but had also been with me at that other theatre school when they were very, very young. One of them just came back from being at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York for a year and another one just graduated with his masters from the University of Ohio, and they both are studying Meisner technique and they’ve now come back and run workshops for my younger students. So, it’s amazing the skills that these kids and the excitement that they have about what we do, and then they come back to share it with the school later what they’ve learned from other people who know things that I don’t know. It’s really, really a great thing. And the kids keep in touch with each other over the years and it’s really nice.
Lindsay: When did you know that not just being involved with theatre but teaching theatre was something that you really connected with and wanted to pursue?
Aviva: Well, I wanted to teach before I wanted to be involved in theatre. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher.
Lindsay: How come?
Aviva: I loved working with kids and I started babysitting when I was like eleven. And that was something that always drew me. Theatre was a hobby and then when it came time to go to university, I actually decided – I had been acting a bit and I decided that perhaps that was what I wanted to do. So, I went in as a Drama major, but once I was in university and doing shows, I realized pretty quickly that I really love directing and that was probably the part I liked the best. I was still teaching, I was teaching part-time theatre classes at local places – you know, community centers and things like that in the city and I loved that and started honing, taking more directing classes, started taking Drama and Education classes kind of to the side of my program in school. And then, I had just, just graduated. I was teaching at another local theatre school which, to be honest, I can’t even remember the name because it’s probably almost thirty years ago, for the life of me, I’m pulling a blank on the name but I don’t even think it exists anymore – and I was teaching there and I had auditions, Geordie Productions was doing a tour version of The Wizard of Oz and I got cast as Linda the Good Witch and it was a tour show and I would have had to give up my teaching job to leave and to go tour for three months as well I was about three months into dating the person I have now been married to for twenty-six years and I just sat down and kind of said to myself, “Is that really what I want? Do I want to leave? Do I want to leave my boyfriend at the time? Do I want to leave my teaching job to go and do this tour?” and it was a bit of a conversation in my head. But, eventually, I realized that I really didn’t like standing up in front of an audience all that much. Sometimes, the applause made me very uncomfortable. It was never my favorite part of the whole process and I really didn’t want to leave. I mean, a year and a half later, I was already considering getting married. I was in my mid-twenties; I knew I wanted to have kids. I didn’t think that vagabond-y kind of life was going to be for me. And so, that’s when I decided I was really going to focus on teaching.
Lindsay: It’s interesting when we hit those points, right? Where it’s like, really, it’s such a cliché, but it really is, “Here we go. Two roads. Which one are we going to go down?”
Aviva: Yeah, it really, really is, and it’s a vivid memory for me. Actually, the daughter of the woman who cast me in that show, her name is Alison Darcy and she is an amazing – I don’t know if you’ve ever come to Montreal but she’s one of the heads of Scapegoat Carnivale which is a production company here in Montreal that does a lot of classic theatre. They just did A Fellow at one of our larger theatres. They did Medea last year. They did The Bacchae. She is an amazing, amazing actress, director, producer, and she does workshops for me sometimes here and her mother is Elsa Bolam.
Lindsay: Oh, yeah.
Aviva: Okay. So, Elsa is the person who cast me in that show and Alison is the daughter of Maurice Podbrey who started the Center of Theatre and Elsa Bolam who started Geordie Theatre. And Alison was ill one night when she was supposed to teach a workshop and her mom came in and replaced her and it was really funny to say, “Do you know that you were my crossroads?” She said, “This is amazing how far you’ve come! All the things you’ve done, it’s great what you do with the kids,” and I said, “You know, it was kind of because of you that I took that path.” So, it’s very funny how it all comes full circle.
Lindsay: Yeah, it always does, it always does.
Why is it important that youth and teens participate in theatre regardless of whether they’re going to go off and have a great theatre life or they’re going to go do pre-med? Like, why is it important?
Aviva: The skills that you can get from having to, one, get up in front of other people but also, and more importantly, the prep that you do before you get up in front of other people, it’s, you know, we call it like a team sport. You really have to be able to work with others. There’s so many components to putting a piece on and it’s so great for kids to come out of themselves whether they take a leadership role or a sideline role, and I don’t mean a role on stage – I mean a role in the process – to go through the process together with other people and figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t on a personal thing. You know, I’ve been teaching for a lot of years, I have two kids – I have a twenty-three year old daughter and an eighteen year old son. My twenty-three year old daughter started with me at the theatre school when she was five years old, when I was teaching at another theatre school, and she has now graduated from university, she’s a professional actor and this is her passion. We always knew it was her passion. I have an eighteen year old son who’s really into computers. He was about to apply to university this year actually and when he was little, you know, I would think, “Just take one class. It’s so good for you.” You know, he’s kind of a quiet guy. I said, “You know, it’d bring you out of yourself.” “No.” No interest, no interest, no interest, and then he ended up the high school that both my kids went to which is a great school. One of the requirements, it’s a very small school and one of the requirements is that, in grade seven and eight, you must take music, drama, and art, as well as all your science stuff and as well as being part of your robotic club or your sports clubs or whatever.
Lindsay: Oh, if only that was the way everywhere, right?
Aviva: Yeah, exactly. The small private schools, the grade school, and they really want to expose the kids to everything. And so, he had to take it for two years and I was so glad because, even though he had never been interested, I knew that this was going to be a great life experience for him and it really was because I remember his drama teacher coming to me and saying, “You know, he really takes the leadership role,” me with my mouth hanging, he wanted nothing to do with theatre. Yeah, he doesn’t actually want to be on the stage but, you know, he’s taking charge and he ended up, as the years went through, he and his closest friend at school, they ended up being like the theatre tech guys. They won the theatre tech award when they graduated. You know, they helped build the stats and learned out to do the lights and learned how to be backstage and, you know, all of those skills – whether you’re backstage, on stage, working lights or hammering a set or doing something – you are part of this unit and the really nice thing about theatre – because sports are phenomenal and they’re a great way to become part of a unit and to learn together and to learn to work with other people – but, in theatre, it’s pretty non-competitive at that level.
You know, of course, there’s a competitive aspect to theatre because people who are auditioning and want the big part or whatever which, you know, we talk a lot in this school about how it’s not – I’m sure you’ve heard it before – “it’s not the size of the part, it’s what you do with it” that makes it, and sometimes the biggest part is not the most exciting part nor the most challenging part. But, when you’re a part of all of this, you learn so much about working with other people, about respecting other people’s skills, about respecting the audience, about respecting the person who’s pinning your costume, all of those things teach us about working with other people outside of ourselves and that everybody is relevant to the process, and I think that’s the most valuable lesson that theatre can teach to anybody, no matter where you end up in the process, it’s that process of working with other people to accomplish a goal and then, you know, theatre’s the greatest thing because, when it’s all over, you get applause and I don’t like or love that part of it but, you know…
Lindsay: Some do.
Aviva: Oh, yes, and I would say probably 99.999 percent of the students that I’ve taught over the years really do. They love that, in the end, someone’s kind of patting you on the back by clapping.
Lindsay: Well, it’s an acknowledgement of “You’ve done a good job.”
Aviva: Exactly.
Lindsay: And that’s all anyone really wants, isn’t it? They just want to know they’ve done something good.
Aviva: Exactly, and one of the things that’s so amazing about taking the kids on tour is, not only do they get applause but then they get kids, especially when we work with younger audiences, you know, kids coming up and, when we end our shows whether it’s high school or elementary audiences, the kids stand up on stage, they introduce themselves, they say their age and their high school and, you know, then the kids in the audience get to ask them questions. It’s part of our process and, you know, in the high schools it’s cool because they get that kind of admiring feeling from people who are their peers or, for the ones who are a little bit older, almost their peers. But, with little kids, they come up, they high five them, they hug them, they ask them to walk them back to their classes.
Lindsay: Oh!
Aviva: It’s really, really, really cool. That’s probably the best part for me, when the whole show is over and all these little kids kind of, we say, “Okay and you know our actors love hugs and they love high fives,” and the kids, you know, they look at their teachers and they get permission from the teachers and they just basically bomb the stage, and it’s really, really cute. They just come rushing and I think it’s great.
Lindsay: It’s the best thing ever!
Aviva: Actually, at the same time, I’m going to say something else that you made me think of. One of the greatest things I find, and I think that the kids even comment on, is that it’s a place – at least, my theatre school – is a place for the kids to come in and leave all the garbage that happens in high school, especially behind, and all the stress of the day, and all the stress about exams, or fighting with the teacher, or fighting with a friend, or all of those things. They come in and, for a few hours, we just have fun and we go out and we hang out and we, you know, we’re working on stuff but they’re laughing a lot, they’re being silly a lot. You know, it’s still extra-curricular and, for me, except maybe senior tour where we’re much, much more focused because they’ve already gone through that whole process for years with the school. They’re really coming in and we spend three hours and we just rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We have a great time and that’s why they’re there. But those are the kids who are the most passionate about this and, you know, they’re there because they want to do this show and be a part of it. But, for the younger groups, it’s so nice to have them come in and smile and have parents afterwards come out and go, you know, “This is what they look forward to all week. This is what they talk about all week – being able to come in and work and see their friends in the theatre school.”
And, like I said, you know, I’ll never forget. There’s a young woman who graduated from NYU in Drama and Education who had been with me for years and she’s actually living in your city now in Toronto. She’s finishing her masters in Dramaturgy at one of the universities there and she started a Facebook group, years ago, for past students. That was one of the greatest things I ever heard in my life, that they have this little Teen Tour Facebook. I’m not on it. I have nothing to do with it but this group of kids who had known each other for so many years and now they’re in their mid to late twenties wanted to keep in touch and that was how they did it because of this feeling of coming in and just feeling like it’s a safe place. And I think, very often, the theatre is a really safe place.
Lindsay: Well, what a great thing that, if a student is not having a good time at their school, that there’s a place where they can go and actually just be themselves and not have to worry about all that extra, well, baggage, like you said. And, you know, just as a testament to the community that’s being created, you know, where, if they want to keep in touch that means that they’ve made a connection.
Aviva: Yeah, exactly.
Lindsay: What better thing can you teach a student than to find a community and maintain a community?
Aviva: Exactly. It’s great. They come back. I mean, like I said, the senior workshop program which is that added program – it’s for students who are fourteen right up to whatever. The eldest we’ve ever had is someone who was thirty which was kind of funny. We were joking around, we needed to change the name of the school because it’s called Teen Tour Theatre. But you know it’s really nice because every time we have one of these workshops, people come in who haven’t seen each other in months, or sometimes even years if they’re coming back to the city and they’re just signing up for this one workshop, and they’re all so good to each other, and they’re all so happy to see each other, even if there’s a ten-year age difference between them, and that’s the main thing, you know?
Lindsay: Okay. So, as we end up here, we have a lot of teachers who listen and who maybe have thought about including some kind of tour as part of their program. So, what would you say would be the top three things that a teacher needs to think about if they’re going to take a class and do a tour?
Aviva: First and foremost is a commitment from your students. If you’re going to do a tour group, you really have to have students and parents who are behind you because, what can happen is, you know, you plan your tour way in advance because you have to get in touch with the schools, and our touring philosophy is we don’t charge for our tours. There are schools that do and I understand why. But, for us, we feel we’re doing a service for the community but they’re also doing a service for us by allowing our students to perform as if they were professionals. So, the schools we go to, the libraries we go to, they normally bring in professional actors and we’re a student group. And so, those audiences expect the same level of performance from us. They don’t come in, you know, saying, “Oh, these are kids so it’s not going to be as slick or as professional or as ready.”
So, I would definitely suggest making sure that that, one, your kids are really committed and that the parents understand the commitment which really means that, very often, they have to miss an afternoon of school or a day of school when they’re touring. The way I work is we never have extra rehearsals. We might extend an extra half an hour once in a while but our rehearsals are really once a week. And so, that means the students have to be committed to doing the work at home because we can’t have extra rehearsals so they have to be prepared. You know, I have students who are going on break now but they’ve got it planned – they’re Skyping once a week to make sure they don’t lose their lines because, when we come back, we’ve got four rehearsals left and then they’re on tour in February. So, that would be the first thing.
The second thing would be to make sure that the locations you’re going to respect the fact that you’re coming in and appreciate the fact that you’re coming in – that they’re timely, that they talk to their students about how to behave in the theatre which I think is one of the greatest things that tour can give is not just exposing kids who aren’t in a drama program to theatre but exposing kids to how you behave in a theatre – you don’t bring in your food, it’s not time to have a snack, we don’t talk to our friends while the show is going on, you know, those kinds of things.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Aviva: As well, you know, to choose material – and obviously I’m going to talk about you now – but to choose material.
Lindsay: Oh, it’s like I planned it.
Aviva: You have to choose material that your audience can relate to. So, for example, this year we’re doing Body Body – which you wrote – with our senior tour which happens to be a group of girls and this was something we sat down, like I said, very often we do shows for young audiences so, when we’ve used your shows for the most part – I’m talking really young audiences, the three to ten year old group. So, when I’ve used yours, it’s usually yours where the kids want a new challenge, a different kind of challenge because we want to do something for a high school audience. And so, this particular show, we wanted to do something really unique. So, we’re actually only performing for audiences of girls.
Lindsay: Oh, wow!
Aviva: Yeah, we will be doing one show, probably – I’m still waiting to confirm this one – at a local library and that one will be open to anybody. But we’re highly suggesting teenage girls and their moms.
Lindsay: Yeah, and just so the people know, Body Body is a play about the main character, a girl, and it’s about self-image and body awareness.
Aviva: Yeah.
Lindsay: So, what an interesting thing to do to just really not only that the play is focused on that but that the audience is focused on that.
Aviva: Exactly. And so, for the first time, instead of calling principals and vice principals and whatever, I called the guidance counselors at the schools when I was arranging the show because I wanted to make sure the guidance counselors would be there, they would be prepared to ask questions after just in case there are girls in the audience who are currently going through, I mean, they’re all probably going through body issues at the moment but very serious issues because it does have a bulimic character in the show. And so, you know, the first thing that’s going to come to the kids’ minds is anorexia, bulimia, which are huge issues in the schools right now.
You know, that’s a different kind of challenge for us, doing something that serious. In the past, even when we’ve used your shows in the high schools, they’re usually comedies, right? This Phone Will Explode at the Tone and Wait Wait Bo Bait, you know, those are funny plays even though they deal with some issues that you could talk about after. This is really issue-based, and I guess, when I’m giving advice, I would say, “Pick material and then know who you’re bringing the material to.” Make sure that, you know, this for Body Body, we’ve made this specific choice that this is a play with young women in it even though, in your casting, you want that character to be male, we’re using female because this is an all-female show for an all-female audience.”
Lindsay: I think, really, knowing your vision and your thesis for what’s happening, it only makes sense that it’s all girls.
Aviva: Yeah, exactly. So, it’s the same thing with picking material. I mean, last year, we actually used one of your shows for one of my younger classes which was my grade five to seven group. We used School Daze which is hilarious and so relatable for that age group, and that wasn’t a tour show, they just did that for the parents because they were younger – that was my ten to twelve year old students.
But what’s great about material like that – and, again, here’s great advice for other drama teachers – is it’s an ensemble piece and pretty much everybody’s on stage all the time, doing stuff, all the time, whether they’re speaking or they’re not, and that’s something that’s really a priority for me. It’s very, very rare that we choose material in the school whether it’s a tour show or for the younger students that have one lead or two lead roles and then a lot of little roles on the side. We don’t do that a lot because I want to challenge each student – one, at the level that they’re ready for but, two, I hate the idea of people fitting around waiting. Yet it’s a great experience when you audition for your school play and, you know, you get a smaller role the first year and that role is amazing and it’s a great challenge but you’re spending a lot of time backstage.
Here, this is a very unique program that we have very, very small classes. I never have more than twelve students in a class which means there’s never more than twelve in a show and, usually, the touring groups are really, really small. There’s five students in Body Body, we’re doing another show with our juniors this year – excuse me, that’s not one of yours but for young audiences – there are eight students in that play. Even though there were fourteen students in the class at the beginning of the year, you had to sign up to tour to do the second part of the year, you have to be committed to the tour. So, there’s only eight students in that class. And so, I want those eight students to be constantly working and constantly doing stuff. I don’t want them to be sitting on the sidelines waiting for their turn. And so, I really recommend that to other teachers trying to find as much ensemble work as you can. It doesn’t mean it’s not a great experience to do those other kinds of shows. But, for us, it’s a focus – trying to find ensemble work, trying to find pieces that allow everybody to be up there working. And, like I said, it doesn’t mean that everybody has the same amount of lines. It just means that everybody has a really good challenge on stage.
Lindsay: Okay. That’s awesome! Thank you so much for taking time out of your day and talking to me. And I want to know how this tour goes out. Please keep in touch with how it works with Body Body, particularly what kind of feedback you get from your audience.
Aviva: Absolutely. Well, we’ll send you a picture.
Lindsay: Yes, please. Awesome. Thank you so much!
Aviva: Thanks, Lindsay.
Thank you, Aviva! I love how she talks about being in the theatre is like being in a unit and how much theatre helps you to work as a group, to work with other people, and to respect the work that each person has to do to make a play happen. I just think that’s what I like about theatre. I’ve always loved the ensemble nature of it. It’s always been my favorite part.
Okay. Before we go, let’s do some THEATREFOLK NEWS.
It’s a play feature! It’s a play feature! It’s time to feature a play! What? Not done with new plays yet? Not done with new plays yet! We’ve got another one to feature and this one is lovely. I just think it’s great. A new Greek myth inspired work called Ariadne’s Thread: The Adventures of Theseus and the Minotaur by Judith White. That’s right! We have a Theseus and the Minotaur story and I just think it’s a little something special, mostly because Judith takes this great well-known story and shines a light on it in ways that I didn’t know, which I love – I love seeing things in a new light, and particularly the Minotaur here is just, I learn things that I didn’t know – always great, particularly in theatre. So, she has created a wonderful take on the Greek Chorus – lots of movement and sound opportunities. And I really like the way that she has used poetry. There’s some poetry and some prose both in the play. The poetry in the play is really character-driven. You know, again, I love that. I love when anything is character-driven and here’s a sample. So, Ariadne of Ariadne’s Thread, she is King Minos’ daughter. He’s the one who’s expecting all the tributes. If you know the Theseus story, is that there’s a Minotaur that has to be fed these human tributes and, one year, Theseus decides he’s going to go and deal with the Minotaur. So, Ariadne who is King Minos’ daughter, she’s supposed to be some kind of oracle and it’s pretty awesome – she’s sort of a failed oracle because things just aren’t working out for her.
ARIADNE: (confides in the audience) The same dream over and over!
I’m holding the end of a spool of thread – the one Daedalus gave
And tangled up at the other end,
Is this boy I’ve never even seen.
What can it mean?
I have no clue.
How can I be an oracle if
I can’t even fathom my own dream?
Fine Priestess I am!
When I breathe in the laurel smoke,
I don’t see visions, I just throw up!
My spells at Aphrodite’s altar fall flat,
The sacred snake curls up and goes to sleep,
My dances fail to charm
I can’t get a single prayer to rise.
I’m stuck.
It’s the family bad luck!
My duty seems my doom – the tributes will be arriving soon and
Send them to the Fearsome One below.
I have never felt so afraid – and so alone.
Awesome! So, what a great cross-curricular project. It’s just a plain old awesome theatre project, a great ensemble project – yes, ensemble, hoo! Go to theatrefolk.com, read the same pages for Ariadne’s Thread: The Adventures of Theseus and the Minotaur by Judith White.
And finally, 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 is where we are going to do. Ah! Ensemble makes me very excited.
Take care, my friends, take care.
Music credit: “Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
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