PIZZUTI COLLECTION GETS ILLUMINATED IN A SHOW REVOLVING AROUND LIGHT
Theater’s playwriting, acting program for schoolchildren filled with lessons
Luis Osorio belted out the most evil cackle he could conjure. After all, he was the bad guy.
It was clear the 10-year-old was having a ball on stage Thursday at the Columbus Performing Arts Center.
“I love being the villain,” Luis, a fourth-grader at West Broad Elementary School, said. “I get to try something I’ve never tried before.”
His teacher, Terrie Black, agreed that Luis stepped out of his comfort zone — “He’s one of the bestbehaved kids,” she said — to act in a play that he and his classmates wrote.
“It’s about these princes and princesses trying to find fossils and save the world,” Luis said, adding that terms in the students’ script taught him the difference between different types of fossils.
Black’s students spent the past 20 weeks working with the theater organization CATCO through its in-school playwriting and acting residence program.
Throughout the school year, Andrew Protopapas, CATCO’S education coordinator, visited West Broad once a week to help students develop a play that focused on subjects they were studying — fossils and idioms, for example — and then perform it.
Three other classes at the West Side school also participated and acted out their plays Thursday, the annual culmination of the CATCO program.
Pupils from three other Columbus Public Schools took to the stage last week as part of the residency: Gables Elementary School, Highland Elementary School and Columbus City Preparatory School For Girls.
While the yearlong exercise helps students learn theatrical vocabulary, how to spot a theme, and more about traditional school subjects, Black said the program offers her students much more.
“We’re thinking about the educational piece, but they’re learning life skills,” said Black, who has participated in the residency each year of the five years she’s been at the school.
“What I hear from students is this is the first time they’ve done anything like this, that it’s a confidence builder, that Mr. Andrew doesn’t give up on them. They are so excited about being in the theater.”
Every year, she said, she watches one of her students come out of his or her shell through the writing and acting.
“They avoid everything in the classroom, either because they’re behind in their skills or it’s not their personality, and then, you see them just blossom,” Black continued.
Protopapas, who led sessions for the West Broad fourth-graders while his colleagues handled teaching at the other schools, said the program has given schools another tool to reach students since it started in 1995.
While students learn the fundamentals of playwriting and acting, it helps students, especially those who might be more kinesthetic learners with concepts — branches of government, math concepts, figurative language — they may struggle to understand in more traditional educational settings. And the life lessons, he added, can’t be understated.
Protopapas watches how the children’s attitudes change throughout the 20 weeks — 10 of which is spent on writing and the other 10 on auditioning, rehearsing and performing. They go from believing they could never write a script to doing just that, from being terrified about going onstage to overcoming those fears, he said.
“I love that realization that ‘I just did what I said I couldn’t,’” Protopapas said. “It’s really great to see the kids work together to accomplish those milestones.”
Nine-year-old Veda Beebe said she appreciated how “Mr. Andrew” acted as a guide but allowed students to do the bulk of the writing, from choosing a genre, naming characters and creating dialogue.
“I really liked how he let us do it instead of showing us lines or giving us a book and saying, ‘Learn this,’” said Veda, who played the main character, a paleontologist, in one of the plays.
Although Veda said she had stage fright, she made it through her multiple lines with little trouble despite an audience of more than 100 schoolmates, parents and supporters.
Some students were more animated than others, but every student delivered the lines they were assigned, most without too much direction from Protopapas, who sat at the front of the stage.
The props were minimal — a cape here, a crown there — but Protopapas stressed to the students that their acting was their costume.
Ja’honna Mccallum was ready for her stage debut: She said she always wanted to try acting but hadn’t had the opportunity — yet.
“You can act funny and do different things,” said Ja’honna, 10, who enjoyed telling other characters to “snap out of it” while onstage.
Plus, she said each of the four plays contained a good message, such as being kind or persevering.
To that, her teacher, Black, smiled.
“I forgot there’s a moral in each play,” Black said.
The program’s benefits are numerous, she said, and were on full display last week.
“He took something that was seemed so hard and made it manageable,” Black said of Protopapas. “This can bring the classroom to life.”
award@dispatch.com @Allisonaward