Stage and Classroom: The Interplay of Theater and Education with Actor Brad Wages

Looking to create a lasting impact on your students? Tune in as we turn the spotlight on the power of theater education. We're joined by Brad Wages, actor and seasoned theater education maestro from Venice Theater's Education and Community Engagement Department. We dive deep into a discussion about his journey in the world of theater and how he uses his expertise to transform students' lives and learning experiences.

Get ready to expand your teaching toolbox as we explore the magic of theater skills and education. From simple theater games that ignite group dynamics and creative energy to academic advantages such as improved information retention and social skills development, we cover it all. Hear firsthand stories about students and the transformative power of theater education. It's not just about acting; it's about growing, discovering potential, and creating meaningful connections that go beyond the classroom walls.

But the work doesn't stop in the classroom. We also delve into the crucial role of theater education advocacy. We share ways you can support arts initiatives and share success stories that highlight the good in education. Learn how you can be a part of this mission to bring about positive change in education. So join us, learn, be inspired, and take a front-row seat as we shine a spotlight on the brighter side of education.

To connect with Brad Wages or Venice Theatre and learn more about their student programs, go to https://venicetheatre.org.

Transcript

Lisa Hassler: 0:11

Welcome to The Brighter Side of Education. I'm your host, Dr. Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? Today's episode focuses on theater education. How can theater education enhance student learning outcomes and address social concerns arising in the classroom? In current classrooms, where student focus wanes, disruptions in classrooms are rising and the social-emotional well-being of our youth is troublesome, theater education emerges as a beacon of hope.

Lisa Hassler: 0:57

In the Arts Education Partnership Series, Arts Count, authors Gwen Middleton and Mary Delerba delve into the benefits of theater education in their 2022 report titled Theater Counts how Theater Education Transforms Students' Lives. It highlighted theater education's impact, which transcends student demographics, age groups and learning settings. However, it's disheartening to note that, as of the last comprehensive study conducted 15 years ago, nearly 4% of public elementary schools provided theater instruction and less than half of public secondary schools integrated theater education into their curriculum. Moreover, data from a 2012 report by Americans for the Arts indicates a concerning disparity, revealing that fewer schools offered theater courses during the school day compared to those offering extracurricular theater programs. Additionally, schools serving wealthier students were more likely to provide theater education during the school day than schools serving students in areas with higher poverty rates.

Lisa Hassler: 2:03

Joining me today to discuss the benefits of theater education in ways to incorporate it into all students' lives is Brad Wages. He is the lead instructor at Venice Theater's Education and Community Engagement Department. Welcome to the show, brad, thank you. Can you please tell us about yourself and how you came to theater?

Brad Wages: 2:22

Sure, I was born and raised in a very small town in Oklahoma that had very little access to theater or to the entertainment world at all. But I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and as a child I was cast in a national Hershey's commercial. I was 2 feet tall and about 4 feet wide, and I had lost my teeth, and so I was cast holding a chocolate bar, smiling with my teeth, and that was one of my first introductions. It was just being in the right place, having the right physicality.

Brad Wages: 2:56

But, through that moment I realized how much I enjoyed being in front of the camera, how much I enjoyed the act of the director telling me what to do and creating a little character. So I pursued that and my parents were wonderful people that saw my love for it. They encouraged it. They continued to take me to auditions. I became one of the few working child actors in the state of Oklahoma. My parents would take me out of school and my mother would homeschool me when I would get a job away from home, so we would go away for eight weeks to 12 weeks while I could perform and my mother would be my teacher. That continued, of course.

Brad Wages: 3:35

Graduated, ended up getting my degree in theater performance, traveled to Atlanta for many years and created a career for myself, became a union actor, went on to Chicago for several years and then I ended up down in Florida because I had worked for several theaters here when I was living in Atlanta. I had was job didn't quite a bit to theater in Florida. I came down to from Chicago to do a show at theater up in the panhandle and it was it was the winter, it was freezing and I had left you know minus 30 degree weather and came down, and I walked the beach on Christmas Day and I said this is where I belong. So I stayed in Florida, and through that, though, I ended up getting hired for several national tours. I was on the road off and on, for about four years, and I came home from my last tour and I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and, you know, on a regular basis was going to be nice.

Brad Wages: 4:34

And this theater contacted me, knew of me and seen some of my work and basically I was tempted by someone saying you can still create, you can still be a viable force in the entertainment world, but you're going to be able to sleep in your own bed. And I took the job and have never regretted it, have loved going from I still perform and I still go out on the road when I'm called. But I have really loved making transition from active performer 100 percent of the time to becoming an educator, because I look far and the back on those people that saw a talent and a drive and a passion in me and I wanted to be able to get that back and I'm thrilled to do it.

Lisa Hassler: 5:15

It was a little drama, kid, when I was growing up. I didn't didn't get into a Hershey commercial, but but I was, like, I think, a leprechaun. I was a leprechaun, I had my own pot of gold and that's your imagination.

Brad Wages: 5:29

That's what. That's what we do.

Lisa Hassler: 5:31

It really does. I remember we had a drama club in my elementary school and then went on to middle school. When I applied to become part of it it was said why do you want to be in the drama club? And I said, um, you know, I don't know. And so my grandma said put that, you're a natural born ham. So I did and he loved it and I got in and I never looked back. I didn't understand that it all. My grandmother said it but the whole family thought that was quite a riot and I was like I'm not really a ham. Now my experience with Venice Theater was when I was teaching at Epiphany Cathedral School, teaching second grade. Our middle schools were part of your Venice Theater program. My own daughter got to be a part of it. So if you want to just give a little overview about like, what was that program like and how did you design it?

Brad Wages: 6:21

I'd love to. We were very gifted to partner with Epiphany. I thought it was an outstanding program. I thought it was a great idea when the principal came to us our first year. She came to us around January and said we want to start a theater program. Our theater was right across the street from the school. It was so close for the students to come to us, which I thought was a very important thing. They weren't learning a new skill within their education environment, they were coming into a theater, they were coming into a creative space. When the principal contacted us and said it's January and I would like a full scale production in March, my teeth dropped.

Brad Wages: 6:56

That first year I wrote a show called Gates of Imagination, which was based on the poems of Shell Silverstein oh fun. And then I added contemporary music and we created a storyline that basically was a young girl who goes through a gate and she enters the world of the imagination and we incorporated all of that. And then we added dance because I wanted the kids to feel what it was like to have to learn that physicality. Many of them, of course, were in sports and it's very similar because there's a lot of the same muscles that are used, but the way that we think of dance and the way that we think of football is very different. So it was very successful that first year we managed to pull it off. The parents loved it, the kids had a great time, the school saw the value of the program and then we continued for 10 or 11 years and at that point we decided to start using well-known scripts. So we found a school version of well-known musicals Godspell, guys and Dolls, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, some classics in literature as well. So then we started.

Brad Wages: 8:00

The kids would come over the beginning of the school year in September. We would rehearse all year. I would have them two mornings a week for about 45 minutes, but we rehearsed the entire year and then they were able to put on a full scale, fully costumed, fully realized production. That helped to boost their imagination, to let them think outside the box and to sort of test where they wanted to be.

Brad Wages: 8:23

We also taught basic acting skills. We taught theater terminology. We instructed them on how a production is put together, who's responsible for what. We taught them physical awareness what's happening around you, how are you involved in it and how is your involvement important. In the beginning they were very cold and they were very stiff for a better word. But as the years went on and the reoccurring students came in, they became more and more relaxed with the process of being silly or pretending to be another human being in another environment with different realities. And to see that success over those years was stunning for us. We had some great success stories, but it was the smiles on the kids' faces, my students' faces, starting with the fear. It's always started with fear in the beginning, but by the time we got to performance, to see that change in attitude, that confidence was just, it was a heartwarming thing and that growth was something that cannot be measured.

Lisa Hassler: 9:26

Oh, absolutely. I would witness it. Being a second grade teacher and then seeing these students as they were entering your program when they were in fifth grade and sixth grade and seventh, and being able to see that change in them, that was so impressive to me and my first viewing as an audience member to be able to see the level of professionalism that they were being able to be immersed in. This just elevated all expectations.

Brad Wages: 9:54

The more that we invested in the production itself. We saw that investment coming back from the kids, from our students. We are a real theater. We're second in the nation. So everything they were given was a costume was built for you. This is not just a dress. Somebody pulled out of a closet. It was like no, we measured you, we built you a costume specific to your character. And that moment, that feeling of having something built for you, that is such a glorious feeling for a student to go. I'm important enough that they're doing this for me, and so they're. They're investment back to us and they're investment back to themselves to continue to grow.

Lisa Hassler: 10:31

What skills do children develop through participating in theater?

Brad Wages: 10:35

I think the most important, lisa, the children. Yet first and foremost it's confidence. You know some kids in the school classes. I know I never had this problem because, as you said, I was a big ham too. We had to get up in front of the classroom and read something. I had no problem. You know I'd be the first to raise my hand and go, let me do it.

Brad Wages: 10:56

But I know that there are many students who get so shy and so scared of standing in front of a group, and when we put them in front of a theater, it's not a classroom of 20 students, it was an audience of 400 people or more. So we watched and it was a slow process for some students. For some it's not a slow process, but it was first and foremost it was confidence, believing in themselves, learning empathy through how a character feels about other characters. Feeling it's okay to be happy for someone, feeling it's okay to be concerned if the other character is having a bad moment. Theater skills teaches us how to communicate. It teaches about collaboration, group focus, problem solving, active listening, which is, I think, a really important thing.

Brad Wages: 11:49

In theater we try to teach our students not just to listen to what another character has said to you, but listen to the intonation of the voice, listen to how it's being said. There are so many things that aren't being said in the words that we say and play. Scripts are written that way specifically quite a bit, but it's active learning. Active listening became a very important thing for us to hear exactly what you need to hear, then take it in and figure out what it is you're really hearing and what it is that somebody's asking from you. So active listening became very important to us how to express ideas Just some kids, where some students are afraid or just timid or don't know that they have the right to say I have an idea and I would like to share it, right.

Brad Wages: 12:44

So we tried to teach them that your opinions, your ideas, your thought processes are so valuable and they can help to actually change and shift the final product. So it's not just that the teacher was saying we're doing this period, it was. I see it like this, but I'm open to suggestions that empowers a student to go hey, my ideas are valuable, my ideas are important, and so I think that that's a part of the confidence that comes through it. But I think the confidence is the biggest thing that we learn from theater skills.

Lisa Hassler: 13:23

How can theater programs help address the disconnection and lack of social skills in children, especially after the challenges of the pandemic, where they were a lot of that distance and that separation and isolation a lot of them had felt, and that the increased use of electronic devices that are being used as communication instead of they face-to-face the body language. So how do you think that theater programs could be helping these kids?

Brad Wages: 13:50

First and foremost, in our rehearsals and our classes, the first thing that we say is get rid of the phones, because kids will try to hold their phones Just as a security blanket. No, put it down, walk away from it. One of the basics of theater is that we learn eye contact, that on stage, if you're talking to a character, you're looking at that character, you're reading what's happening in their eyes, you're seeing their face, you're seeing their expressions. So that's one of the first things that we find that. You mentioned the pandemic. A lot of my students.

Brad Wages: 14:25

I saw that disconnect because they had been away from each other for a while, and even students that had been great friends before the pandemic. Being away from them for a year and a half, they were very wary. Coming back together, girls got them. They liked to hug, they see each other, they like to hug. I'm aware of the girls that would run up and see each other and hug. I was very aware of the same girls being very timid about it after the pandemic. But you saw the yearning, you saw the oh my gosh, that's my friend. The pandemic scared us, but we also lost a little bit of our social connection.

Lisa Hassler: 15:04

So theater skills again.

Brad Wages: 15:05

It's you learn group dynamics, you learn an energy feed that every theater game and theater games are so important and there's always a learning curve to it. There's always a reason we do theater games it's not to waste time. Some of my students will go, we're just playing. I will then define what that game means and what they can get from that game. So that sort of changes like the way we play the game, because they understand there's something to gain.

Brad Wages: 15:34

But theater games, theater skills, it's the eye contact, it's the group dynamics, it's interaction. It's not looking at your phone, not looking at your tablet, not staring ahead at the classroom. It is everything about theater relies on all of us working together and that, coming back from the pandemic, coming from the world of cell phones and laptops and iPads, that if we can put those away and we can look at each other once again and we can rely on the partner, then it opens up again. It opens up that sort of creative energy that has been locked away because of the pandemic. That gets locked away, I think, daily, because we're so onto our electronic devices. I think it continues to.

Brad Wages: 16:23

It does, I will say it does trained students on one side of their brain, but it kills the other side of the brain. So by putting down those like 20 devices, by playing these games, by learning to problem solve as a group, the interaction needed to put a production together or even to play a successful theater game, those are the skills that we get from that. Even though we are still reeling from the pandemic and we're constantly on our phones, I think if we can take those moments away and again eye contact, talk to your partner, play a game, explore the imagination, we forget how to imagine A lot of what we do in life. The answers are for theater students. It's sometimes it is their saving grace.

Lisa Hassler: 17:17

Yeah.

Brad Wages: 17:18

It is the place that they can suddenly go. I'm at home.

Lisa Hassler: 17:22

I'm relaxed. These are my people. Yeah, yeah, I fit. That's my drive Right. And there's a lot of research that actually supports the academic benefits of theater education. Can you talk about what those benefits are?

Brad Wages: 17:36

Certainly, as I started to say, there is a forgotten group. I mean, we have the athletes who are the natural born athletes. They click immediately because that's who they are. Then we have a group I always call it the marching band group because they like music but they don't necessarily want to sing, but they get into a marching band situation and again they're part of a group that is working toward a greater goal.

Brad Wages: 18:04

But there's, a group of kids that maybe aren't athletic, that don't want to be in the marching band, and those are sometimes the forgotten group, For lack of a better word, and I'm sorry, in old school we called them the geeks or the nerds. Basically they were the creative souls. They're the creators, and theater gave them a place to belong. It gives them a way to find their tribe. But the academic benefits have been tested and have been proved. So much Information retention, because we learn to memorize a script. Once students don't realize they're learning the process of how to memorize something. But that memorizing, of course, then comes back into play in your academics. You're studying, you're tested on things, you're expected to know things, so they're learning how to retain that information. They're learning how to memorize and keep information inside their head without realizing it. Again, I said it, they're thinking outside the box. They're learning math skills. Quite a few shows, of course, are musicals, or band or chorus. Music is all math. It's all measures of music, it's all math. So, without realizing it, that skill of three, four music, four, four music, two, four music, how many measures do I sing? How long do I hold the note? It's all math. Dance is the same thing. It's like OK, I swing my arms four times Now I go to the floor for three counts so that skill can be transferred to just living in your math class, learning your math class.

Brad Wages: 19:44

It teaches enhanced reading skills. When we read we don't always retain because kids want to do their studies and get it over with quickly. Sometimes that's not the most effective way because they're not really reading the story, they're not really soaking in what the story has to say. As they work on a script or a sketch. The same thing can then be, of course, pointed to their reading skills for their history class. You learn to have empathy for what was happening. It's like, oh, it wasn't just a war in 1787. It was people were fighting for something they believed in. People were killed, People were saved. There were heroes who came to the rescue. It just helps in the reading skills and how that we take that in into our minds.

Brad Wages: 20:37

Social skills are greatly enhanced because, again, the interaction, the thinking outside the box, the working on a project together and what we've seen through those evaluations and tests are that there is a higher graduation rate with students who are in theater arts than students who are not. There are higher test scores. Sat scores are, overall better, they're higher and there's a motivation. They learn motivation. You're motivated to get up and do something. You're motivated to finish your studies and to do it in a timely manner. I think that's because we always have a rehearsal schedule when we work on anything. So they know by the end of the week I have to have ABC completed and I think that can transfer over to. By the end of the week I have to have chapters two and four completed. In history, I have to have my math history done. So I keep learning to keep to a schedule and adhere to what is expected from yeah.

Lisa Hassler: 21:37

And I think also when I think about having to be patient and to be able to take turns, like this is not my turn to speak, so maybe that impulse control and the controlling of my behavior, my choices, that's really important, because what I say or do is going to impact somebody else and can't all be talking at the same time in a place. You're going to be taking your turns, you're going to be waiting and listening for your part and so and you're putting it into action, so it's not just stationary, you're moving and you're engaging in that, your whole body and the music and the dancing, like you were saying. So it really involves a lot, all these parts of our minds and our bodies that are actively involved. So I think that it could be very engaging.

Brad Wages: 22:24

And I think that's incredibly important. You said it, it gets students up out of their seats. We spend, you know, of course, in school we spend a lot of time. Students spend a lot of time sitting.

Lisa Hassler: 22:33

Yeah.

Brad Wages: 22:33

They just sit. We know that the more active you get, the blood is pumping through your heart and your brain, which is opening more doorways. So I think after the rehearsal or after their theater class, going back to a history class or to a math class or biology or science, whatever it is they retain better, they take in more. That sponge is willing to take in more information because they have been up moving and their blood is circulating, their mind is moving, they're absolutely more activated.

Lisa Hassler: 23:06

As a parent, I saw my children thrive in both your school, and then you had summer theater programs as well. You still have the summer theater programs, right, we do.

Brad Wages: 23:16

Oh my gosh.

Lisa Hassler: 23:17

Those were fantastic, yes, I love those. And same thing, end of the summer, wonderful theater production you guys had put on. But my daughter especially, she impressed me through your program because she was very quiet and introverted, and so she was in your program from sixth, seventh, eighth grade, did the summer programs as well, and she completely embraced the experience and went from, like I said, this very quiet child that did not want to ever have any attention towards her, never wanted to speak in front of anybody, especially her classmates, and she thrived in this and she really loved it so much that she was like please, can I go to the summer program. So it wasn't just like, oh, I have to do it for the school. She signed up willingly for the school but then wanted to continue it through the summer. And so I just saw that it made a difference in the way she carried herself, the way that she had the discipline to be able to say I'm going to stand up tall, I'm going to project my voice, I'm going to be thinking about what I'm saying, I'm going to be rehearsing it, practicing it, and so those skills transferred over to her into high school and into college and into life, and so those were some really big changes that I saw in her.

Lisa Hassler: 24:32

And then as a teacher I was able to see my former students, and one boy in particular was. He went from very shy to very confident. He transformed, he actually blossomed on stage. And I just remember, as a teacher going to the show and you know I wouldn't see these students very much and where you'd see them in the hallway hey, how you doing, or whatever, or maybe in our morning gathering, but I wasn't seeing them all day in the classroom and stuff, and so I just remember, in particular, this one was a very quiet boy while he was in second grade, didn't really want to raise his hand, didn't really want to ever be in front of the class. And then I go and I see him perform in the theater and he is on fire. I mean he's dancing and he's singing and he's smiling and I was absolutely floored I know the rest of the teachers were all talking about it Like who is this child? We do not know him Completely different.

Lisa Hassler: 25:25

And he, I saw that as the way that he would walk in the halls with confidence. He, you know when kids saw him, like when the whole school went and saw that first performance and there he was like the star of the show, dancing and singing and everything else, and the kids and everybody knew his name. Then it was like, oh my gosh, they're, you know, the little ones are like he's a little hero and and they're looking up to him and they want to talk to him and they know his name and his classmates had this like newfound respect for him, like he was super cool and he all of a sudden, like was engaging in classroom discussions and he became a leader. And here's this child that was this, this shy, introvert who didn't want to really be involved in anything. And the next thing, you know, he's at like cloud nine, top of the top of the ladder here when it comes to the pecking order or whatever in the school dynamics all the way up to eighth grade. So I just saw that and I was very impressed because what it can do for a child and that that really impacted him and made a big difference in his life.

Lisa Hassler: 26:23

Do you have any other stories to share about Some success stories that you've seen in your time?

Brad Wages: 26:32

Very similar and we do see them all the time. That's the thing that gets very addictive as an instructor is to see that my very first year was that first year that we only had a couple of months, a young man who was incredibly shy the first six weeks. I don't think he ever raised his head and looked me in the eyes. He was just that shy, painfully shy.

Lisa Hassler: 26:55

I gave him a few things to do.

Brad Wages: 26:56

I didn't force the students to do more than I thought they could handle. I wanted theater to be something they really enjoyed. I thought, alright, he doesn't want to be here, but he's in the class, so he has to be here.

Brad Wages: 27:10

But I didn't give him as much to do and he was very stiff. He was very stiff, a little awkward, chipped away at the stone or that hard shell around him. I saw a little chipping. Then we did the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and of course that's a great classic piece of literature and there's a fantasy about it. There's a battle in Narnia.

Brad Wages: 27:35

He got to fight, he got to do stage combat and that he suddenly blossomed into this energetic hey, have you thought about let's do this? He had ideas. I mean it was just and I knew I talked to his parents at one point and I knew he liked video games and he liked some of the mythological stories. And getting to act that out, getting to have a sword fight on stage, carefully choreographed, a sword fight on stage, I watched him blossom. And that continued to blossom, going from Lion, witch and the Wardrobe into the next year where it was again a musical where he had to sing and dance, something he was totally uncomfortable doing and jumped into it with both feet and was really quite wonderful.

Brad Wages: 28:26

And then at the end of the school year, after the performance, his mother came to me, introduced herself, tears running down her eyes. I thought I had done something wrong and she said thank you for giving me back my son. She said for years he had become so introverted and had gone into the world of just playing on the computer. And she said he never looked up. He never looked up at dinner, he never spoke at dinner, we never had conversations. He had become so withdrawn and something clicked. And getting into a sword fight on stage, something clicked and she said he comes home every day excited to go. This is what we did in class. This is why I got to do it in rehearsal. Oh, mom, this is so exciting, I can't wait till you see this part. And she said suddenly my son was back in our family again and it really affected me and seeing that, seeing how much, how important it was to her, was a major success story.

Brad Wages: 29:28

And I see that every year. We saw little stories like that every year. But I've also had one of my former students was in that first production. She's now a professional classical musician, a glorious opera singer. I've got a young girl who is now a well-known ballerina that just she came to me. She's like, yeah, I dance. And I saw that she was incredibly gifted and we had a lot of talks and I talked to her parents quite a bit and they continued to support her and now she's. You know she has a ballet career, which is what the only thing she ever wanted was to dance.

Lisa Hassler: 30:04

So it's opening up these creative opportunities for students that if you don't have these type of programs in your school or the ability to reach out and to access that, it kind of limits a child's future. When I was in first and second grade and I had taught, I used the Readers Theater. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's a really simple way to introduce theater to first and second graders. You know, when we're not doing a full-on production, and they used to love that. But that was an easy way for me to be able to bring those little stories to life. And we did something called Stone Slop. It was like a twisted fairy tale from Stone Soup and I would have, like all the kids, they made all their costumes, they made the scenes, the settings, all of it. They made it all by themselves and they really took ownership of that.

Lisa Hassler: 30:52

That was a big deal to be able to take ownership, to say, oh, I think that it should look like this and I'd say that's great, okay, and then they would bring in like a can of soup and we would have this giant pot, and so each child would throw a can of soup that they brought from home into one big pot.

Lisa Hassler: 31:06

It sounds absolutely disgusting. We would cook it all day long and you'd smell it, and as long as you avoided seafood, honestly it was actually pretty good. We would invite the other classes in and they would perform and then they would give them this stone slop you know right, the sloppy soup and students that would come into the class would be like when can we do that play? And they would always remember it and it was something that just kind of stayed with them. The experience, I think, was really fun for them, but it was also really engaging, kind of brought something to life that they could take control over. So what would you recommend for other teachers to be able to do to bring theater into their classroom, especially if they don't have a theater program at their school?

Brad Wages: 31:46

Lisa, I think you touched on it by simply that's such a great idea. I love a stone stone slop, but I love the fact that you made a soup. That that's, you know, taking it at an extra level. That's incredible, and I know a lot of schools certainly don't have theater programs and I don't think it has to be, you know, a massive. We're lucky that we were again for the Epiphany Cathedral. We were lucky to put on fully scaled, fully realized musicals. I don't think it has to be that, certainly not at the younger ages.

Brad Wages: 32:18

So what I think you did was brilliant, simple theater games that any teacher can go on the internet and look up theater games. Those are the games that again teach the interaction. They teach the think outside the box, even for the young ones, the tiny ones. There are some great games out there. Doing what you did, you found a great script, but sometimes I will do one day little workshops with schools and I will just let's do. We're gonna act out a fairy tale, because it's most of the kids will know the same fairy tale and we'll do the same thing. I'll bring in a bag of some props that look like they should be in the fairy tale and then I'll bring in a bag of, just okay you need a sword, but it's a stick.

Brad Wages: 33:04

Now I need you to use your imagination, or what else can it be? So it's playing with props and going alright, it looks like a box, but in the sketch what is it? And what do other kids create for themselves? Oh, it's not a box, that's my magic time travel machine and I have to pass it around the theater games acting out the short skits, like you did. I think that's a great thing and it doesn't have to take a ton of props, it doesn't have to take a ton of time, but it does immediately go. Kids, we're going to work on our imagination, on the thing that our imagination, for me, is the thing that is our life force. I've always said that Imagination is our life force. So by doing that early on, we're still already training them to make use of their imagination and then to think outside the box, and you said they did it themselves, so it empowered them.

Lisa Hassler: 33:59

Yeah. So, anytime that we can empower students.

Brad Wages: 34:02

We should be doing that. But it's again theater games, short skits, fairy tales. If at all possible, I would say, take it out of the classroom that you're teaching your math and your science in. Find another place, because then that becomes the creative space space, the place where I'm not thinking about biology or math or reading. I'm thinking about what I'm creating. So if it can be in another space, it's always great.

Lisa Hassler: 34:31

That's good advice. What kind of advice can you leave for parents?

Brad Wages: 34:36

My favorite story in the entire world is Peter Pan, the boy that won't grow up, and I think that as teachers and as parents, as older brothers, as older people, we sometimes inadvertently quelch the imagination of children. I encourage my students to play games, but when mommy or daddy are, you know, stressed about something, sometimes we hear stop that, you're not Peter Pan, stop that, grow up. When you hear that over and over, you're trained to not use your imagination. Without our imagination, man did not go into space. There are not professional football players, there are not great female scientists, there's nothing.

Brad Wages: 35:20

We all at some point, consciously or unconsciously, imagine something that we end up being, and I think the most important thing that we can do to parents, or help parents, is choose wisely the words you say instead of no, you're not that person, or grow up, you're too old for that. I think we need to learn how to say that's great, that's awesome, and let's explore that at another time, but for right now I need you to dot dot dot. You know, when we play pretend as children, there are no boundaries. When I get a theater student for the first time in ninth grade, they have forgotten how to play pretend. And play pretend is what is how you became a doctor in education. Play pretend is how my father became ran an oil company. Play pretend is how we went to the moon.

Lisa Hassler: 36:14

Right.

Brad Wages: 36:15

And I think the most thing we can do is just keep supporting imagination.

Lisa Hassler: 36:19

Excellent. Well, Brad, thank you so much for joining me today to discuss the vast and transformative benefits of theater education.

Brad Wages: 36:27

It is my pleasure and keep doing what you're doing. This is awesome.

Lisa Hassler: 36:31

Thank you. So let's take action today. Advocate for theater education, support arts initiatives and spread awareness about its transformative benefits. If you've got a success story from a school that you'd like to share, reach out to me at drl isar ichardsonh assler@ gmailcom, or send me a message on my website at www. drlisarhassler. com. If you've enjoyed tuning in, don't forget to subscribe and spread the word to a friend. The more people who know about it, the greater impact we can make. If you found value in the podcast, you can also support us by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.