Lawrence.com

Sooner or later, all conversations about theater for young people come back to audience.

After all, that's what really distinguishes children's theater from regular theater, where adults can be so steeped in etiquette that they become, well, how to put this -- pretty boring.

Veterans of Kansas University Theatre for Young People will vouch there's no such danger when performing for a room full of kids.

"It's just one of those things that you have to enjoy about children's theater," says KU senior Erika Crane, who plays the leading role in the upcoming "Still Life with Iris." "They are just so wrapped up in the story and the characters, and you can just feel their excitement much more than you can with an adult audience."

A common belief that reaching youth through theater is paramount has kept KU Theatre for Young People in character for half a century. TYP celebrates its 50th anniversary this weekend with a reunion, guest speakers and performances of "Still Life with Iris" and "Amber Waves."

Reflecting on the history of TYP has been great fun for Jed Davis, a leading author of children's theater books and director of TYP from 1960 to 1986. He can't help but chuckle as he recalls a short list of "controversial" plays staged during his tenure.

"There was a production that we did way back in the 1960s of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' and some people objected to the fact that here was this young girl living with these seven old men," he says.

"We remember those things, and we realize whatever show you put out is going to have some ideas in it, and ideas are potentially controversial," he continues. "That doesn't stop you from doing them, and it certainly never stopped us."

Origins

Davis took the reins of what was then called University Children's Theatre from Bea Brady Harvey, the former speech and drama teacher at Lawrence High School.

She had become director after the departure of Sally Six Hersh, who, as a KU senior, had staged one of the first two children's theater performance in university history. She directed "Huckleberry Finn" with actors ages 7 to 17 to celebrate Lawrence's Centennial. Fellow senior Mark Gilman had directed the University Players, a student group, in a production of "Rumpelstiltskin" earlier that year.

In 1955, Hersh and Nathaniel Eek, then director of KU's Experimental Theatre, submitted a formal proposal to Allen Crafton, speech and drama department chairman, to introduce children's theater and creative drama into the speech and drama degree program.

That same year, "Land of the Dragon" became the first department-sponsored "inaugural" children's theater production at KU. Hersh directed and designed the show as her master's project and, after receiving her degree, began teaching children's theater and creative drama courses.

By the time Hersh left KU, the children's theater program was staging two annual productions and touring to Wichita and Topeka.

Hitting the road

Davis expanded the program with tours to Wyandotte High School and the Kansas City Music Hall.

"The next step, in 1967, was to semi-professionalize the spring children's theater tour," Davis says. "We would pay the actors, and we would go out for a certain length of time. That's when we began getting sponsorships all over the state and several different states."

The troupe even traveled to Los Angeles with a production of "Jim Thorpe -- All-American," performed by a cast comprised mostly of Haskell Institute students.

A couple of factors put an end to such extensive touring. The Kansas Arts Commission stopped partially subsidizing the program as their funding decreased. In addition, the cost of a university education increased, and students took jobs to cover the expense, leaving little and then no time for touring.

A remnant of that era peeks out of a display case in the Murphy Hall lobby: an old wooden sign flanked by cartoonish thespians that says "KU-TYP."

"I remember making that sign, you bet, in the scene shop," Davis says. "It was attached to the top of a bulletin board on which we posted photos of the show and programs and fliers. We took it with us everywhere on tour."

Expanding a legacy

In the 1980s, a graduate student named Jeanne Klein came to KU to study with Davis, whose philosophies she admired.

"He was one of the few professors at the time who believed that the best way to improve the field is to actually talk with child audience members and find out what they are thinking," says Klein, who has conducted studies that explore the visual and verbal meanings children make of theater performances.

When Davis left in 1986, Klein became director of Theatre for Young People. It's a post she still holds, and holds dear.

"My goal has always been to maintain what Jed Davis built and to continue his philosophy of doing new plays, original plays, as well as dramatic adaptations that are quality, meaningful productions," she says.

In addition to two annual productions for grades 1-3 and 4-6 on the Crafton-Preyer Theatre stage, post-performance drama workshops are now offered in area schools in lieu of touring shows, and area elementary school students may enroll in after-school drama classes in conjunction with Klein's Children and Drama class.

Teachers like Jan Dicker have devoured just about everything TYP has offered during her 30 years as an educator.

"We've taken children in parents' cars and paid for buses and done everything that we possibly can," says Dicker, a fourth-grade teacher at Sunset Hill School. "Kids need to know about all kinds of art, not just what they experience in the art room."

As the education director at Topeka Civic Theatre & Academy, Jennifer Fletcher, who did graduate work under Klein at KU, sees every day the impact theater can have on youth.

"It's such a rewarding experience to see how much they can learn through drama and how much their lives are enriched," she says of child actors and audiences.

Kids rule

One ongoing challenge in children's theater is getting theater students to take it seriously.

KU alumnus James Still, who didn't study children's theater at KU but has gone on to write plays and television programming for kids, has been in the business long enough to know that many fresh-out-of-school theater majors get their first jobs in children's theater.

"A lot of kids don't want to be in a TYP play because sometimes there's this idea that it's not REAL theater or it's not as complicated or sophisticated," he says. "I think if you talk to these kids, for example, who are doing 'Amber Waves' -- they have their hands full. They are working very hard."

Klein says she arrived at KU in the midst of an ongoing struggle to legitimize the field of children's theater. One problem, she says, is that too many companies are doing dumbed-down shows for young audiences that are more intelligent than they're given credit for.

"This country has many prejudices against children," she says. "Adults seem to consider children to be inferior, and we marginalize children in a lot of ways. There's another side of that coin which says, 'No. Children are complete human beings. They ought to be respected for who they already are.'"

And when you understand that, Klein says, and really put something out there that kids can respond to -- the rewards are instantaneous.

"They will tell you immediately, in the moment, what they're feeling," Klein says. "It's the full range of emotions. Children haven't learned those adult rules."

Thank goodness.