A pledge to make a difference

Now in its tenth year, the Children’s Theater Company based in New York City is doing very well. The idea was sparked in 1989 when a Baha’i youth attending a youth conference pledged to serve the world through some form of community service.
  
Ugly Duckling - Music & Lyrics by: Frank Sanchez & Mehr Mansuri; Adaptation by: Mehr Mansuri; Based on Original Story by: Hans Christian AndersenI asked Mehr Mansuri to share her personal story. How did it all start? She replied with great affection and respect for the community of people who made this service project successful.  “It actually began in Los Angeles where many people like Lisa Janti, Judge Dorothy Nelson, Oscar DeGruy were the key influences. But the main event I suppose that inspired me to do something was a wonderful Bahá'í youth conference in 1988 in Indiana. The conference organizers passed around a slip of paper to all 10,000 participants. We were asked to make a pledge to be of service to others, in other words to find a way to make a difference around us. I figured that I should do something that I would like to do again. Maybe do it more than once. So I wrote that I would like to do a theater by kids for grown-ups. Because I had a lot of contact with kids in summer camps and other types of theater experience, I put this promise and pledge on a piece of paper.

Ariana and Dana - Royal Rotten Rascal princess holding serving girl upsidedown; Written by: Mehr Mansuri Music & Lyrics by: Frank Sanchez & Mehr Mansuri; Additional Music & Lyrics by: Lory LazarusAnd I couldn’t believe it, but a year later the organizers of the conference mailed us back our pledges. I received it in the mail and opened this envelope to read, “I promise to start a theater by kids for grown-ups.” So I thought, “Well, I guess I have to do this.” (It was a matter of integrity).  I basically called my community and said I know a whole bunch of children who are in theater in summer camps and they would love to be on stage and do plays that illustrate Bahá'í principles such as no prejudice, equality and others.” That is how it all started but having the full support of our communities is what made it happen. I can definitely credit it to those positive engagements with our institutions that just took the obstacles out of the way and didn’t let us doubt ourselves, and they just gave us a “large margin of error”.
 
“Ten years later, the Children’s Theater Company (CTC) does over 5 episodes and recordings a year for Sesame Street, appeared on television shows of Good Morning America, Reading Rainbow, Verizon literacy awards, performed annually at UN events with heads of state, including Nelson Mandela, James Earl Jones, Wynton Marsalis; has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts and others. It has chapters in various places around the nation, public schools and community based organizations participating with the model. The Children’s Theater Company is dedicated to introducing children and youth to the incomparable magic of theatre, with a commitment to develop in each child a keen sense of citizenship alongside their artistic achievements.“

John and AZ in Wayward Knight show - Written by: Mehr Mansuri; Music & Lyrics by: Frank Sanchez & Mehr MansuriSo, my goal was to partner with other Bahá'í friends and open the doors. We were offered these keywords: “individual initiative”, “large margin of error”, “systematic”, “outward-looking orientation.” These were a license to me and really liberated me to go out and try to do this in a way that I could share. My question was “how do you make the arts systematic? It’s almost an oxymoron.”

“The goal was to make sure that whenever we created a new musical or play like any of our 15 musicals, we had to do it in such a way that anyone could replicate it. We would create a vocal tutorial CD sung by Broadway singers and make an instrumental CD to allow producers or teaching artists to teach the music or just use the CD for their actual performances if they didn’t have an orchestra.”

JamesTo help local artists and producers start their own children’s theater, we first begin by taking inventory of their assests and strengths. We evaluate their venue, e.g. if it is a backyard, a school, or whatever, then we provide materials and training depending on their needs.  We follow the A.B.C.D. - Asset-based approach to community development not deficit-based (empowering strengths of the community rather than working from the ‘need’ / weakness.)

“How do you choose your teachers and volunteers?”  “We ask them if they believe in unity in diversity, inclusivity and interfaith, elimination of prejudice of all forms, including religious tolerance and their ability to honor the spiritual traditions of all people. And we have found that there are many people that share our values, regardless of faith or secular background.” 

Blossom The Possum and Tyson The Bison - Play written by: Mehr Mansuri; Music & Lyrics by Lory Lazarus; Piano Arrangements by Frank Sanchez; Directed by Jill BolstridgeAre the parents involved in the children’s classes? “The parents have a vital role to play in the success of their children. We tell the parents that they are stakeholders not bystanders, like other acting or dancing programs and subsequently the process becomes more enriching and more important than the product itself. We want them to be part of the community and we want them to see their children’s progress and join us in a culture of encouragement. When parents are asked what is it about the Children’s Theater Company that is so wonderful? They usually say the children on stage, then the play and the costumes. Amazingly eighty per cent of parents praise the spiritual time spent together and the devotional gathering, we call “Honor Circle.” It is really a collaboration between the parents, the artists, the audience and their children.

Battle of Nortwood and Norwich - Play written by: Mehr Mansuri; Music & Lyrics by Lory Lazarus; Piano Arrangements by Frank SanchezDo you teach children of all ages?  We allow six years and older to join but we have also found that younger siblings are learning the show too. Once a three year old started saying ‘So powerful is the light of unity...’ so I asked the parents if they would allow their child to participate and they said yes. We will never turn a child of any age away. We have decided that as long as they are out of diapers and can enjoy a group experience and stay away from mummy without crying, they are in.”

How many years do the children stay with the Children’s Theater Company?  “We encourage the children to leave after so many years because they need to have other life experiences but the CTC cycle of graduating from Group 1 to 2, 3 and 4 (pre-college) has created a model of advancement that has helped us with student retention. We had a four year old who kept coming back but he is now fourteen years old.  They like to come back to help the teachers and be an assistant. We have also many college interns that have grown out of the youth performing group. They love it because we place the art at the heart and the children at the center of theatre experience. It stimulates and liberates their imagination, intellect and spirit. They feel good about themselves. The children and the parents reflect, celebrate and explore the richness of the diverse society in which we live. The children’s theater classes offer approaches to resolving conflict and encourage questioning and analysis.“

Rehearsal studios“To illustrate unity in diversity and to allow each child to shine at the end of every show, “each child recites a saying or quote from a different faith tradition or peacemaker like Ghandi, Einstein or Anne Frank or from different Faiths, from Buddha to Jesus, from Mohammad to Baha’u’llah. The New York Times referred to the quotes are ‘utterly stirring’.”

“As a Bahá'í, noted Mehr, this has also been an interesting year. We also had an article in the Daily News last November. They wanted to do a story on immigrants in NY who have made a difference. Most of the time people want to know about the play or the work that we do and how we do it, how many kids are involved but people rarely ask about why I am doing this. But since this was a Big Apple Big Dreams: Story of Immigrant New Yorkers, for the first time, I had the opportunity to share the story of the Baha’i Faith and my family’s escape from Iran, “ I’m a Bahá'í, I left Iran, and I have the opportunity to champion social justice and that includes religious liberty and freedom of conscience. So they took great interest in this story.” This has also been an interesting year in view of the renewed persecutions of Bahá'ís in Iran. This is a time when I can share more of my own sense of the importance of human rights and religious freedom and freedom of conscience.”

BAHA'I UNITY CENTER SPACE GRANT - While a generous space-grant from The New York Baha'i Community has afforded the CTC an extraordinary opportunity to serve children and families in the arts and character development, no donation can be accepted at any time toward the Baha'i Community fund. All fees, grants and contributions are expressly for CTC production costs and staff stipends.Who writes the plays?  “I collaborate with a team of writers and composers, Lory Lazarus a brilliant playwright and composer, Frank Sanchez, a genius arranger, pianist and composer, Eric Dozier a world acclaimed R&B and Gospel musician and songwriter and Jill Bolstridge, my co-Artistic Director. Our plays and productions have been reviewed in the New York Times each year. This year we wrote a new musical called  “Henry ‘Box’ Brown” it’s a story of a Virginia slave in the 1850s who after losing his entire family, he re-married and then they stole his wife, his children and after all this incredible agony, he finally decides to put himself in a box and ship his way to freedom.”
 
“And I was looking, as we do with all our materials, for some way to do Victor Hugo’s musical Les Miserables. I thought to myself that it is very strange that children from different backgrounds and cultures are singing the music from these musicals and thinking that it is very unusual that African American children are singing about miserable French people but they aren’t singing about their own history and they’re not looking. I noticed that in the canon of American musical theater that there has been nothing, nothing on Black history. Only recently, and that’s not even black history. There are of course great African American plays and playwrights, but little to nothing in the genre of the American Musical theater that tells and celebrates the triumph of the human spirit within the context of slavery, where there were  many brave stories of black and white people.”
 
The Children’s Theater Company is not only dedicated to producing and presenting high quality theater, but is rooted in the belief that parents and audiences are not incidental but integral in the “village” that raises the child. We believe that artists must encourage an inclusive approach that nurtures not only confident, creative and caring performers, but also those who are keen to share the stage with their peers rather than to claim it for themselves. The arts have a special capacity to elevate and educate, by harnessing and supporting the inherent nobility of children- early in their development.
 
In addition to its resident theater in Greenwich Village, the Children's Theatre Company serves over 400 children a day through public schools in-school and after-school-, as well as has been implemented into 6 national communities producing the CTC chapters in Boston MA, MD , Providence RI, Chapel Hill, NC, Los Angeles CA, Washington DC, Peekskill, NY and soon in Urbana IL and Australia.

It all started with a pledge to make a difference. This year we turn 10.

Website: http://childrenstheatercompany.org/