What do young thespians do when “cataclysmic events” — a global pandemic, riots in the streets — are happening all around them?
They put on a show. That’s what the students in Heather Lundy Kahl’s new acting school informed their teacher, she said.
“They came to me with a clipboard and said, ‘We have to put on a show. We need a meeting with you’,” Kahl said. “I said, ‘Absolutely.’ That’s the base of kids I’ve got.”
When the coronavirus pandemic broke out last year, Kahl, who formerly taught at Vancouver’s Riverside Performing Arts, started reconnecting with her students via Zoom.
“We met every Thursday, just to talk,” she said. “We were just talking about our feelings, talking about how we missed theater. That grew into me offering classes. I needed a job and my students needed a teacher.”
The first run classes turned into a Zoomed production of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” she said.
“Then the Black Lives Matter movement occurred, and I felt very called as a theater director and educator,” she said. “To work with kids who need their voices elevated. The mission shifted into the idea that when we teach kids the craft of acting, we’re teaching them compassion — better communication, better listening. It helps make this a better community.”
Kahl’s new theater school and company, Downstage Center Productions, means to draw LGBTQ+ kids — and others looking for a way to fit in — into theater arts.
“Kids who get labeled as ‘others’ — when they find their place in the arts, when they find their tribe in the world, it can be really powerful. So many kids in Vancouver need that opportunity,” she said.
If you’re interested in learning more about Kahl and her school, visit https://acting101withhk.com.
Theater in the rain
It was cold, rainy and a little loud with the nearby roar of Interstate 5 as 11 performers and a stage manager stepped onto a temporary wooden stage under a big tent Friday night on the grounds of Providence Academy. The appropriate centerpiece of the stage for this dramatic reading of “James and the Giant Peach” by Roald Dahl was a giant peach pit. The stage was loaned by the Liz Borromeo Dance Studio and the tent was sponsored by Castle Farms.
The masked actors projected their lines into two microphones, which projected the sound into nearby car radios thanks to an FM transmitter rigged up by Logan Quinn. About 25 cars pulled close in the gravel lot so parents and other supporters could admire the performance while staying socially distanced.
The view wasn’t perfect from every vantage point — and rain plopped onto windshields, on and off — but when time came for audience participation and final applause, car horns honked in a noisy chorus.
“Creative solutions to creative problems,” Kahl chuckled. “I think for the most part people were just thrilled to have an event to be part of, to leave the house and see some live theater.”
That’s definitely how the actors felt, she added. Rehearsals for “James and the Giant Peach” were held entirely via Zoom, she said, so the Friday night performance was “the first time they had all ever been in one place and one time. It was really special, and it made them pretty nervous.”
Which is appropriate for “James and the Giant Peach,” a pretty nervous and chaotic tale, which is typical of Dahl: the sort of story where blameless parents are eaten by a rampaging rhinoceros and wicked aunts are flattened by rolling fruit.
“It wasn’t like any other thing I’ve ever done,” said Nishanthi Berkey, who played one of the peach’s many odd inhabitants — an earthworm. “I was concerned it wouldn’t work, but it was really fun. Acting is a way you can imagine you’re someone else and you can look at things through their perspective. It’s really fun to become a character — and then it’s really fun to bring the community together.”
