Rose Atwell is tasked with preparing the seventy-plus students of Living Wisdom School for the annual all-school Theater Magic Production in mid-March. Her long experience in theater, and her genius for knowing exactly what each child needs, make her a perfect choice for this very important role.
Q: How did you come to direct the Theater Magic program at Living Wisdom School?
Rose: I was a full-time teacher at the original Living Wisdom K-8 school in Nevada City, California from 2007 to 2015, and I served as the high school drama teacher for part of that time.
I remember when I met with the teenagers to discuss our first performance. They said, “Can we do Lord of the Rings?”
I said, “Oh, no – it’s too big!”
But they weren’t fazed. “What if we write the script?”
I asked them some questions to determine how serious they were. They were very enthusiastic, so I said, “All right, if you write a script, we’ll do it.”
They spent lots of after-school hours writing the script and building the sets, and they put their hearts and souls into rehearsing and performing the play. It really stretched them, so there was lots of personal growth. We had a wonderful time together, and since then theater has become a focus of my work in the Living Wisdom Schools.
One of the great joys of theater is the sense of community that it creates. Working on a play together creates wonderful connections for the actors and the audience, and it gives the children a very valuable experience of being part of something larger than themselves.
When I came to the Palo Alto Living Wisdom School, I was delighted to be offered the opportunity to direct the Theater Magic program. The school puts its whole energy into the plays, and the staff and teachers give the children tremendous support so that they will have a profound experience with lots of learning and personal growth.
All of the students, from the youngest to the oldest, TK-8th grade, take part in the play, and they take it very, very seriously. They bring their best to the rehearsals, so there’s tremendous learning for them.
For example, if a very shy child is being challenged to project their voice and fill the room with their energy, we offer them endless support to grow into their role and discover what they’re capable of.
I love the months we spend together creating the plays, because they give the children so much, including the opportunity to experience the joys of cooperation and community. We have five-year-olds working alongside the eighth graders to perfect a scene. They’ll be working together to perfect a scene, and it’s beautiful to see how they’re helping each other. The middle schoolers are learning to help the younger children, and the little ones are having mature behaviors modeled for them by the older kids. We’re constantly witnessing how those connections inspire tremendous growth.
In all my years in theater, I’ve seen that the process is more important than the product. During the months of build-up to the performances, we’re focusing on the elements of joy, enthusiasm, courage, and community, because we know that if we can create a happy, safe, expansive environment, the children will thrive and the results will be beautiful as well. The adult audiences love the plays, and the four performances are always standing-room only.
It has become increasingly clear to me that my role is to be fully present with each child, and to help them have the happiest, most rewarding experience possible. I’ve come to a point where I can quickly sense if something is too big a stretch for a particular child – if it’s too scary at this point in their life.
We do ask a lot of them; for example, we ask them to fill a huge room with their voice and their presence in front of their peers. The plays are very professional, so there’s lots of memorization and lots to learn about polishing their craft as actors.
We spend lots of time helping them go deep in their roles, but if we see that a child is at a point that isn’t comfortable for them, we’ll immediately stop and let them go and be supported and relaxed, and take the pressure off.
In my role as an adult who’s guiding kids from age five to fourteen, I’ve learned that it’s really all about finding those points of personal growth, without ever crossing the line into a situation that would overwhelm them.
We’re always teaching to the individual child, tuning into their special needs and finding out if they are ready to move forward into a little more growth, or if what they need, for now, is more support and comfort.
Both are very valid needs, and we’ve learned to be very good at identifying the edge of what will be fun for the child and a good and appropriate next step, not only for the sake of the play, but for their personal growth and their next step in confidence, creativity, and expansion.
Those are the most important things we’re always watching for. I believe our ability to understand what the children are going through evolves through years of watching how they deal with being challenged at the near edge of their ability. We’re always focused on keeping it doable for them, so that they can feel happy and excited by the experience of discovery, but never swamped.
Q: Do you spend most of your time working with the youngest children?
Rose: No, I actually spend more time with the older ones, because the very young ones can only go for so long. (laughs)
For the kindergarteners, for example, our first priority is for them to be happy, to be having fun, and to feel good about what they’re doing. So we’ll give them something they can accomplish every day, something we know they can succeed at and feel really good about.
If you try to push them too far, the happiness won’t happen. So we’ll give the kindergarteners a little dance, a poem, or a song, and then they can come to rehearsals and be part of the larger process and become inspired by the older kids.
It’s extremely sweet to see the kindergarten kids at recess, acting out everything they’ve seen, including the big kids’ roles. But when we’re working with them at rehearsals, we’re careful to keep it very doable and happy and enjoyable.
As the kids get older, they can take on more acting and dialogue. In the early middle grades, they might have a handful of lines, and they might also be in lots of scenes without saying very much. But they’re getting a feel for it. Then in fourth to eighth grade they can start taking on larger roles, so that they’ll be stretched more with memorization and projection, and holding the play together.
Q: Does the theater experience teach them life skills?
Rose: Yes, very much so. We are helping them learn to relate to people, to speak well and clearly in order to be understood, and to take the other person’s point of view.
Also, the theme of each play is the life of an inspiring individual who has demonstrated positive, expansive values. Beginning at a very early age, the children are living a story that is uplifting, hopeful, and inspiring.
“What we practice, we become,” and the attitudes and values we dwell on, we can expand into. The children are dwelling on stories that offer them beautiful personal traits and positivity. And what could be more important for children than to be absorbing and acting out uplifting values?
Acting-out positive qualities is a very powerful path to personal and academic growth. For each child, it’s an affirmation of positive, beautiful ways of behaving and being. We, as adults, talk about the power of our thoughts, and the children are memorizing lines that are infused with wonderful life lessons. And each year they add to the pantheon of heroes from various cultures.
Back in the classroom, they also get to dwell deeply on the themes of the play and the lives of these inspiring people. Of course, they will bring their own unique values and beliefs to the discussion. We aren’t trying to feed them a narrow belief system. We’re offering them universal, inspirational values of courage, kindness, compassion, and the like.
Q: With every student in the school participating in the play, it must be a lot of young people to relate to!
Rose: We work on one scene at a time. For example, we’ll rehearse Scene 1 from 10:30 to 1130 a.m. on Monday, and everyone who’s in the scene will be on stage. Then the kids in the next scene will come, so it’s always a small group and a mix of ages.
There may be five, ten, or twenty kids in the room, all amazingly well-behaved. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve honed the art of crowd control (laughs), but I will lay out the ground rules. “Okay, this is what you need to do. This is what I expect.” And they do it. The kids are amazing, and I think it’s a tribute to what the teachers are giving them in the classroom.
Q: Some years ago, when I filmed video in the kindergarten classroom, I found it amazing to see how the teacher could go off to help another group, and the kids at the first table would be completely engrossed in their work and very polite and considerate. So I’m guessing that you’re blessed to be working with kids who have a certain degree of maturity. How does it compare with the other theater groups you’ve been involved with, in college and community theater?
Rose: (laughs) Well, if you’re majoring in theater in college, you’ve probably going to have some creative energy, but you won’t necessarily be calm. There are wonderful, talented people in theater, but I think that if you’re going to do theater well and be successful, you have to be very solid and mature and aware of other people’s realities. If somebody isn’t respectful and aware, they aren’t going to go very far in a theater production community. It truly is the reality that you have to work with others in a mature way.
Also, to portray a character correctly, you must have empathy. In other words, you have to be able to relate to a reality that isn’t your own, and then share it with the audience. Learning to relate to realities outside of your own is an important element of an Education for Life.
The theater experience gives the children fantastic practice in not taking themselves too seriously; it challenges them to be aware of and examine the habits and thoughts by which they define themselves, and it teaches them that they can choose to change for the better.
Q: Do you work with the other teachers during the theater process?
Rose: Not until the final stages. A teacher will send three or four students for Scene 4, and the other students will remain in the classroom. The teachers are wonderfully supportive, but I don’t spend much time working directly with them until Tech Week, when we’re setting up the sound, the lights, and the sets, and organizing the scripts, and so on. Then everyone is pitching in together, but for a large portion of the rehearsal time, it’s just me and the students.
Q: Did you have special training in child psychology, teaching theater, or anything like that?
Rose: No, it’s all been hands-on. After I graduated with a theater degree from UC Santa Cruz, I spent a year working with Narani Moorehouse, a wonderful teacher at the original Living Wisdom School who has more than forty years of teaching experience, and I learned a tremendous amount from her.
Also, when I was a young person I was a student in the Living Wisdom Schools, and I’m sure I absorbed a great deal from the wonderful attitudes and practices of the teachers. Teaching has felt very natural for me, and perhaps I was born with a certain aptitude for it.
Q: It’s a blessing for the children to be exposed to inspiring people and ideas from an early age, and to have so many valuable learning experiences. Thank you for taking time to share your thoughts with us.