Acting

My first love in theatre was Acting. As a dramatic child, my parents encouraged me to do the middle school play and I was hooked. I was entranced with becoming different characters, learning about them, and embodying someone different than me. Theatre was an escape. In High School I worked closely with our Best Buddies program and was a part of PAL PE, Peer Assisted Learning, working with students in a level-3 special education classroom. When we needed an audience for a dress rehearsal, I suggested we invite those friends to come and watch. I came onstage and one of the students started yelling "MADDIE! MADDIE! I KNOW HER!" and I barely was able to get through my monologue. 

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From then on I was determined to figure out how to make what I loved more than anything, accessible to those students. That purpose came to a head at The University of Northern Iowa my senior year during To Touch The Moon. A completely devised process, this mammoth of a production encompassed 3 interactive "episodes" that took students on the Autism Spectrum and other Exceptionalities on a journey, learning about The Moon, science, Communication, and theatre. I was part of the devising process, an actor in the production, an Episode Leader, helped build the set, and so much more. This process was hard - but so rewarding. Getting to tell caregivers that they get to sit back and watch their student thrive was thrilling. One of the students we worked with was mute, their school associate had never heard them use their voice. By the end of Episode 3, in Houston Control Room Command Center, this student was giving verbal instructions, into a microphone, to their team on "The Moon". 

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Acting gives students a means of escape. It is a safe place to not be you. To explore what it means to be someone else. As an educator, it is my job to make sure I am setting all of my students up for success. As an Actor, it is my job to give a voice to a character that someone in the audience is going to connect to and relate.