Off With Kid Gloves, On With Kid Love

Passage; Children's Peace Theatre.  Credit: CPT

Last March, I wrote a piece entitled New Directions: Thoughts For Aspiring Directors Based On The Little I've Managed To Figure Out So Far. It centered around theatre creation with adults and as such, I omitted one suggestion that I feel so strongly about, I knew I had to write about it on its own.  I not only recommend this piece of advice, but would probably mandate it if I could.  It is THAT invaluable.

EVERY director, no matter how gifted or esteemed; no matter how many awards or honours bear his or her name should - at least once every other year – do work for kids or, even better -- work with kids. 

No, I'm not kidding.

Directing children and adolescents calls on creativity, courage and compassion at magnified levels.  I must reach those who walk this planet with significantly less experience in the life bank than I, who look at it through a lens neither as wide nor as filtered as mine.  At the same time, I must widen that lens.  As an educator and director, my job is to communicate and negotiate.  Each time I work with kids, there arrives a moment when I am at a loss as to how to make them buy in.  In that moment I remember how spoiled I am working with adult actors, with whom I share an implicit understanding.

Young people keep me on my toes in an entirely different way.  If they're bored they don't feign otherwise.  There is no artifice, no filter.  They have immediate access to their feelings and are often overwhelmed by them.  The adult theatre I co-create brings me boundless satisfaction and broadens my humanity.  But as much as I get off on being in a roomful of grown-ups, delving into the hierarchical structure of prostitution or spotlighting the war in Kashmir or shining a light on resistors in Nazi Germany or excavating the mind of a wannabe school shooter –  I also take great satisfaction in creating works that address poverty and inequity with Grades 4s.  I embrace confronting the word 'nigger' in To Kill A Mockingbird in a Grade 8 classroom, or unpacking issues of identity, power, and injustice with 11-year-olds.  Sacred, profound moments of illumination.

Bare; Toronto Youth Theatre. Credit: Seanna Kennedy Photography

A colleague told me recently at the end of a child-filled day, in a surprised tone, that “You don't speak to them like they're young – you speak to them like you speak to me.”  Yes.  We as adults know when we are being condescended to.  They know too and the moment they sense that, you've lost them.  I approach children and youth expecting intelligent interaction, and work to raise the level of discourse to that which reflects their very best.  Kids will live up to our expectations; they will live down to them too.  I refuse to engage with them as if they cannot step up to meet a more sophisticated realm of thought.  

They can.  They do.

Creating with young people necessitates invoking the child within.  Residing solely in Adultmind erodes the ability to see the world, and the work, through a child's eyes.  At the same time, the crispness and clarity of adult perspective is crucial.  With kids, my job is not to guide them in a didactic way, but to present an array of thoughts and artistic possibilities.  Process is paramount; they participate in decision-making and thereby take ownership of the work.  My aim is to take children and teens from one level of maturity and insight to another – to move them through a process whereby at the end they are more evolved people; more probative and empathetic, thinking about the world more deeply, moving to the next experience in their lives as more of who they are meant to become.

Passage - A Moving Experience; Children's Peace Theatre.  Credit: CPT

In 2014 I created a new theatre initiative called Teenage Graceland.  I had been so incredibly moved and invigorated after directing the musical Bare for Toronto Youth Theatre and Emotional Creature for V-Day Toronto that I knew that I had to make working with youth a larger part of my life.  Creating with children is one joy; creating with teenagers is another.  Both bring me immeasurable fulfillment, but witnessing teens who are figuring out who they are in the world excavate and question the issues of our time is something I feel honoured to be a part of.  

The conversations we have had -- those delicate and wondrous moments when the child and the adult present themselves at once -- are like nothing else.  When I was casting Bare, I was pressured to put two young men in their twenties in the leads.  I flat-out refused, and cast a 14 and a 15-year-old who proceeded to rip my heart out for the next two months.  When Teenage Graceland debuted Admissions, our first production, was what said to me afterward was "That wasn't a great 'teen' show, that was a great show."  I knew that it would be.  I never doubted my cast for a moment.  They have entire worlds inside of them.  Those worlds do not magically materialize at 17.  They are in bloom a decade before that.  This is why I also love exploring with them a decade before that.  

They have entire worlds inside of them.

Admissions; Teenage Graceland. Credit: Ayesha Mansur

I am troubled by the lack of respect I have witnessed for theatre for and especially by young people.  I've heard people whom I admire make comments that were a dart to a disillusioned heart.  I've been asked by colleagues what I'm working on, responded that I'm directing a show with a cast of young people, and been met with “Oh, I'm so sorry.”  Although said in jest, it speaks to a real attitude that exists in our industry – the idea that child or youth theatre is paying dues, or something one does in desperation or under duress.  I've had people say “Hang in there, you'll get something soon”, as if what I just said I was doing wasn't legitimate.  Not only is that attitude insulting, it is drenched in ignorance.  The journey I have been on, beginning with three years as a preschool teacher and now eight as an arts educator, is incredible.  The work is challenging, the rewards incomparable.  It has given me insight into the teenaged psyche, the underestimation of childhood intellect, and the complexity of the emotional landscape of adolescents and children. 

Emotional Creature; V-Day Toronto. Credit: Aliyah Guillemette

Everytime I enter a roomful of young people, half of my heart flutters.

Each half of my theatre life has informed the other, and enriched me as a woman and an artist.  Everytime I work with young people, I bring something back to the next adult piece I direct that I simply would not have had without my last experience with children.  Similarly, my work in adult theatre allows me to bring a sharpened skill set to my time with kids.   I cannot imagine doing one exclusively; they both feed me so.  The commitment I have made to children and teens not only breeds tremendous care in creating work, but makes me more cognizant of the people who are growing into my next adult audience.  Audience engagement doesn't begin at 20.  And so part of my work is to awaken them and propel them from child audience to adolescent audience to adult audience – to make them want to make that transition.  How do I honour them and inspire them into craving a continued relationship with theatre?  That fuels me. 

The engine that powers all theatre is the same.  It is the quest to investigate the millions of ways to be in and engage with the world; to understand what it is to be a person.  Personhood is not solely embodied by those of us who wear the label of "adult".  It is our common experience.  A strange and wonderful gift it becomes when I explore it with people who have lived less life, but whose life is no less.  

If I possess any wisdom at all, kids have contributed greatly to it.  They make me better.  We ignite each other.

- TT