Why Grove Theatre?
 

"As an author I love a good story. One with heart. One where the characters grow. That’s why I teach private voice and direct musical theater.  Each year I have the privilege of working with kids who improve and learn and grow and produce a product that shows that growth.

But a few years ago, when my co-director, an award-winning equity actress retired after we had directed dozens of shows, I thought I, too, was done. I knew I would never find such a great partner and team player with incredible talent, skills, high expectations, and who really cared about kids and believed they could put on quality shows with high production values.

That was until I had the opportunity to work with Beverly Pruzina at Woodgrove High School. Over the past few years, I have worked with her on Mamma Mia, Elf, Alice by Heart, Little Women, and Seussical. This year spans Hadestown to Cinderella!

I have watched Beverly Pruzina build an amazing full-time drama program at WHS. Her program grew because she programmed and produced quality theater for the community and because she teaches her students life lessons that go beyond the stage. Beverly is one of the hardest working teachers I know, often working seven day weeks and into the evenings as a production reaches show dates. One year besides all the after-school plays and class productions, she also put up three musicals.

Obviously, the Grove Theater is healthy, growing, and vital because of the traditions and values she’s built into each school year. These include:

• Involving the students in show selection for the season

• Honoring seniors by having them tap out on the stage after their last curtain call

• Focusing on one student at a time by having them sit in the middle of a circle while their fellow classmates acknowledged their strengths

• Asking students to claim personal growth goals

• Acknowledging and highlighting all students involved in a production from the pit to the tech crew by a circle of introductions.

• Teaching respect for one another and respect for what happens on and off the stage

• Making the black box home for any student

• Encouraging student directors and high school leadership in positions

Because of the learning afforded the Cappy Award experience where Beverly has served as not only director, but guide, facilitator and advisor, when the Musical Theater class put on Seussical this year, she required students to have both onstage and offstage roles.

 

The student directors came up with a vision for modernizing Seussical which spilled into costuming and set design. This inspired a beautifully unique production with their handprints all over it.

What I took away is the universal theme, “A person’s a person no matter how small” and the accompanying hand symbols that went with it whoever was singing that all important phrase. The beauty of that sentiment will now carry over beyond the stage.  Isn’t that what theater should do? And isn’t that the story we are telling?

Our discussions as directors more often involve teaching points and life lessons for teens in a transitional phase. Our aim is to raise young adults who create beauty on and off the stage. But that means the director is a teacher who cares about her students as more than just actors to move around on the stage. That is the heart of her theater story and why I work with Beverly Pruzina.

She helps kids by giving them the opportunity to rise to a challenge, the disciplined setting to work hard, and the satisfaction of producing something beautiful.

That’s the story Beverly Pruzina and WHS Grove Theater will tell.

And it’s a good story."

 

-Submitted by Ann Marie Stewart
www.AnnMarieStewart.com