Broadway actors bring dreams to the stage in Wilcox County
As “Dream a Little Dream of Me” plays softly, Caroline Grogan, actor and teaching artist of Zara Aina, floats around the Star of Hope building “collecting dreams.”
Handing out pens and sticky notes to the audience, she asks them to condense their greatest hopes into a sentence or two, short enough to fit on small pieces of paper. Once done, she places each written manifestation into a humble, wooden basket to be read aloud by the starring cast during the show’s finale.
While she dream-catches, her Zara Aina coworkers, also actors and teachers, are busy making dreams come true themselves. Tina Canady and Shaun Taylor-Corbett rally the younger kids into position, readying them for their grand debut.
Marx gives the older children one last pep talk before the show, and Andres Lopez-Alicea sets the stage as Justin Cimino prepares to give the preliminary remarks. Soon, it’s time to begin, and the moment that many have practiced hard for is upon them.
Almost every year, Zara Aina, a non-profit organization originally founded in Madagascar in 2012, whose name in Malagasy literally means “share life”, now operating out of New York, sends a select few actors and artists to rural Camden, Alabama, for a week to work closely with the youth of the BAMA Kids program in Wilcox County.
Zara Aina’s crew cultivates the children’s creative abilities and allows them total freedom to articulate themselves however they wish using song, dance and acting.
The week spent in Camden ends with a performance hosted by the group, piecing together the ideas concocted from the imaginations of the children all surrounding a central theme of their choosing. The title of the 2023 showcase held Sunday, July 2 at 5 p.m., was “Mixed Dreams”.
“They said we want to make a show about pursuing dreams, so we began creating characters, scenes, songs and dances all about dreams,” said Justin Cimino, actor, teaching artist and director, to the audience as he opened the program.
“That is why, if you’ll look around, you see pictures of the kid’s dreams, and why we asked for your dreams. It is also why they chose the title of this production.”
Devised and executed within a week, the show has no script and no definite beginning or end, which adds to its impressiveness. Even during its performance, the events occurring are subject to change.
“Everything we do is improvised by the kids, in the moment,” Cimino informed the audience. “We tell them all the time ‘There are professional actors on Broadway in New York who cannot do this’, yet every time we come to Camden, they can—even if it’s not perfect. We say to them ‘It’s not about perfection, it's about doing their best and having fun’.”
Zara Aina has worked with BAMA Kids for ten years. They were introduced to the community-based organization through Kate Schutt, award-winning singer and songwriter who was, herself, a volunteer at the outreach program in the early 2010s.
Today, Schutt, through fundraisers and donations from willing philanthropists, helps raise the money to sponsor the teaching artists’ journey to Alabama each year.
Grogan said, “She’s responsible for bringing us here. She generously fundraises for us to come here every year. She’s the reason this partnership exists.”
Childhood friends with the co-founder of Zara Aina, Broadway actor Lucas Caleb Rooney, Schutt suggested that the group travel a little closer and share the mission they had begun in Madagascar a year earlier.
The mission of Zara Aina is to “use transformative storytelling as a form of empowerment for kids”, hence the amount of improv and flexibility allotted in their shows. Emphasis isn’t placed on the accuracy but on creativity and the artistic freedoms of the children.
The teachers have had to do little else to do but watch in awe as the products of their student’s imaginations unfold.
“The kids are always ready to try something out and offer new ideas. Just giving them inspiration and letting them run with it has been really cool to see,” said Canady. “They’re so courageous. They just jump in on whatever prompts we think up, and they have so many great ideas.”
“Even from the first day, when starting the process of creating the songs and choreography, I remember Harmony, who’s like 5, just took off with the project and began dancing and showing her moves,” she added. “It's inspiring because it makes me recall when I was that age—how much fun they’re having. It’s what drew me to this art because it was so much fun to create.”
Amid marveling at the young Wilcox residents’ knack for the arts and acting as mentors to many of the children they’ve been teaching, the adult actors and artists also realized that they could learn a lesson or two from their students.
“I’m impressed by the flexibility that these kids have. It’s what I’m taking away from this experience, especially with this group. They’re so spirited and receptive to change,” Marx said. “I’m learning that from them, and it’s such a wonderful gift that they’re blessed with.”
Lopez-Alicea added, “My time spent here has reminded me that it’s good to play. Seeing the kids just having fun, playing with puppets and laughing, makes me realize that I too should have fun.”
Zara Aina’s return to Camden also allowed Iesha Smith, owner of MDCA Credit Solutions and board member of BAMA Kids, to reflect on her youth as well but with a different perspective as she now has two young daughters active in the program, Malaya and Malena, ages 15 and 9.
“I was a BAMA Kid myself from third grade until high school. Watching my kids participate in something like this…I’m so proud and I love watching them perform,” said Smith.
“I love the work that Zara Aina does within BAMA Kids and Wilcox County. They’re so good at pulling these characters out of the kids and showing them that they can do anything. It opens their minds that they too can be actors and actresses, artists,” she said.
“Coming from a small community, they don’t get that opportunity every day. It’s not something that they’re necessarily taught at their schools.”
According to Taylor-Corbett, they are already “young artists” instead of mere participants in a program or actors in a play. “Asking them to be vulnerable and share a creation that they made up in front of a room full of people—that’s what I feel makes an artist and every child here has been willing to open their hearts and be vulnerable in front of each other and others.”
He and the rest of the group sings the praises of the support system that the children have within BAMA Kids and is certain that none of the trips to Alabama nor the experiences that they or the children have had would’ve been possible without the warm, uplifting attitudes of Sheryl Threadgill and Jacqueline Hives.
“We have to thank Mrs. Sheryl and Ms. Hives,” said Cimino to the audience. “Their can-do spirits are unmatched, I think, in this entire world. They could make anything happen.”
Hives, however, is simply thankful that the children she enriches through the BAMA Kids program receive cultural exposure that isn’t easily accessible to them through the school system or within the confines of the community.
“Even though they didn’t get to leave Camden, being in the presence of Broadway actors was still a great opportunity for them to gather experience and be exposed to the arts and acting,” Hives said.
“They don’t normally get a chance to do anything like this—drama, theater, music. It’s not offered in elementary and secondary schools. Spending time with Zara Aina has given them insight into what they can achieve and how creative they are and sometimes they don’t know that. They just need someone to reveal to them that they have talent.”
For more information about Zara Aina and its collaboration with BAMA Kids, visit the links below.
https://www.kateschutt.com/blog/optimism-and-20k-for-kids-art
https://vimeo.com/271119361?embedded=true&owner=10507664&source=video_title
Tags: Camden
