Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
The Power of Performance: The Lasting Impact of Theater in Education
According to a recent Forbes article – Research has found students who participate in theater programs exhibit higher scores on standardized critical thinking tests than those who do not – Not to mention it’s just fun to step into the shoes of different characters and worlds.
As all of Canyons School District’s five traditional high schools prepare for their fall musicals, on the latest episode of Connect Canyons we sit down with Alta High Theater Director Linze Struiksma, and two senior thespians, Kaylee Cannon and Taylor Fairbourn, as they prepare for the Hawk’s production of “Hadestown: Teen Edition”.
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyon School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach, and why we get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great. Students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections. So connect with us.
SPEAKER_03:According to a recent Forbes article, research has found students who participate in theater programs exhibit higher scores on standardized critical thinking tests than those who do not. Not to mention, it's just fun to step into the shoes of different characters and to experience different worlds. Welcome to Connect Campus. I'm your host, Francis Co. Joining me today is Lindsay Struxma, director of the Alpha High Theater Department, and some of her thespians from the Hawks All production of Hades Town Teen Edition. Thank you for joining us. Why don't you two introduce yourselves?
SPEAKER_04:Hi, I'm Taylor Fairborne. I'm a senior and I've been doing theater all four years, and it's awesome.
SPEAKER_02:I'm Kaylee Cannon. I'm also a senior and I've also been doing theater all four years.
SPEAKER_01:They seem to like what you're doing in my undergrad and then had been doing theater, like did the musicals in high school and did some other little theater things on the side, but really kind of nailed down it was my freshman year of college that I didn't think I wanted to teach music specifically, even though that is like what was my gateway. Really, really loved being on the stage and creating character. And I felt like with opera, it didn't allow for as much character work. It was more melodrama. So I wanted to go deeper in with that and started to take acting classes and really get into the acting center at the university and quickly switched my major over to theater and acting, but still was dating and singing stuff. And then realized that being real honest, I wanted to make money and I wanted to have stability, and that I really, really loved doing theater and being on stage myself, but I liked guiding people. And I liked the idea of having a set job where I wasn't trying to audition for something or try for something else. I switched over to theater education, and that kind of guided my path. I have two parents who are educators. My dad was a superintendent, my mom is still a teacher today. And so I was always kind of like the education in the blood, but I think I also thought it a little bit because I was like, I don't want to be like my parents, I'm different. And I mean, neither of them teach theater. So that's my difference. But I started subbing in my mom's classroom, realizing I really loved teaching and I really liked youth and working with youths. And so it just kind of led me into how do I bring together my love for theater, my love for music, and now my love for working with youth and being like a mentor. And that led me to teaching theater for a living. That's fantastic. How long have you been teaching?
SPEAKER_03:This is into your 14. Welcome. I have to admit, I'm very impressed. And especially with your humble brag. You know, my dad was a concert pianist. I studied opera, hair toss, hair task, hair toss toss toss. That's fantastic. How about you guys? What got you into theater?
SPEAKER_04:I also come from a musical family, and my sister really loves musical theater. And I remember, I think it was fifth grade. I went to go see for a field trip Matilda at Hale, and I wouldn't let anyone know it, but I really liked it. I remember we were on a trip to Vegas, and in the car, I had my monster on and I was playing the Matilda soundtrack, and my sister caught me and she was like, I'm not gonna judge you for this, and it's like all these things. And when we got home, she showed me the Pro Shot of Newsies on Broadway, and I was like, Okay, this is awesome. So I just started like going to see shows with my family, and I just I loved it so much. And finally I got to middle school where they had a theater department, and that's actually where I met Gayley.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. Wow, you guys go way back.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know. It was it was really fun. We did Duty and the Beast, but that year was COVID, so it got shut down. But the next year, it was the first show that I've ever actually gotten to do. It was Matilda. Full circle. Yeah, and I played Nigel, which is a really fun part. I just loved it. The next year we did Lion King and I was Timon. And then I got here, and it's just such an accepting place, you know. I I love telling stories, of course. I love telling stories and making a difference through like music and acting, but also as crazy as it sounds, it really is a family, you know? Yeah. I can have a bad day at school and I walk into the to the theater and it's like, okay, I'm finally home. Yeah. So it's just it's a place that I can have fun and I can be with peers, but it's also just a really warm and safe place for me.
SPEAKER_02:I wouldn't say I come from a musical family, but my parents would sing a lot, you know, and my mom can play the piano. So I grew up singing, and when I got to middle school, I took choir. And I remember like I love singing so much. I was also in debate, so I was doing choir and debate, and I liked them both, but there was like something missing from both of them because I liked singing, I liked performing. And then I was auditioning for the advanced choir class at my middle school. My teacher asked me, he's like, Well, why aren't you in theater? And I was like, Um, theater's kind of the weird people. This seems like nerdy, and he was like, Oh, okay. And then he enrolled me in the theater class anyway. And I was trying to convince my mommy to get me out of the class, and she's like, just try it out, it'll help you come out of your shell a little bit. And I ended up really liking it. I auditioned for Beauty and the Beast in sixth grade, and then Matilda Jr. in seventh grade, and then when we did Lang King, I was Rafiki, and that was my first like big part too. And I like opened the show. I was the first person to sing, I was by myself on the stage. No pressure. Just like the rush from it, and I got off to the show and like you did so great. I'm like, oh, so I continued to do it through high school, and it's just it's really great to portray a character and to step on a stage and get to feel somebody else's emotions and what they're going through, and it's really beautiful. I love it. And I love singing too, so it's a great look at it.
SPEAKER_03:You know, I think once you enter the theater realm, you do realize, not only realize, but embrace that it's for weirdos and it's for nerds. And we're okay with that. We we're like, yeah, I'm a nerd and I am proud of it. My coworkers pick on me all the time because I'm always geeking out about musicals. I can just at the drop of a word, I'll start singing a song and it'll be from something obscure like White Christmas. Tell me, why do you all feel that theater and the arts in general, a lot you all seem to get your start with music and then transition that into theater? Why is that so important as part of your education?
SPEAKER_01:I think the arts are a great place. Most of life, if you understand it, is just storytelling. That's all we're, I mean, you look at English and you look at history and all these other subjects, and they all tied back to telling stories and understanding other people's perspectives. And that's all that theater is. We talk about how theater is just like living honestly under imaginary circumstances. And so you're getting to understand the perspectives of somebody else who's not you know. And that to me is really, really beautiful. I just think theater, it can be just fun and spectacle and all of that. And that is valid. I think it tells messages and meanings and it teaches us lessons. But I think that's why it's the educational side of what it is. Education is all about us learning and growing and becoming our best selves. And I think that theater allows us to do that by learning who we are and learning from the mistakes and the successes of other people. And that's kind of what drew me to it always is there's some message I can gain. There's some way I could be a little bit better after watching a show and learning how to be a little bit better for myself. And I think that's something I really strive to do here at Alta is make sure that they know, hey, this show is awesome, but we're gonna teach a message. We're gonna look at what we want the audience to walk away feeling better about themselves or about a situation or learning from something. And so the learning aspect of what theater is is probably my biggest driving factor. And I don't think it's just because I'm an educator. I just think that's the nature of the thespian I am or a theater lover that I am.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I feel like it's there's so much that goes into a production. It doesn't matter if you're doing a play, if you're doing a musical, you're analyzing script, right? You're trying to figure out what your character means when they say something. Never mind working with someone across from you. And when I say this, how are they gonna respond? And how am I gonna send that back to them? You're doing choreography. I mean, there's so many elements to learn that you're learning different skills while you're portraying somebody else too. Yeah. What about you too? How have you felt that theater has changed your education? I think that it's taught me a lot about myself, to be honest.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, first of all, there's something I think we learned about it in theater two or theater three, where you try to think about where your character would be holding tension in their body. And through that, you learn where you hold tension in your own body. So whenever I'm feeling stressed, I now know I hold a lot of tension in my face, you know? And then I can apply that to a character, like this character would hold tension in his shoulders or like whatever. So it's just like learning stuff about myself and even, I mean, conversational skills, I think also can be up to Yeah. I mean, there's just so many things, but really just learning about yourself and others through storytelling, I think it's just really important, and it's the most fun way to do that, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, theater has absolutely helped me with my social skills and first of all, just getting rid of stage right a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:So you're saying your mom was right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. It's a forgotten for shell. It's true, yeah. But it also has taught me lessons, like structures saying, like, there are there's times where I've come out of a show and I like cried during the show. And over the next few weeks, I'm like, I shouldn't say that mean thing because I watched that show and I need to choose kindness. Like it really does, like the messages stick with you. And it's helped me just like studying a character and how they interact with people and how they move through, you know, the fictional world. It's I don't know, it's almost sort of helped me to like think about when I interact with people. I don't I feel like I'm almost studying like human interaction a little bit and how people get along, and so it's helped me in the real world.
SPEAKER_03:You're mindful of how each interaction.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. And like how other characters are human characters, but they're real.
SPEAKER_03:Listen, we all play characters now and then, right? You got a bad day, you want to try them. Sometimes you bottle that up, but then sometimes you gotta let it out. Like in theater, you know you have the people that you can go to and say, you know what, I just gotta be weird and nerdy for a minute, and I need you to appreciate that. And I'll be like, I got you. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about the show. This fall season, you guys are doing Hades Town. So for those who haven't seen it, tell me what is Hades Town about?
SPEAKER_04:You attacked him to you.
SPEAKER_01:I told him right before, I was like, they're gonna ask for a synopsis, Taylor G. And you he's I mean, I obviously know the show, I chose it. Sure. He's just the king of having studied his character and the show so in-depthly, more than I've seen most students do. It's pretty impressive. And so I was like, I feel like you know the show better than Nathan. And I have read this 83 times. Like, it's nice at acting.
SPEAKER_04:It's so unique. I just can't help but learn about all the cool things about it. The story, it starts, it's a story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology, and it's tied into the story of Hades and Persephone and both of their relationships and how they mirror each other through the show, even though they're so different. I'm trying to think of the best.
SPEAKER_01:No, but you say that that's said so well is the mirroring of what it is, because we see through Orpheus and Eurydice, which is this new love and this new story that's being told, this other more ancient and established love of Hades and Persephone, that has kind of gone a little rotten and has kind of just not as happy and like healthy as it used to be. Like you kind of see the way that they're paralleled and like the path that you could go on if you make certain choices to how your love will end up. I think that's one of like the underlying like themes of it. Yeah. But it's also then this story, Hermes is one of the other central characters and is the storyteller of the whole entire play and brings us back constantly to remind us this is a story. This is a story, and it opens and closes with we're gonna tell it again. We're gonna tell it again and again and again, even though it happens the same way, we do it with the hope that one day things might be slightly different. We're gonna tell it again, that we might learn a little bit different this time and things might be a little bit better or a little bit brighter. And so it's like those two stories in a snow globe. I don't know if that makes sense that you just keep shaking and hoping you'll see something slightly a little bit different so that you can learn and grow a little bit more.
SPEAKER_04:I think with that theme, there's also the theme of we're gonna sing it again. We're gonna, if something happens to you, you can learn from that. You can accept experiences as they are. If something happens, it's in the past, but you don't have to block it out, you know? And I think even though it's such a sad story, learning from that is the important part. And that's why we sing it again. I think that's one of the underlying themes too.
SPEAKER_01:I think storytelling, something that I think it makes me so passionate about theater in general, is it doesn't have to be pretty and it doesn't have to be polished, and it doesn't, I mean, we do that as a theater practitioners, right? Like we're like, get this dance right, whatever. But in general, the story is just what it is. And that's like our lives. We're just paralleling our lives as we tell things. And it's okay to talk about hard things. It is okay to talk about things that aren't pretty, and because that's how we learn and that's how we grow, and we can't just only talk about happy two-step dance and done. Like that that's not everything that the world has to offer.
SPEAKER_03:Not every story is a fairy tale ending.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I think that the more people can learn that and go, but what's the brilliance you can find? Yeah, then they know how to deal with the hard things in life because life is not always easy. There's gonna be beautiful vistas and it's gonna be awesome at times, but it's also gonna be hard sometimes. And there needs to have both, we need to hold space for both stories.
SPEAKER_03:And like you said, learning from maybe the darker times and finding the light in them. Like you said, Hades Town is not a fairies and sugar plums kind of story. And I agree, I think that's one of the great parts about theater, is you can find the joy from the messy bits of life. So I'm curious, what are your characters that you're portraying and what have you taken from them and how they've handled their stories?
SPEAKER_04:That's an interesting question. I'm playing Orpheus, who is kind of like the lover boy a poet. Yeah, he's the poet. He's a fish, and he's not shy by any means, but he's very inward. And I would say that I can be too, you know. He's a very relatable character to me. I think the way he's written is just so genius because he makes mistakes, but those mistakes don't define him. And I don't know, I I think he's a really beautiful character, and I've learned so much with as cringy as this sounds, the power of music, you know. I know that that theme is in like every Disney channel, but I really think that like he's a musician who is working on a song that will change the world, and I think that that power that he holds in that, I have now kind of taken to because I don't know, I have always loved music, of course, but I've never thought of it as something that can really, unless you're like Beethoven, you're not gonna write something that's gonna change someone's life. But maybe you can, right? And I think that's something that I've taken from it is really just like how powerful art can be and how powerful your art can be. Something that you make can really make a difference, and you shouldn't stop trying because you think it might not, you know?
SPEAKER_03:It doesn't have to be Beethoven. Exactly. It can still make a difference. That's a beautiful message.
SPEAKER_02:I play Persephone, she's the goddess of springtime, white with Hades, Lady of the Underworld, and it's she's definitely the saddest character I've played because she's very fun-loving, you know, and she loves to dance and party when she's in the overworld. But I mean, she's she's deeply sad when she's with Hades. And so one of the messages I think I've learned from her is when she's in the overworld, she's she's really happy, but she's almost kind of ignoring the sadness in her and the problems she knows that's going on. And Hades is obviously the villain of the story, but what's almost worse about Persephone is that she's an accomplice when she's just sitting back and sort of letting this happen, and she wants to do something, but she feels powerless about it. I think something I've learned as I'm developing the character is using the voice that you have one and standing up for what you believe in when not just sitting back and letting problems happen.
SPEAKER_03:That's one of the main messages I've taken away. What an interesting character to think of. She's the goddess of springtime, and springtime makes people happy, right? So she I imagine she feels like she has to put on this mask of joy and happiness. But then, I mean, you're married to a guy like Haiti. Yeah. That's there's gotta be difficulty in that. It's very cool to hear both of you taking such deep understanding of your characters and not only applying it on the stage, but to your lives as well. You're in rehearsals now. Hades town is coming up. What dates?
SPEAKER_01:Give your plug. What are we looking for? Our show opens on November 19th. We have shows the 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 24th. Obviously, not Sunday. And each of those shows starts at 7 p.m. We do something cool at Alta here where we have understudies for each of the main characters, and we give them an evening that is dedicated to them because of all their hard work. So Thursday night, the 20th, is our understudy night, where specifically they will be performing. And I tell you, these two are two of our leads, and they are incredible, but our understudies also are they're amazing. They're putting someone and it's job. It's really, I just get to see two beautiful, awesome casts. And so I would encourage everybody to come to see both casts. Either way, the 19th to the 24th, 7 p.m. here outside in our beautiful performing arts center. We're very lucky to have the space and we know that. And uh yeah, we're just really excited for the show to open. It's still got weeks. We've got tech to do, we've got stuff. Yeah, and we are finishing blocking it actually today, and it feels really, really exciting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And when do tickets go on sand? Tickets go on sale November 5th. I think at 9 a.m. I don't know. Um go ahead and cue at 9 a.m. It's November 5th. We do something called the opening night gala that people can come and mingle an hour before the show with the characters in character. Oh they get like refreshments and treats, and it's a special like opening night tradition that we do. Those tickets go on sale on the 27th to the Totterwich and are a little more expensive, but it's because it's like a big fun beiser. And it's so fun for the students to be able to interact as characters and be introduced as their characters and so themselves. It's super fun. So that's another option if people want something fun to do the hour before 6 p.m. on opening night the 19th. Very cool.
SPEAKER_03:As we wrap things up, we've talked a lot about the impact of theater on your own lives and you know, your hopes for what it will bring to others. What overall message would you like to leave when it comes to just it's to theater, to the art? You name it. What do you want people to walk away from this thinking about?
SPEAKER_01:I think every single show has a message. So I've definitely got like messages for specifically Hades Town that I want people to walk away with like love and redemption arc and like standing up for what you believe and having a voice. But I think a lot of those things actually apply to most of theater in general. Sure. My biggest thing when people leave any of my shows is understanding a little bit more about self, gaining a little more confidence in who they are, and knowing how to use their voice more, like finding their source that allows them to speak on things they believe in, they are passionate about, they care about. Everyone should know how to use their voice and be able to feel like they have the tools to do so. And that's probably my biggest thing for theater in general. I think you have two success stories right here.
SPEAKER_02:I think one of the biggest messages that should be taught from theater is just to have fun, you know, in a way of telling important stories and messages. But I mean, theater is a fun way to tell those messages. Theater, although I think about like you know, the characters and the story and the message and whatever, but also it's just a great way to meet people and have fun, and I hope that anybody who comes to see a show like leaves a song stuck in their head, you know, and dance and have a good time.
SPEAKER_04:I think the arts in general, this applies to like theater, music, dance, like everything. I think it can I mean if you if it's not for you, it's not for you, obviously. But I think everybody can get something out of it. And I think everybody should try to. You know, it even if it's like I know, like, even my dad has like gone he's seen some of my shows and he's like, I didn't love that one as much, but that other one, it's like it's it's not like a one and done deal. Like, you know, find find what you love. And like, I mean, even me, there are some shows I see, and I'm like, that wasn't my favorite. You know, I admire it for what it is, but I think there's beauty in everything, especially in the arts, and you should try to find that.
SPEAKER_03:And it's beautiful to see how you, as students, are not only passionate about what you're doing, but you're, you know, you're learning from your experiences, you're having fun with it. I know for me, theater was one of the best parts of growing up, and I to this day am a thespian nerd and proud of it. So I want to thank you all for joining us. I want to thank you for leading these young thespians. And I can't wait to see Hades Town break away. Thank you. And thank you for listening. If there's a topic you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, send us an email to communications at CanyonsDistrict.org.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram at Canyons District, or on our website, CanyonsDistrict.org.
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