🎄ELF! The Musical is the hilarious tale of Buddy, a young orphan child who mistakenly crawls into Santa’s bag of gifts and is transported back to the North Pole.  Unaware that he is actually human, Buddy’s enormous size and poor toy-making abilities cause him to face the truth. With Santa’s permission, Buddy embarks on a journey to New York City to find his birth father, discover his true identity, and help New York remember the true meaning of Christmas. This modern-day Christmas classic for the whole family is sure to make everyone embrace their inner ELF. 🎄

JDHS THEATRE DEPARTMENT PHILOSOPHY: I believe that all students can become polished performers.  Theatre is a home for any and all students. I have watched time and time again, students make major life changes because of participating in theatre. Many students start out shy and unsure and blossom into unique and intriguing performers with a heart and soul for acting.  I also work to create a family and an ensemble in my classes and in my casts. Everyone deserves to feel important and safe to create freely and openly. They learn to respect themselves as well as all the other students in the classes or the plays. I construct my teaching to help students become proud of their accomplishments.

I treat all of my students as actors who are serious about perfecting their craft.  I tell all of them that THEY CAN, they just need practice and determination. I use many techniques from many fields of thought to help the kids understand individual concepts that they need to help each one clear a performance hurdle.  When I see acting problems arise during rehearsals, I find the right acting exercise to teach the needed skill, and then we use the work from the exercise to incorporate it into the play production. 

I teach the students about professionalism.  I raise the bar high for all of their performances and all of their class projects and performances as well.  I teach deeper level acting skills all throughout the direction of a play performance using many different acting techniques to help students polish their individual acting skills beyond their imaginations.  I believe that if you are going to ask people to pay to come to your show, then they deserve a polished, professional show.  

I work hard to help any student who comes into my classes or into a play production to hone their courage and presentational skills. I don’t turn any student away.  I find a place for everyone who would like to be in the show and I also find a place for them to shine. I also work closely with the self-contained special education department here at school, and I work to include them in both my classes and my shows.  The program has been wonderful for them as well and wonderful for my other students to become familiar with and work with these mentally challenged students. It has been a blessing to all involved. 

The self-respect and sense of accomplishment my students build helps them in all walks of life.  They grow into mature, creative, loving citizens of society who will also give back to the arts. It is a privilege to be a theatre teacher and director of teenagers.

Theatre Classes: Drama (Beginning Acting) Dipping into all different types of acting: improv, scene work, puppetry, choreography, etc. & Acting Company/Acting Techniques (Advanced Acting) Honing the skills of the Acting Craft...going deeper into improv, scene work, puppetry, choreography, monologue, learning about acting philosophies.