Rocking the boat: NEYT troupers act against bullying

By JON POTTER, Reformer Staff
Brattleboro Reformer
Posted:   03/30/2012

BRATTLEBORO - No kid wants to feel like roadkill.

But that's how Daniel McMahon feels after being buried in an avalanche of bigger, older kids, who trample him in a schoolyard touch football game, take the ball away and call him "loser" as they leave him lying there ... like roadkill.

Fortunately, this game comes with a "Rewind" button. As the big kids celebrate their touch football success, Celia steps forward and stops them in their tracks with a disarming question: "Would you want that done to you?"

Chastened, the big kids rewind the scene, and their leader, Aja, chooses sides a little differently, mixing big kids and little kids and picking Daniel to be his quarterback. The scene plays forward again, this time happily ... with no roadkill.

But life doesn't come with a "Rewind" button. Nobody knows that better than the 14 teens and tweens who gathered on a March afternoon to enact this little scene in a classroom at New England Youth Theatre.

Those young people make up the "Rock Your Boat" AcTouring Company, a program of NEYT that aims to address real-life issues kids face, through skits, theater games and direct engagement with students.

Working with NEYT Founder and Artistic Director Stephen Stearns, the 14 young people appear to be having plenty of fun as they worked for more than two weeks to create skits and scenes for student audiences. But a list of issues on a blackboard behind them indicates the serious nature of their work: Bullying, gay taunting, laughing at misfortune, betraying trust, exclusion of the uncool, cyberbullying, making fun of race or religion, spreading lies, ganging up, intimidation, bus bullying.

No wonder Stearns had little trouble finding four high-school-age mentors and 10 actors ages 11 to 13 from Brattleboro, Bellows Falls and Keene, N.H., willing to do such important work.

"NEYT is a big part of my life. Stephen Stearns is one of my first acting coaches, so I knew it would be a lot of fun," said 11-year-old Rock Your Boat troupe member Lexi Larsen. "It's good to help people, because in my school there's a bunch of bullying, and it has to stop."

"Rock Your Boat" began a tour of four elementary schools on Tuesday at Vernon Elementary School and Wednesday at Oak Grove School in Brattleboro. The programs include 30 minutes of performance and 15 minutes for the actors to talk about issues with the students at the school. The tour continues on April 3 at Academy School and April 6 at Guilford Elementary School.

The burning question is will it work? The Rock Your Boat actors believe it will.

"We're not saying it in a lecturing way. We're saying it in a fun way,"said Rock the Boat trouper Maia Struthers-Friedman.

"I think that theater can be super-influential," agreed fellow Rock the Boater Maeve Campman. "I'm not positive this will change bullying, but it will definitely raise awareness of it."

The early returns are favorable. One woman in the audience in Vernon told Stearns "This is the best thing I have ever seen brought into the school."

It made a big impression with the fourth- through sixth-graders at Oak Grove, too. Very telling was the first question a student asked the troupers: "Will you be back next year?"

The Rock the Boat program represents the latest step in NEYT's growing efforts to reach outside its walls and beyond merely performing plays and musicals.

"I think of New England Youth Theatre now under his moniker: 'NEYT: It's the attitude,'" said Stearns. "I started NEYT to teach a positive mental attitude."

And to help kids make a difference.

The genesis of Rock Your Boat grew out of efforts by a number of groups in the community to address issues of racism, bullying and other forms of intolerance, peer pressure, violence, healthy choices and building empathy. In developing programs around this, Windham Southeast Supervisory Union Superintendent Ron Stahley invited Stearns to work with a group of middle school students who were being trained as peer mentors. The students were invited to see NEYT's summer production of "Grease" and over three years, Stearns led other training for students and educators alike, many involving dramatic role playing and other theater games. NEYT has developed other programs around themes of restorative justice and has inspired BUHS to create an Arts for Social Change course.

Stearns envisions the AcTour program as an ongoing endeavor that could one day run year-round, with three different plays, three different troupes, different directors and more.

"The troupes that go out will not only be NEYT actors. Other organizations and art forms can be involved," said Stearns.

For now, the test pilots are the 14 Rock Your Boat troupers, who are working on skits written by Stearns and the troupers and based on extensive research and consultation with area educators and experts in the field.

"In talking with (Academy School Principal) Andy Paciulli, he said 'My students will really respond to kids who are their own age. He also said 'Please bring in some older kids who are in high school,'" said Stearns.

The Rock Your Boat troupe fits the bill, including Amelia Graff, who attends Academy School and is anxious to see what her friends and fellow students there think.

Fortunately, she has a lot of support among the Rock Your Boaters.

"I want Amelia to come back and tell us that people at her school took it seriously," said Rock Your Boat's Aja Selbach. "A couple of us are older, and we're not around the schools we're performing in. We're like the ambassadors, and we'd like the next generation to be better than us."

Providing wind for Rock Your Boat's sails, People's United Bank stepped in as sponsor.

"We were very impressed by the fact that it was students talking to and performing for students," said Arne Hammarlund, community services manager for People's United Bank in Brattleboro.

The Rock Your Boat troupers are: Maeve Campman, Celia Cota, Cassie Dunn, Amelia Graff, Jason Guerino, Lexi Larsen, Rye Lyczak, Elias Martel, Daniel McMahon, Joseph Meima, Mia Rubinstein, Aja Selbach, Kaelan Selbach and Maia Struthers-Friedman.