Episode 28: Johanna Gorman-Baer

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STEPHEN FALA: I’m Stephen Fala, and you’re listening to Pipe and Drape, the only podcast that spotlights the creative minds behind the Theatre For Young Audiences industry. Every two weeks I sit down with a theatre professional to hear their pipe and drape stories. These are the stories that take place behind the pipe and drape scenery in the theatre for young audiences world. Theatre for young audiences (or TYA) inspires young minds by entertaining audiences with topics big and little in any and every setting. My guests have mounted shows small enough to fit in a minivan to productions so big they travel by caravan, and on this podcast we discuss the ways theatre for young audiences helps all artists and theatregoers make this world a better place. Thank you for listening with me today.

STEPHEN: Hi everyone. I'm chatting with teaching artists Johanna Gorman-Baer. She's been teaching theater in many forms for the last ten years. She has worked with Six Elements Theatre, Human Combat Chess (she has a page dedicated to her on fandom.com for this), Theatre Novi Most, Youth Performance Company, Lyric Arts Main Street Stage and many others in the Twin Cities area. She is constantly inspired by how group play can challenge the imagination to grow beyond the individual, creating small artistic communities in every class. She works to incorporate social skills and emotional literacy as essential components of artistic education. Johanna is experienced in teaching all ages and all abilities, highly skilled in armed stage combat, and Johanna is also a fiber artist. This will be her seventh year with Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, which we will learn all about in this episode. Johanna, welcome.

JOHANNA: Thank you so much.

STEPHEN: I have so many questions. First of all, I know this episode is not about chess, but I need to know how you, just really quick, got into human combat chess.

JOHANNA: [Laughter.] Yeah, so it's definitely a good talking point, always an icebreaker. So out of right out of college, I graduated from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and I joined a brand new theatre company that had been formed by quite a few friends that I had met there. One of their first shows was Human Combat Chess. That's how I came on board with both that show and also Six Elements Theatre as an organization. The page that you see on fandom.com is probably our Human Combat Chess Wiki, which we created kind of in the same vein as like professional wrestling and that we all had these larger than life characters that we created. As part of this new sport, we were calling Human Combat Chess. Now of course it's theatre. It was all choreographed. We were working with trained theatrical stage combat coordinators and choreographers. All of the props and weaponry we used were stage combat grade, not sharp, still very strong. And so that was, it's a show that was an annual production that worked with thirty to fifty, at one point our production grew to about seventy-five actors who were all getting training from industry professionals in stage safety and stage combat. We had teams, each team had a logo. Some of them had their own cheering section in the audience. People would come to the show like dressed up in team colors, cheering for their team. And it was a giant chess board made out of mats. A full team of chess players that would play the pieces. And it was a whole lot of fun. We had a jumbotron up with all the player stats and facts. Again, all in-world, right? So if you look me up, don't believe everything you see on that website. That was, that was mostly character. But yeah, we had trading cards at one point of every player.

STEPHEN: Yeah. That is so cool. So did you have experience in stage combat before this period of your life?

JOHANNA: Very minimal.

STEPHEN: Okay.

JOHANNA: I mean, I was always interested, who doesn't love a good sword fight? And so I was especially like as a teenager in high school, we loved that kind of stuff. And then it was through Six Elements Theatre and the folks there. And then eventually I came on as a company member in Six Elements. And also as a producer in Human Combat Chess, those two organizations kind of we're calling it, what is it, A Cellular Divide, sort of split into the, our own two separate organizations as well that I was working with small nonprofit, local theatre companies doing gigantic, ridiculous stage combat shows. A lot of overlap in personnel. But yeah, that was a lot of fun. And then I took a year off in about 2019 from Six Elements, and in 2020 I think we closed the show. We closed our Human Combat Chess show on a Sunday and the following Wednesday was when the state shut down for COVID.

STEPHEN: Wow.

JOHANNA: So that was the last production. I was in for quite a while. [Laughter.]

STEPHEN: Go out with a bang!

JOHANNA: One of the few shows, one of the few companies to produce a show in 2020, especially in the spring. So yeah. And then of course, everything shut down, came to a screeching halt. But they're, they're still, both organizations are still doing amazing work. I've taken a step back slowed my life down a little bit, been focusing on my work here at the Children's Theatre Company since then, but full support. I can't wait to see their shows again.

STEPHEN: Did you grow up playing chess at all?

JOHANNA: My grandfather taught me chess actually. Oh. And I really wanted, when I was like still very young, I could barely grasp the concepts and so I think I got frustrated when I was young, 'cause I really wanted to be like an amazing chess player. And I still, as a board game, I'm not very good. I love playing, but I'm not some amazing chess player. I feel much more confident when it's pre-scripted and I know what moves are gonna be made and I know who wins at the end, [Laughter.] but I love the game. I love a lot of metaphors and imagery that comes along with it. I do love the sport of stage combat. That's something that has really helped me sort of figure out where I wanna be in theatre, especially in terms of when it comes to communication and safety and awareness and focus on partnering and things like that. That's really helped me. Especially when I went from performing to then also producing. There was a year where I was a director. There was a year where I was stage managing. There was a year where I was last minute directing as well. And so there was a lot of these elements of the show that by necessity because it was a huge show, but also because of there were so many moving pieces and we got to know the world so well and formed such a community around it. I think I have a lot more, I have a lot more skill at this, this beast we created, but also a lot more appreciation for all things sort of related and connected to. I used to get pretty impatient with a board game. Not gonna lie.

STEPHEN: As a kid, did you play a lot of board games at all? Or were you more of like a pretty much a theatre kid, lifelong?

JOHANNA: Oh, I was reading and then I was, I was just reading books and then my parents would tell me to go outside. So I'd bring my books and just sit outside and read.

STEPHEN: What was your genre of choice?

JOHANNA: Oh, fantasy. Fantasy all the way. Read Lord of the Rings more times than I could count. That's why I got into stage combat. All the sword fighting and all of that. Love all of that. I also grew up across the street from my local library. My parents are both librarians, so it wasn't like they weren't supportive. They were prob…I mean, hopefully they were pretty impressed by my book lists.

STEPHEN: Did you see a lot of theatre as a kid?

JOHANNA: I did. And I was very fortunate. So I grew up in southern Wisconsin. Okay. In the Madison area. And I remember not just seeing a lot of theatre, but being very aware of the possibility of theatre. I think one of the first plays I went to was The Piano Lesson.

STEPHEN: Oh!

JOHANNA: And after the show, that cast came out and I got to meet the kid who played the main role. And he signed my program. And I remember talking to him and I was maybe eight, right? I was very young and I just had that in my head that the first show I can remember, I met the child actor and got his autograph. And then there was a community children's theatre that would tour around. And I later was acting with them when I was in middle school and high school that would tour around school gymnasiums in the area and auditoriums and give shows. And it was all, 3rd through 12th, 3rd through 8th grade Playtime Productions, Southwest Wisconsin. And they would do fairytales, musicals, but it was all kids. And they would go to everyone's hometown and it would be months of touring, it would be months of rehearsal and then like a full month of three to four shows a week touring around locally, the area. I mean, everyone went home to sleep every night. But it was incredible. And then it was the same thing that you got to meet and talk to all the kids and they got to go out and meet the audience. And so that was my big thing when I was a teenager. And so it was always, and then of course, American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin was right around the bend going there. I remember going when I maybe twelve, my dad brought me to see a show, Shakespeare, I think Measure for Measure. And I remember that I had, and I remember being very aware that I had almost no idea what the words they were saying meant, but I remembered understanding every single moment and knowing like that's what the acting is, right? Because it was, it blew my mind that I don't hear, I don't understand the words they're saying. They might as well be speaking another language, but I know exactly what's happening and think like, ‘How can that happen where I don't know the words and it's very complicated plot. And I don't remember their names, but I know that that guy's heart just got broken in half?' And like, just that like sheer emotion on the stage was another…just like moment for me. I'm like,’Ooh, that's what this is, that's what that's about.’ You know, I'm being totally hooked.

STEPHEN: Yeah.

JOHANNA: But having parents who would take me to see Shakespeare at the age of eleven or twelve, or who would bring me and say, ‘Oh, do you wanna go up and meet those actors? Let's go,’ you know, it was incredible.

STEPHEN: Was there…? someone's gonna cancel me for this…

JOHANNA: I’m so excited.

STEPHEN: Is there fighting in Measure for Measure? I cannot remember if there is any combat in it.

JOHANNA: Well, so the, the stage combat person in me would say, I'm sure there is moments of stage combat, even if there's no sword fighting. 'Cause I'm sure someone gets slapped in the face, hopefully. Oh my goodness. If there's not a “they fight moment,” there's gotta be something in there. I mean, but seeing like they would have five, six shows a season that we would, I would try to see as many as I could. I was a volunteer usher there, so I got to see shows for free all through high school. I don't know if they still do that [Laughter.] but, you know, early 2000s so…

STEPHEN: That’s so cool that you're getting the opportunity to perform, to tour as a kid, and then see it/have your hands in another part of production by ushering and knowing what it takes to get the audience to their seats and assist them throughout their theatre experience.

JOHANNA: Always. It's, it's always been a package deal. It's a bundle, right? There’s never been, I mean and that's kind of been true with a lot of different things I'm just realizing now that like, it's always just been, everything's in support of the same goal.

STEPHEN: Did you have additional duties when you were bringing shows to different gymnasiums? Like you were performing in it, but did you also have to set up your set and strike?

JOHANNA: Everyone was responsible for their costume. Everyone had a load-in duty and a strike duty every single time. I mean, you've got like thirty pre-teens running around. And it was like two or three powerhouse women that were running the company, right, and then a couple guys to run like the light and sound, but that was it. And so everyone had their load-in duty. Everyone had their strike duty. Everyone had their piece of scenery they were taking ownership of. Force of nature, stage manager. I can't imagine stage managing a bunch of rambunctious kids throughout various venues and trying to get them in an orderly fashion to load up a van. But she did it. And I can still hear, ‘Don't touch that prop,’ in a very strong Liverpudlian accent that I'm not going to try and replicate right now 'cause Siobhan is still in my heart and hanging around Liverpool somewhere.

STEPHEN: That’s such a cool and important piece of education for kids. As like future performers but also just as future adults. Like learning how to cooperate like that to get something up on its feet packed away to be put back up against somewhere else.

JOHANNA: And that it takes everybody, yeah, it takes absolutely everybody to do that. And that's your show that you get to bring to other communities. And when you get to bring it to your own school, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. And then there would be whoever was hosting, whatever school was hosting, or community group or you know, parent network was hosting would provide snack. And there was a big thank you song like ritual that happened with the cast where we would sing like, ‘Thank you for, you know, you know,’ it was it was like a camp song. I can't even remember it right now, but it was like…part of the ritual was we're gonna load up the truck, then we're gonna get snack, we're all gonna sit down and eat together, and then we're gonna sing a great big thank you before we go home. So it was an incredible culture.

STEPHEN: That is so neat. How did you get from there working with teaching artists as a student to becoming a teaching artist yourself?

JOHANNA: Yeah. It wasn't a long leap [Laughter.] well, but I did, so I did have that thought. Well, 'cause I'd seen a bunch of theatre. I'd grown up seeing theatre and knowing like, this is what I love doing. I know I love acting because I'd always been acting and performing. And I sort of, because of this, grew up with the concept that part of being an actor is helping load out. Part of being an actor is cleaning up the stage. Part of being an actor is all of this. And so for me, going into my college career, the concept was always of what this is is acting. There was never any like, oh, but there's also designing and directing and teaching and choreographing. It was all, this is what acting is and we're a community of actors, right? And I don't think I quite got that, that segmented nature that theatre often provides or the hierarchical nature of more traditional theatre. Until I got into college and you had to take specific delineated classes, I'd never taken a theatre class before college. I'd never…I had to Google what a monologue was to audition for colleges. That didn't go great. [Laughter.] But it was fun. And I learned a lot, right. Especially once I got into acting classes and started getting a lot of context into all the things I'd been doing. Now, getting some background knowledge was incredible. You know, I'm from a small town and I love the community and the arts community that was there, but it was very much a do it yourself, sort of learn from experience kind of thing, right? And so suddenly having the perspective of this explosion of that world of what is theatre? I went into it. I'm going to be an actor still. 'Cause that idea was stuck in my head. And I did, I acted in a lot of shows and that was a lot of fun. But then it was one of my college advisors as I was graduating, recommended an internship at the Children's Theatre Company in their theatre arts training summer camp education department, and said, ‘I think you should consider this.’ And I was thinking, well, no, I'm not a teacher, I'm an actor, right? ‘And I think you'd get along really well.’ Well, I like working with kids, you know, I used to babysit. I like, you know, teaching games and skills, but, you know, that's not, I didn't see the connection again until I dove in. And it became, you know, a summer internship into two years as a teaching assistant here at CTC into ten years as of this summer as a teaching artist here at CTC. And I'm just finished after this summer, I will have finished my first year as a resident teaching artist here at the Children's Theatre Company. And so this is something that I'd always part-time come back to, right? Because we teach a couple hours on a Saturday in the year, or all summer, but a couple weeks in, a couple weeks off. Or I was working for four different children's theatre companies here. Four different youth theatre companies here in the Twin Cities. And taking a couple years here or there, or a couple weeks here or there depending on schedule and work in a coffee shop during the day or something, right? But just always sort of orbiting back to this teaching artist world. And just very slowly over the last ten years, realizing that this is where I get my artistic fulfillment. I, after a while, stopped auditioning 'cause I didn't feel like it, you know, I felt like taking a break. And then this is way more my artistic medium now, and I'll still…you know it's not like I'm never going to act again or anything like that, but just the evolution of realizing not just that acting can mean a lot of things and theatre can mean a lot of things, but also artistry can mean a lot of things. And that it's all, even though there's a lot of different, sometimes segmented roles that one can take, it is all again, still in support of the same beast, right? It's, it's all working towards the same goal and realizing where I can have the most voice and the most reward for my own creativity. And the most impact, honestly. And so, in the last handful of years, even pre-pandemic, I was finding that where my priorities were, were in the classroom. And where I got most excited, even in a more traditional show, was in the how and in the rehearsal room and in the process. And for me personally, I started caring less and less about the performance, the audience, the script, and started caring more and more about the practices and the culture. And that's become more my drive and passion is, is in the process. And this is where I can certainly do that.

STEPHEN: When you take in a new group of students for your class, how do you like to begin, like that first day of class? Do you have anything that you…it’s like your first day ritual to create a space for all of that?

JOHANNA: Well, that depends. And this is where it gets kind of complicated because here at CTC we have quite a few different kinds of programming that we do and different classes that are all very different settings, right? So we have our onsite classes, our theatre arts training program where students can come and take classes in acting. They can take classes in voice and dance. We have, you know, students ages three through eighteen right? Coming in for different classes after school on the weekends. And now, now that it's summer coming in for themed summer camps, we have a different group every week. Right. And I mean, summer camp is still very different from school year classes, but it's still under theatre arts training at their on site, right? And what I've been doing the most of this year or the school year and also dating back to about 2017, I think is our residency work. And so we have a couple different tracks. We have our Neighborhood Bridges programming, which is designed to be in the classroom, in the school classroom I should say. It's based in critical literacy and storytelling. It's a very strong curriculum that was been created and developed for years, right. And we also have our Creative Play program, which is my heart and soul right now, which is our early childhood emotional literacy programming. And so that was designed to be brought to not only daycares and preschool classrooms, but also that kind of age group wherever we could go with families. So we were at crisis centers and shelters and community, other community support organizations as well. We were doing partnerships with various local organizations and school like community organizations and schools. But that has been our trauma informed social emotional track that I have had the good fortune to be taking on more in depth this year. And that's something that I am working on, creating a very focused beginning ritual, right? And recurring set of activities and plans and routines, knowing that what we are trying to do through the arts is create a safe and and predictable environment. So that's a lot more set up and structured than a typical day in our Fundamentals of Acting  onsite. Thursday nights kind of class would be, it's a complicated question, right? Because day one of any acting class, you know, we're coming in, we're seeing how many returning students we have, how many brand new students I teach the beginning fundamentals or have been this year. And so we have a lot of new students. Sometimes on some of our, some of our tracks are ten weeks, some of them are five, some of the classes are year round for some of our more intensive programs with like high schoolers. I tend towards the younger age groups, the more beginner classes. And so for me it's a lot of hello songs, it's a lot of mindfulness and breathing exercises. It's a lot of sensory activities, a lot of just sharing favorite animals and how we're feeling that day. You know, a lot of checking in.

STEPHEN: Yeah. Can you just summarize for some of our listeners: what is emotional literacy?

JOHANNA: Yeah. So if you looked up definitions in various contexts, you would get very different answers. For the purposes of what we are doing. We are working in our creative play programming in first and foremost identifying emotions, right? That's the level that we're starting at, right? We're working with preschoolers primarily, and it takes a lot of work just to say, this is what mad looks, feels, sounds like, this is what happy looks, feels, and sounds like, this is what sad…you know, and being able to name emotions. And then when we're talking about emotional literacy, what that means is that I can notice and name and understand how feelings feel in my body, what they're called. I can notice and name and recognize what emotions look like in someone else, right? Because those are two different skills. And then as we go on, I can predict how emotions and actions are connected when I feel this way, my body does this, or when this situation happens, it makes people feel this way, or it might make someone feel like this. And then the next step of what might they do about it, right? Which is very beginning building block levels of when in an acting class, if you're talking about motivation and tactic and relationships, right? And all of those things, what it really does boil down to is: this thing happened, what feelings come from that? And because of that, what might they want to do next, which seems very pre-K and toddler, but it is the building blocks that you cannot move past without addressing. And what we've been noticing is that it is very much worth it to start at that basic square one because especially when it comes to a more inclusive, a more adaptive or a trauma informed lens that you're looking through. We do have students who might not be able to recognize when someone is feeling excited versus angry if their body shows agitation, right? Or if they see a blank face. If a student automatically would assume, ‘Oh, they're feeling sad,’ or, 'Oh, they're feeling angry, or maybe they're feeling confused, or maybe I don't know how to tell what they're feeling at all from whatever cues they're giving me,’ right? Or, ‘Even I'm feeling something inside, I have no words for it yet,’ that's unsafe. Like, that feels unsafe if you're feeling a certain way and you don't have any way to communicate it. How frustrating can that be to anybody? I see that in grown adults, right? Yeah. And so really working at the most basic level to understand our feelings and emotions, especially how they connect physically in the body, and especially how we can communicate those to our peers, has been one of many or a handful of components of creative play. But it's become what I am always thinking about in my classrooms because it, it really does boil down to that. And a lot of times when you really look at a source of frustration or conflict in the classroom or between characters, it can be boiled down to someone didn't know how to communicate how they were feeling. That happens in Measure for Measure that happens in anything. Yeah. Right? We all know the frustration of watching a movie going, why don't they just say how they're feeling? Right? So it's the basis of theatre, it's the basis of interpersonal communication and it starts very young.

STEPHEN: So what are some of the exercises that you do with your younger students to dive into that world?

JOHANNA: The first one, and I mean first like first chronologically what we start our class with, but also I think the most important is to get into our bodies. And you cannot…I cannot stress enough just the power of a deep breath, right? That it, and it seems…I don't know. It really does work…just the power of a group taking a deep breath together is so regulating. And it helps with transitions, it helps brings us in. It helps bring us into the present moment. We have a lot of different, you know, whether it's butterfly breath, where you stretch your wings wide, and then you wrap yourself in a hug like a cocoon and take a deep breath, right? Or a rainbow breath where you breathe in and stretch your arms out wide, like a rainbow or a five finger breath where you trace your hand and, and breathe in and out as your finger goes up and down. Every single one of those is tied to at least two different physical strategies, whether we're stretching and using our muscles, whether we're using our balance, whether we're using visualization. But it always incorporates the breath. And when we sing our hello song we can pat time on our knees, it gives us sensory input, right? We're patting on our legs. We're giving ourselves that reassurance. We're also keeping time. Also, when you're singing everyone's breathing at the same time and they're controlling their exhale, which is the most important part, right? I care how you breathe in, but I need you to breathe out slowly, right? And if everyone's singing, they're controlling their breath. And it really does trigger something in the brain that gets everybody into the same sort of ready to learn mindset. It's very powerful. So as we're singing, we might be rocking back and forth. That's another great self-soothing technique. You know, it's also giving you vestibular input which is one of the eight senses, not five senses, eight senses, right? That we can work on that help, you know, bring us into the present moment, whatever was going on, however, stressed out we're feeling, however dysregulated we might be feeling. We're all in this together, right? And so a lot of little sneaky techniques, yes, we're just singing a song, but we're also doing so much more than that, right? And then if we're going around and sharing our name, we're also practicing confidence. We're practicing turn taking, we're practicing listening to each other and waiting our turn, which is hard again for grown adults in the Starbucks line, not to mention for our three-year-olds in the classroom, right? And so all of these things are happening. There's all of these circuits firing, there's so much work that is happening in a young brain just from singing a hello song. And we only build from there.

STEPHEN: I like that.

JOHANNA: And then we do more breathing, and then we'll talk about emotions, and then we'll pull out some scarves and do a sensory activity. We'll read a book, 'cause again, who doesn't love a book? I'm such a huge fan of picture books.

STEPHEN: Do you have a bias for fantasy in your classes?

JOHANNA: No. I am very picky [Laughter.] about my…because I know how I know what's out there. My mom is a children's librarian, so we're always swapping books. We're always sending recommendations. I have a huge stack on my desk right now, not to mention the bookshelf behind me of all of these picture books. And these days I do get to, when I'm researching materials for class, get really specific about, ‘I need a book that's a story that is about a child who gets overexcited and starts to feel out of control,’ right? Because that's the theme that we're working on this week, is when we get too excited, how do we control our bodies? You know? Or I need a book about a character who goes on a journey and meets new people, because that's the theme this week, you know, in class. And so I'm always looking, always about emotions, always incorporating them. But sometimes we're looking for text or material that outwardly just outright names emotions. ‘So and so was feeling sad.’ Sometimes we're looking for open-ended situations that we can then apply our learning right here. Where the Wild Things Are is a great example. Classic, also just absolutely magical in terms of pacing. But it also, I don't think it ever says the a word for how the characters are feeling, but they clearly are. And it mentions a lot of things they do. So that's a good one for clearly this character, Max. He says, ‘I'll eat you up.’ Why would he say that? And all kids always know. They always know. I mean, whether, I mean, it could be nineteen different answers, but they always have a clear answer of what makes them say that, right? Because it's such an impulsive thing. And who doesn't, you know, it's so easy to connect with being a wild thing. How do you feel when you're wild? Well, we get nineteen different answers again, but they know for themselves what that means, right? So we can go sort of the explicitly naming emotions through the text route, or we can have an open-ended story and start applying our knowledge to that text as well. And then from there we can act it out. I love a visual aid also with a picture book. We do have a series of stories that were specifically written without a book that we just act out and tell verbally and practice. But there is a lot to be said, not only for just the calming power of sitting down with a book. You can see all these kids just melt into calmness as soon as I pull out a book. Oh, they know what that means. It's time to get cozy. It's time to relax. Nothing's, nothing's gonna be asked of them for a while. You know, we can, we can lay our anxiety down. We can just look at the pictures and the words. It's so meditative. But also the visual aids are very helpful. We have an example of facial expressions in the books. We have things we can point to and notice and latch onto. And teachers in schools are doing so much amazing work when it comes to looking at a book and making inferences and thinking, oh, what do you think they'll do next? What else do you notice? Like the literacy work that's being done in any school right now really is phenomenal in terms of creating conversation. But we can also then take it a step further as teaching artists and act it out. And there's examples right there on the page, right? We have something to latch onto as a clue that then we can expand on. So that's another reason I really like using picture books. And again, I'm very picky about them, but I do love using them all the time. Got a huge long list of things we can act out as well from the books.

STEPHEN: Do you use similar strategies with your older students as well? As far as like, structure, starting with breathing and then moving into interpretation of existing literature?

JOHANNA: I always start with a check-in. And a lot of that is for me, I wanna see what my students are bringing in the door every day, right? How are we feeling? Are we feeling hopped up on adrenaline? Are we feeling tired 'cause Halloween was yesterday? Whatever it is. But also just starting with a circle, you know, we're sitting in a circle, we're sharing our name, 'cause you can never start slating too early. We're sharing [Laughter.] just something to get the conversation started. What I've noticed with older students that has been really interesting in the last couple of years is that it really helps, especially in the earlier couple days of a class, to give students a chance to just share something about themselves. And I was realizing that a lot of times if I'm asking my students to come into a class and immediately be focused and on point and on topic with what I want us to talk about, they're sitting in a room with a bunch of peers that they haven't met yet. And yeah, we share our names, but just the fact that we're all here is not a reason to trust anybody [Laughter.] you know? And for me to ask a kid to be emotionally vulnerable or creative or take artistic risks in a room of strangers, I wouldn't ask that of adults. You wouldn't be able to, right? And so having just some time, and it's not like a free for all kind of chatting time, though. I have had that in the past of just like, great, everybody, what do you wanna talk about for the next five minutes will help so much. Not just with focus. Like, they're not gonna be talking to like, if they can get it outta their system, right? I mean, yes, it is partly that, but it also helps with so much social anxiety, you know, of just get to know something about the kids we're in a room with. So you have something to talk about later. So you're starting, I mean, kids, I mean, and adults are always like, sussing out, ‘Who's gonna be my friend in this class,’ right? ‘Who in this group?’ Like you think, like the first read through of any script, you're in the room going, ‘Okay, who am I gonna crack jokes with after this? Who's gonna get me when I roll my eyes? Who's gonna,’ you know, just like all of those little bits of like, triangulation, right? Social triangulation and context. We need that. So I try to allow for as much social sharing as I can within the boundaries of…I only have an hour sometimes a week, and I only have five weeks. But if the point isn't for them to be creating community, and if the point isn't like, what then what are we doing this for? Like, that's what theatre is. So I'm not gonna skip right to facts or an educational exercise without acknowledging the humans in the room and without acknowledging their social needs. Like that's why they joined, that's why they took a class, right? To make friends. So I'm not gonna get in the way of that. Now. We're gonna use a lot of games and activities to give them something to talk about after class. Absolutely. Right? And there's still plenty of time to be working on skill building and vocabulary and all of those things. But I do like to have a good chunk of sharing time at the beginning. And breathing helps everybody. Taking a deep breath helps everybody. Warmups is a good, it's always good ease into things. I'm not gonna ask you to be emotionally vulnerable at the drop of a hat. We're gonna ease into it with a silly game, right? And then we'll start talking about a text or a strategy or whatever it is that we end up going for. But if we're not in it for, for the community, you know, and it's not like a school day where like they need to pass a math test or something. So what are we here for? We're here to have fun. We're here to make friends. Yeah. In my fundamentals of acting classes, we are learning stage vocabulary. We're learning stage directions, playing a bunch of games about stage directions, right? We're focusing on how to cheat out, how to enunciate and project, and we're not going..and I, I kind of break their hearts every time the first day of class…but I'm like, ‘We're not gonna put on a play. Sorry, this is a skills class. It's meant to go a long with whatever other experience you have,’ right? This is the class that I probably needed in third grade before I was gonna, you know, join up with a theatre company. I didn't know that, right? I didn't have any context for what I was doing. And so to be able to then do a bunch of, and I told 'em, it's gonna look a lot like games 'cause It is, it's gonna look a lot like other activities. But we do a lot of little nonsense scenes, right? Open-ended situations and scenes that, that help build the skills. Like I talk about the ingredients of acting. We have…I have a big visual kind of poster thing that has a bunch of ingredients and I say like, ‘When you go see a play, that's a birthday cake, right? It's got icing, it's got candles, it is ready to eat. You are being served a birthday cake, right? But if you didn't know what went into that and I showed you a carton of eggs, a measuring cup of milk, and a bag of flour, you would not recognize a birthday cake in that. Can you make one without it? No. So we are learning the ingredients and I say like, at the end of this class, you are not going to have a birthday cake. You might have some batter. And that's about it. Because what does a cake need? Time. So we have…I can take a metaphor to the end of the earth, right? This is a delicious metaphor, right? But it works. It really works, you know, and kids who take my class multiple times, we'll start to get that, that we're collecting our ingredients, right? We're gathering our ingredients, we're gathering our tools. You look at a birthday cake, you don't see a mixer and a measuring cup, but they were there and you need them and you learn how to use them, right? And so really framing, it's really helped to frame what we're doing in those easy to visualize steps. I'm like, ‘Okay, well friends today we're gonna focus on the butter [Laughter.],’ right? And then they'll say, ‘Well, when do we get costumes?’ It's like, you gonna frost a cake before you bake it? No. We'll worry about costumes later. We haven't even put it in the oven. Right? So, I'm like jumping in and out of metaphor right now. But we could go with it. We're using our imaginations anyway. So it is a lot of those ingredients, right? I'm being really clear that that's what it is, right? I'm not gonna ask anyone to trust the process if they don't know what the process is. But I'll say, here's the process. You can trust it. And giving them those skills that are designed to go along with the process of being in a rehearsal. Right? So I know that a lot of my students are in a school play. They're in a church play. They’re doing stuff outside of class and they're very eager to tell me about it as some sort of status symbol. And I'm saying, great, I love that for you. I hope you really enjoyed that. This will help you understand more of what you're doing. Right? It'll go along with that effort because I'll be the first to say experience is not the same as education. I got a lot of experience before I got any education in theatre. They were both extremely valuable for very different reasons, but they are not the same. And that's something that we really try to instill here at CTC. Especially…we’re very process based because education is not experience and they are both equally essential to theater as an art form.

STEPHEN: Do a lot of your kids that are in your classes, are they also in shows at CTC? Or are they still too young to make that jump?

JOHANNA: They’re too young. Okay. All of my students and I mean, we have so many different teaching artists, so many incredible teachers and classes that we offer. Me personally, my students are all too young. Okay? We do have quite a few actors on stage. They'll be on stage later this week who have taken classes with us in the past. It's not a direct track. It's not like if you take classes then you'll get on stage or vice versa. But we do regularly recommend a lot of our students for auditions. It is a separate audition process. So they still need to go through that. But we're also starting, I say starting to, we have been, but we're starting those classes back up again since the pandemic of audition classes. Not just in auditioning for CTC, but we had a seminar in auditioning for colleges for high school students recently. That was really cool. So there is definitely overlap. I'm not seeing it with my students 'cause they're all much too young. But there, but we have had that and, and do at this moment also.

STEPHEN: Do you see a big vibe shift of the kids between when they're taking classes in like the fall, winter, spring semesters versus the week long summer camps that occurred?

JOHANNA: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But I, that's everybody. I mean, there's a vibe shift for everybody. We're coming into this going, woo-hoo, it's summer camp. We're gonna have some fun. We also have so much more time. I normally have like an hour out of a week, so we're gonna get to, I mean like, yeah, we'll chat, we'll spend some social time. I'm gonna help you make friends, right? We'll learn all the ingredients of theatre, but you're gonna, but we don't have any time to waste in any of those things. And the social aspect is important, but we're not gonna waste time with that. Like, we're not gonna waste time around that either, right? We are getting to the point. Whatever the goal is, we are going there directly. And with summer camp, we have so much more time on our hands, especially with these younger kids. Oh my goodness. We used to do half day camps for K through third grade. We are doing full day camps now. And they're up for it. They're doing it. 'cause they can do that at school. But it is a long day for a six year old, especially when we're all having fun with these very active, very physical games. It's a long day for a lot of those, right? You can't zip zap, zap for like six hours. It's not gonna work. [Laughter.] So we have the gift of time that we can spend really going into developing a story, right? We can play games that focus on certain skills while also spending time, you know, just chilling out, designing characters, right? That's coloring time. We spend time brainstorming, but also have small groups, right? Really focusing on giving different different shapes or different energy levels to different activities so that there is still variation in a day, right? Asking a group of humans, young humans, especially to collaborate for six full hours is a lot, right? And so we make sure that we have time for like a brain break, but also for really getting into the material, but also for looking at it from a different way or maybe getting a hands-on craft involved. Again, I'm talking about younger kids, but also with our older groups, they really can go into depth in these classes, in these camps. They're all themed. Also, a lot more of our school year classes are more skills focused, you know, it'll be called Acting as opposed to Dinosaur Drama or whatever. So there was Destination Dino, that was the one last week. So, it's a very different vibe. Very different.

STEPHEN: How is that for you as a leader structuring your day and, and the week around so that you too don't feel like the [sound of defeat.] and do you color with them as like a brain break?

JOHANNA: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Are you kidding me? I love a good coloring sheet. Well also, I know that if I'm starting to get bored frustrated with leading kids through an activity, that's also how they're gonna be feeling a lot of times. If it's like, ‘All right everybody, let's focus up with a story,’ it's 'cause I need it. And also them, like, it really does, you really can feel the energy in a room. And I mean I've been doing this for ten years, it's, it's knowing how to structure time not to the minute, right? 'Cause who knows if suddenly on a Wednesday these kids are all about creating scenes and they just wanna go for it for the next hour and a half, absolutely we can do that. Right? Having a lesson plan that is malleable but gives us enough so that we're not running out of things to do and we're not running out of time to do all the things we need to do, right? And so being able to plan enough different activities that nobody's getting bored, including the teaching artist, but also knowing when you can, you know, ride the inspiration wherever it's going and, and allow for that space. And just having the confidence to say, this is what my room needs right now. This is what my class needs right now. Whether that is my class needs to keep playing this game for another fifteen minutes so everyone can get a turn and nobody feels left out. Or if it's my class needs to stop playing this game 'cause they're sick of it, even though five people haven't gotten a turn. And they might be a little sad, right? Being able to make those calls and there is no manual for that. But being able to recognize how the energy and attention can shift in a room is, especially in a full-day, full-week camp, it's essential. And we also have we have such a privilege of having an amazing team of teaching assistants as well. So we have other adults in the room that are there also to take care of whatever might come up. If a student needs individual attention, if they need help, if, you know they need a bandaid or a bathroom break, like we also have an amazing team of support that's there, which is essential really.

STEPHEN: I'm thinking back to my camp days and I didn't have anything like that as like a really young kid. I didn't start theatre camp until I was in middle school 'cause it just wasn't available. So I think that's really cool to, in the summers, have that foundation for creative kids who are getting this opportunity to work together and play and make and learn these important like theater skills, but also life skills through a really wonderful established arts organization.

JOHANNA: Well and it really does take a lot of expectation setting and scaffolding to not only do these skill building games, right, these ingredients that don't look like putting on a play, but to also have like, let your students know that that's what you're doing. Like it's okay to pull back the curtain on your process, right? We're going to play a game now that's going to teach us how to face our audience and that's what we're doing. Because when you're in a play, you need to face your audience, right? It not only helps get that buy-in of like, this feels like it, we're just playing a game. What does this have to do with theatre? But it also helps them apply that knowledge later, right? If we're drawing those connections. So that's something I tell my fellow teaching artists a lot is that like, it's okay to just say the thing you're doing that helps, right? Yeah. You can narrate your process if you're at a loss for words, narrate your process 'cause It helps them know what's going on. And as a kid, like everyone knows as a kid, really most of your time is spent wondering what's going on. [Laughter.] Like why are we doing this right now? And you're telling them, which is so, so nice. And it helps with that. Like, we're supposed to be doing theatre. ‘This isn't theatre.’ It's like, no, it is though because theatre's about working together. So if we cannot accomplish that basic step of interpersonal skills, we cannot expect to go onto a stage, right? We need to learn how to be okay if we disagree creatively with a friend, right? We need to be okay with existing in the same space and taking turns, right? And that's why I think arts education is so important is that we're not just teaching how to act in a play. We are teaching basic human skills. Because that's what theatre does anyway, is it teaches basic human skills and it shines a spotlight on that in a very educational way going back in history, right? And so the leap from theatre education to social emotional learning is only a change of lens. It's only a change of perspective because that's, that's what all of us are doing. That's what any of us are doing. And that's what kids already are doing. Especially the youngest, right? The youngest kids in any classroom are doing so much work, recognizing emotion setting, figuring out where their boundaries are and where the boundaries of their peers are. Figuring out how to communicate that work is already happening, right? But again, if we can name it, if we can set the expectations, if we can narrate their process of what they're doing that helps them feel more confident in that process. And then when it comes to applying that to a creative process, oh my gosh, they have such a leg up, right? And that's why, especially when it comes to our residency work. I mean, we have a partnership with a local school Bethune, an arts magnet school, that we have a commitment with them that we are providing in school, during the school day, arts education weekly to every single student. We've had the amazing opportunity to partner with this school. And so I and a few other incredible teaching artists have been doing creative play for their pre-K and kindergarten classes. Then they move on to Early Bridges or Early Critical Literacy program for their first and next year's, second, third, maybe third graders. And then they move on to Neighborhood Bridges for third, fourth, and fifth grade, right? Every student is getting Children's Theatre Company teaching artists interaction and education throughout the week and what we can do is we can start to see over the course of the year, but hopefully, I mean we're still in, I think we're in year two of this, but in the next couple years we are going to see students moving through the programming with greater artistic confidence, but also with a knowledge that that's what they have, right? With relationships that they've built. Not just with their peers and with their teachers, but also with teaching artists that they'll be able to see come back regularly, right? Just the, the social emotional growth that turns into artistic confidence just by factor of practicing with an eye on the process. I'm so excited for that. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge.

STEPHEN: I'm looking forward to reading about it as this continues, like what the results are, what the findings are of what these kids are like, who they become because of this. That's really exciting.

JOHANNA: We’ve already been seeing just over the course of one year because, and because we know this is our pilot program, this is something that we're really interested in developing as far as we can. We've been tracking students on our own metric. Not like their school performance or anything like that, but we've been sort of saying like, ‘How do we want to measure the success of our program? What are we predicting that we'll see?’ and then sort of tracking that throughout the year. And it's been really incredible to see that. Yes. A huge piece of that as students are growing up, right? They're getting used to the school year and they're just growing up as tiny humans. But also the level of confidence that we are seeing from beginning to end of school year. The level of empathy that we are seeing from beginning to end of the school year. Teachers have been pointing out, 'cause teachers participate with their students in the classroom, in the creative play classroom. It's huge part of it that they are also doing this with the kids. Like teachers will come over and say, ‘Oh, do you see? Do you see that kid over there coloring with his friend? That's huge. That's huge.’ Or, ‘Did you see how he got frustrated? He left and then he came back. That's a first for that kid.’ Like, and the teachers are starting the classroom. Teachers are pointing out to us 'cause we're only there once a week. These teachers who are with these kids every day are starting to notice and starting to say, ‘Oh my gosh, notice that kid, because that's a huge jump for him.’ Or they'll tell us when they're telling, like the stories that we were acting out in creative play from the beginning of the year. Oh they were just talking about the mouse story yesterday during lunch. I didn't know. They had to remind me how it went. And they started acting it out at lunchtime, you know, taking ownership of their experience. They remember it. I mean, kids remember everything. But starting to notice that as part of the school culture as well has been really rewarding being able to build these student-teacher relationships over the course of a year has been really exciting. And being able to really go in depth because also students and their siblings can talk about these things, right? With their families and they know what's happening next year. And we have other parts of the program, like I was doing a professional development for teachers on using creative play in their classroom and trauma-informed practices in the arts. And we have family nights where we would get pizza for…we would have $5 tickets for the whole family. We'll meet at the school that they already know where it is. We're gonna have a pizza party, we'll eat dinner, bring all the siblings, and then there's a bus. So you don't even have to drive there, leave the car, we'll bring you to the theatre. Everyone gets to go have a theatre night. Teachers are there with their families, students are there with their families. They get to all see a show together. Right. And then the next day in Creative Play, a kid comes up and says, ‘I saw you at the play.’ I mean, what they say is, ‘I saw you at the movie theatre.’ I'm like, close enough. Close enough. It was a theatre. Yeah, it was at the movie, [Laugh.] play close enough. Right. you know, and then, ‘I went with my grandma to see the play.’ ‘Oh, that's amazing. How did you like it?’ ‘You were there.’ ‘Yeah, I was there.’ [Laughter.] It was great. We ate dinner together, you know, like that community building and that sort of expansion of the concept of, of what theater is and can be. And those connections have also been really valuable. I got off topic there, but…

STEPHEN: [Laughter.] No, this is also so great to hear. I love hearing how theatre companies are weaving into communities in these really new ways because of like their education departments.

JOHANNA: We have a lot of different programming. I mean from, from the school thing, like I told you, even though we're in summer camps right now, we have a few teaching artists doing free story theatre performances at St. Paul Public Libraries this summer for ten weeks. They're going out reading books and acting them out just for free around the community. That's been really great. We've done that at a park, at a plaza in downtown Minneapolis. We're doing Music in Motion, which is one of our early childhood…It's been a class, but it's also these like little workshop sessions, free to the public, bring the whole family, hang out in the park in the summer, you know programming as well, which has been really great. I think that's in partnership with Green Minneapolis is the organization that does a lot of children's programming around different parks and public areas in the summer. So we also have have that kind of programming going on just as like a neighborhood event as well. And I did that last summer and just having the kids come every week with grandma or bring their friends from daycare has also been been really great. Something that comes up a lot as I've been talking to other teaching artists is this idea that being a teaching artist is that you're an artist who also teaches. And we do have so many amazing actors, choreographers, playwrights, musicians that are also teaching artists, right? And there's a lot that they do and they have so many different art forms. Like we were talking, I'd wear a lot of different hats as well. But that teaching in itself can be a form of artistic expression, right? That, that is also a creative outlet. And I didn't know that going into it, but talking with a lot of coworkers and peers, especially here on site, it has really been interesting to see each teaching artists creative voice come alive, right? So we have our warmups that we always do. We have our actors toolkit that we always focus on in class, but being able to within that medium see each teaching artist bring their own creative self to it has been incredible. And teaching for me, I was trying to figure out what it was like, you know, like to someone who isn't an educator, like what's it like? 'Cause people are like, ‘Oh, I guess it's like performing,’ ‘cause you have a captive audience, you know, you're performing for your students, but it doesn't feel performative. And what I realized was that especially creative play, especially our, our early childhood residency work, it feels like, like conducting an orchestra, right? It doesn't feel like I'm performing for them so much as knowing that I have the plan, right? I've got the score in front of me. I have what we're going to do, but then every single individual in that classroom has their own voice that they are also bringing. And that sometimes it takes a little bit more encouragement to bring out someone's voice here. And sometimes someone needs a reminder to maybe bring their energy down a little bit to listen so that someone else's voice can grow, right? But it really feels like the energy is of a conductor, right? That you're listening and you're listening to everybody in the room, whether or not they're speaking, your attention is that the entire group. And then at the end, hopefully when you're done, everyone feels like their part was heard and they know whether they had two notes in the back or whether they were playing the whole time. Just how valuable. Like we, we all accomplished this together, right? And so it doesn't feel performative per se, but there is no more instant gratification than being in a classroom, right? And hearing from your students. But it is sort of this sculpting, this conducting of that energy that when I talk about a classroom community, that's what it's like.

STEPHEN: I have never thought of it that way. And I grew up playing cello and so I totally feel this. Wow, that is so…I did not think about teaching artistry in from that angle before. And that is so cool. And they're very lucky to have you as their conductor. How can our listeners find out more about the programs at Children's Theatre Company and the classes that you are leading throughout the year?

JOHANNA: We do always have our website where we put up our class schedules, our summer schedules as they're developed. So our school year class schedule should be going up, I think by the end of this month or maybe next. But that's in the works. And then we typically get our summer camp schedule up by January or February on our website. We also have a section on our website that's for educators and for community members so they can contact us about residencies and other workshops and things. It really is all funneled through our website. There's Instagram and, and Facebook as well. I'm not well versed in social media. [Laughter.]

STEPHEN: The Children’s Theatre Company Instagram and website are linked in the show notes. This week’s Tuesday Afternoon Dance Party music is the “Entr’acte” from the Original Cast Recording of A Year With Frog and Toad, Music by Robert Reale, Book and Lyrics by Willie Reale, Based on the books by Arnold Lobel. A Year with Frog and Toad had its World Premiere at The Children's Theatre Company in 2002 and opened on Broadway in 2003. And it will be returning to Children’s Theatre Company in April of 2024!

[Pipe and Drape theme plays.]

Are you interested in sharing your pipe and drape story? You can join the conversation by emailing PipeAndDrapeStories@gmail.com or messaging @PipeAndDrapeStories Instagram. And everyone, please be sure to rate and review Pipe and Drape wherever you listen to podcasts! Each star given or review submitted helps future listeners find the show. Be sure to tune in every other Tuesday to hear theatre for young audiences creatives share their pipe and drape stories. Pipe and Drape is created and hosted by Stephen Fala and distributed by Anchor. The Pipe and Drape logo was created by Stephen Gordon and music was composed by Stephen Fala. Thank you for listening with me today. 

Learn more about The Children's Theatre Company:
WEBSITE: https://childrenstheatre.org
INSTAGRAM: @childrenstheatrecompany

This week’s Tuesday Afternoon Dance Party music: “Entr'acte” from A Year With Frog and Toad
Listen to the Tuesday Afternoon Dance Party playlist here!

Connect with Pipe and Drape:
INSTAGRAM: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@PipeAndDrapeStories⁠⁠⁠⁠
EMAIL: PipeAndDrapeStories@gmail.com
Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Fala⁠⁠⁠⁠
Artwork: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Gordon