Huge smiles bloom on young children’s faces as they watch high school theater students perform for them. Theater for Young Audiences, or TYA shows are a Bowie high school theater program tradition since the early 90’s that give AISD elementary schools the opportunity to experience a short but entertaining performance.
There are ten TYA shows being performed this year, and all are based off of a short story made for kids. There’s a variety of fables, fairy tales and classical stories, but all of them turned into sweet productions that bring joy to AISD elementary schools.
“The purpose of putting on these TYA shows is to share theater with younger students who don’t have access to theater. There’s a lot of schools who don’t have a theater program, even through middle school, so we try to give students an opportunity to experience theater at an early age,” says Marco Bazan, one of the theater directors here at Bowie.
Mary Jensen, a freshman in the JBHS theater program, is in the TYA show Miss Nelson is Missing, which is about an elementary school teacher that suddenly disappears.
“Unfortunately, the kids treat her really disrespectfully and she goes missing,” Jensen said. “This really evil teacher comes in and she’s really mean to the kids, making them wish Miss Nelson was back. I play Kimberly, an eight year old in Miss Nelson’s class who wants to be a supermodel.”
The Velveteen Rabbit, a classic children’s fable written in 1922 is another one of the stories Bowie theater plans to turn into a live performance. Sophomore Phoebe Evans landed a major role in this TYA show, giving her an opportunity to showcase her skills.
“The Velveteen Rabbit is about a boy who has all these toys that can come to life,” Evans said. “His favorite toy is the rabbit, but the boy gets separated from it when he gets scarlet fever and the velveteen rabbit is contaminated. At the very end though, the velveteen rabbit gets to turn into a real bunny and is reunited with the boy. I play the role of the Nanny, so I take care of the boy and also tidy up the house a lot.”
This year’s TYA shows are not directed by Bowie’s theater teachers, but actually by seniors. Some of the seniors that have the honor of directing these shows are Gibson Gelfer, Jayden White, and Audrey Cullinane.
“The TYA shows are completely student driven, the students direct it, the cast it, we just produce the shows,” Bazan said. “The responsibility lies on our student directors, and I think it’s awesome to watch the students direct and create their own art.”
Apart from giving many more opportunities to underclassmen, being in a senior-directed show means the auditions are also run by the seniors.
“Auditions were pretty chill because the seniors are directing it this year, so we didn’t have to audition in front of the actual director,” Jensen said. “We just did a monologue, which was super fun.”
Auditions are only one of the first steps that go into making and completing a production, even ones as small as the TYA shows. Sets, costumes, and practice, practice, practice is what pulls everything together.
“Right now, they are all in the beginning phase, but I’m excited for all of them to come together,” Bazan said. “Students have the leadership roles for the TYA shows, but we help get them going, make sure things are paid for and that there’s arrangements made for them to travel to the schools.”
Amongst the chaos of making sure the TYA shows are ready, the performers dedicate hours upon hours to completely memorizing their lines. The time they spend committing the lines to memory varies between each student, but most spend the better part of a week on it.
“I practice memorization about two hours a week,” Evans said. “It depends on the show but for the TYA shows it only takes a week until I know my lines.”
Being in Bowie theater means each performer has to memorize a ton, and not just their own lines. They have to know their cues, like when to appear on stage and the line before theirs so they know when to speak. Over the years, Bowie high school theater students have developed a strategy that works for them and perfected it.
“What I do is write the first letter of every word of my line on a separate paper and then I go through it and try to think of what the word is,” Jensen said. “This helps me a lot.”
Many weeks pass until the TYA shows are ready to be performed to the public, meaning that the elementary schoolers finally get to experience weeks of hard memorization and preparation by the JBHS theater program. This is super exciting for teachers and students alike.
“I’m excited when we do something a little more unique for one of our shows and this year we are actually performing a show written by Mr. Flick, a teacher here at Bowie high school,” Bazan said. “I love that it’s a bit different than what we normally do.”
The Bowie theater program performs the TYA shows both at Bowie and at the elementary schools. They are on the Bowie campus November seventh through tenth and tour the AISD elementary schools the week after.
“I’m really excited to travel to different elementary schools, and my brother goes to one of the ones we go to,” Jensen said. “I’m excited to perform for him.”
