Children will see... and learn
“Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn. Children may not obey but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn to learn what to be...”
I spend a lot of time defending my job. I’m not getting into altercations with people in the middle of the street or anything, but the arts are dismissed everywhere you go. In schools, academics and sports are king. With parents and families, the arts are a ‘fun hobby’ until heaven forbid the kid wants to go in to it. With other adults outside the theatrical universe, my job is ‘fun’ or ‘cool’ - never ‘important’ or ‘meaningful’. The conversation usually stops there. (Side Note: If I say I’m a teacher and I don’t say of what, I do get ‘important’ and ‘meaningful’ - food for thought’) Of course, I am generalizing. Not all humans are like this but a majority of people don’t look past the glitz and glam and jazz hands to the larger picture. The arts and specifically theater, model a lot of very imperative life skills. Today’s topic… collaboration.
When I am working on a show, youth or professional, I am usually connecting and collaborating with upwards of fifteen people. Directors, Designers, Management, Front of House… doesn’t matter. They are all parts of the grander whole. They all serve a very specific purpose and that purpose makes the show and the experience better. Plain and simple. What other youth activities model collaboration this extensively? Sure, we ask kids to collaborate all the time on projects, sports teams and even other arts but we don’t show them what that means. What does it actually look like? What does an experience feel like when collaboration is executed well?
Think about it: What other activities MODEL collaboration amongst more than two adults that are at the same level?
Flower speeches are a pretty common tradition in youth theater. At the end of the last performance, students stand on stage and say thank you to anyone and everyone (and I mean everyone) who made the show possible. They can sometimes be long and embarrassing. If they are little kids, they are usually pretty adorable. If we do our jobs right, the flower speeches bring to light just how collaborative a process this whole theater thing is. There was one flower speech I will literally never forget. Rather than it being individual flowers and individual speeches, it went something like this….
We would like to thank D for running the theater and making all this happen… and for hiring L because L taught us all our lines and our blocking but not music. Music was taught by A but sometimes L helped too because A can’t sing . L also spent a lot of time with X, our stage manager, figuring out where our props and sets go. X is awesome. We can’t thank X without also thanking B and P for costumes, sound and lights, all of which was coordinated by L and X while A was teaching music. Oh - I guess A had to help with sound too since we are using tracks. So A and B worked together on that. And then we had great helpers C and M. They are like a brother and sister to us. They also really helped X out with all the backstage stuff. C was also on headset with B during the show and M helped P with costumes downstairs. I guess D really hired all these people and without any of them, the show wouldn’t have happened so… thanks everyone!
I know… it’s a different language and I didn’t really help by substituting letters for real names but hopefully, you got the point. Absurd sure, but entirely real. Theater is really gears in a machine. You need each to work and affect the other so that things can keep ticking and moving. We model it and whether we call attention to it or not, the kids see it, learn it and most importantly feel it.
Children will see … and learn.
