Theatre and Teaching with Steven Jones

all right rebels so oh we want to like since we don't have video now if we can kind of like hug our mics yeah yeah so that we can hear each other sound at least we'll make up for the fact that we're not doing video anymore any i'm not doing video anymore do you need a drink there's pumpkin muffins oh i got some water thank you all right oh man the muffins are good aren't they good a little asmr in the beginning of the podcast yeah you definitely have to she brought me one of those cookies at camp i like those amr like this asmr

videos when they're like cleaning and they have like two day cookies they literally take two days to make all those videos make me want to punch a baby the girl can bake like all of the asmr videos i don't like that but like the lip smacking yeah i don't like that i'm opening and closing like pop top lids i can't take repetitive noise to start with yeah i think that's what it is yeah they don't have like whole videos of it like of somebody just like with their nails on a microphone um the desk at school i know i'm just gonna jump out of my

skin yeah like the pencils or yeah anyway so uh welcome to the drama mamas welcome are you already recording yeah i already i record a while ago we just started oh okay but we want to hear the end of this story i'm angela and i'm kathy and today we have oh i'm stephen jones yes i am it's like every every podcast we're like we're not going to tell you that we're going to introduce you that way what a surprise we catch a lot of people like that it's pretty much oh yeah that's me yes who am i i'm here what is my name so you

were telling us the story of your wife's dress getting fixed my daughter's oh it was jordan's dress that was tracy's no it was jordan's dress yes oh no we went to the patel conservatory to see jenaya that you've had on and she was doing pippin and we got out of the car and we're walking across the street to the theater and um laura said jordan jordan your dress is ripped and so jordan reached behind she had like ruffles and along the bottom and one of the seams had not been sewn correctly it's a brand new dress but laura as laura is had mic tape in

her purse of course she did and so she went up under jordan's dress yeah and uh mike taped her dress together for the rest of the night so yeah we were just on a street downtown tampa you know right there people going by yeah nothing to see here folks yeah just move along just move along exactly and it totally did the trick did it not yeah it held together for the night yeah there you go so she was putting on the one today and i said you better check those ruffles because it's the same style dress yeah and sure enough there was a hole really

yeah brand new tag still on it so oh belk you need to clean up your act my wife was fixing that one with the with them real things yeah nail and thread this time no mic tape no mic that stuff is resilient though i find it all the time and it stays stuck on your face for days yeah yeah it does on the floor on shoes it that hangs around it does i was using like alcohol wipes to try and get like this stuff off no you need adhesive remover there's actual oh really like goo gone but in wipe form yeah yeah like safe for

the face you know the goal is not to burn off the floor yeah i know the people can't see it but this is surely just totally made me i know we should have been not doing video all along there's lunch being made in the background you're like noises yeah but it sounds like it's gonna be an amazing wrap shout out to stella peppers she said cucumber buffalo oh yeah protein wrap some kind of barbecue something right buffalo sauce yeah yeah yeah see if we had a video you could show it billy kate is very much into food preparation food display whereas i will just grab

a bar it's a good thing because you're gonna have to cook all your food with all the allergy sensitivity stuff good to become a cook then enjoy all right this is delicious by the way it is it is very good i'm gonna have to get me one and i can because we're so not on video okay yeah yeah i need i need a lilly kate come bake for us you know she has a business yes you can order something yes every day yeah gluten free but it's been good they're so nice and these are pumpkin correct they are correct we i have a thing it's

pumpkin time in august well is it that's the thing like isn't it yeah isn't it a bit much i mean i went into hobby lobby the other day it was christmas everywhere oh my god that's way too soon that's way too soon so they have to have all the supplies so the people can make the goods with the supplies that they get at hobby lobby michael's and joanne's i guess that's true yeah to sell and because they have to have time to prep and make their good and then they have to go to the fairs and sell their goods and then those goods are used

in the holiday so it has to you have to have time that's all you just have to have time does a quarter of your store need to be christmas at that point listen i i'm not making those decisions i'm just saying the question is when does the christmas stuff actually go like on clearance for those types of folks i don't know like will it be when easter right before yeah no i feel like it's gonna be before like thanksgiving because won't that particular season michael's and joanne's and all of those guys like yeah they'll have the other hot like there'll be valentine stuff but their

next big one that you'll see with all of this stuff just like you see for christmas is easter yeah well that's obnoxious but i let her make pumpkin muffins against my better judgment that it's too early these are delicious look starbucks just started um their fall ones yeah this week pumpkin lattes yeah duncan had already had theirs for like a week they did i had a friend of mine she drove that she doesn't have one like super close to her house so she took her daughter specifically to go get a pumpkin type coffee and they drove all the way there and they were out of

it oh my gosh can you imagine that's horrible it's ridiculous i mean i could call that duncan okay how about last night gabby and i left the theater we went and had dinner on the way back i had gotten her ice cream at dinner so i called over i was like pj do you guys want some dessert you know i feel bad not arriving with something for max or whatever and they're like yeah sure i'll take something okay what do you want oh he's like i'll just take a vanilla sundae from mcdonald's and you know max is like oh i'll take a vanilla shake okay

perfect or oreo mcflurry something like that anyway we pull into the one right over there on um 98 by grove park i get in there the line is ridiculous i only think because it's a saturday night i guess everybody is getting mcdonald's we finally get up it's our turn i go to order wouldn't you guess oh the machine's down no products i'm like are you kidding me there's somewhere exactly yeah don't make me sit in line before i find out that and then now you're like in the line so i can't hop the curb you know no my car is not gonna do that so

i was like that's not gonna work so we got stuck in that line for like an additional 20 minutes and i got up to the cash i was like hey i'm the ice cream person who you didn't have any for he's like oh yeah yeah yeah keep going i'm like i i will i would love to yeah so then i call the house again i'm like pj you know unfortunately they didn't have any he's like figures you know i said what else is there he's like well there's a burger king right down there in edgewood see if they have ice cream okay go to the

burger king nope she says to me well everything's a little soft right now i'm waiting for it to get hard i'm like so you don't have anything she's like no it's the machine i'm like you gotta be kidding so now i got gabby in the front seat who's like i just want to go home and i'm like no we have got to bring out a mission we are on a mission dq well we didn't go that far culvers i know right so we got on edgewood and i said how about i'm thinking in my brain what is down here what is down here i said

what about arby's does arby's have ice cream or whatever it smells like meat it probably does bacon flavored i'm not eating it yeah so yeah so he's like sure so anyway i said gabby do me a favor in the middle of your whatever it is you're watching on your phone can you please google and see if arby's has ice cream sure enough they do so we go to arby's no line they're super happy like to take care of us sure yeah yeah yeah they were they're like woo we get to actually use the ice cream machine yeah i ordered a small vanilla shake whatever for

max ironically my phone rings and it's him it's max i'm like what are you doing he's like hey you're at arby's i'm like oh my gosh i'm like i am at arby's we have that life 360 or whatever so i'm sure he was watching thinking where where's my ice cream yeah exactly he's like daddy wants a jamoka shake i'm like oh first of all how does daddy even know that they sell jamoka shakes he's already googled but or has already had one perhaps but anyway who cares cover's been yes exactly so i'm like okay so i pull up to the window i'm like hey can

i can i add a jamoka shake to that he's like sure and the kind gentleman gave me the straws i go to give him my debit card he hands me the vanilla shake i'm canning him my debit card he hands me the jamoka shake he's like nope it's all good don't worry about it i was like are you serious yeah so 35 40 minutes you know uh-huh i know so anyway long story longer we ended up getting ice cream for everybody it tasted great and it was for free it's nice there we are yeah so we're neat flavored ice driven to where you needed to

be to get free ice cream apparently i spent it in gas all right well it didn't take us long to get off track did it no we totally just squirled did we have a track no there's no track no track it's more like one of those hamster wheels yeah you just gotta keep up but it's like that's right it's not a circle it's kind of like it is oblong it is a little oblong yeah it squeaks a lot it does we're a little squeaky all right but it's fun yeah that's right squeaky d or something like that squeaker squeaker yeah that's another story for another

time yeah i i get that question every time people see my email it's like it's literally just been my email forever can we squirrel again real quick and talk about the weather are you guys following the hurricanes idalia or idalia i don't know what i don't know what they're gonna call it is that the one that's in the yucatan coming up yeah you said that one's just gonna go up to like the big bend of florida yeah keep an eye though i've heard that before well yeah i mean until it's past this and even then you still have to wait till it's like well gone

so this is the thing guys the 11 o'clock models just came out it is ticking a little bit more east so we will see but with ian this is how south florida felt right like fort myers they were all like oh it's gonna be north of us it's not gonna do anything well the stronger it gets it's gonna well it's a certain point right like they become their own steering mechanism like they go where they want well that's always they're not steered by as easily by like the highs and lows and it's large it's like 500 miles across so if it lands to the north

of us let's pull it up we will possibly see oh that's definitely different than what they said this morning okay so we could possibly you know even if it comes north of us we're on that messy side yeah yeah there you go instead of coming east yeah yeah we're on the dirty side yeah we are on the dirty side so i'm confused which side is this the worst side the north the right the right side okay the right side so when it comes in below us but we're all going to be here right we're going to swim in the pool while the hurricane's happening hurricane

party okay at 100 everyone listening is invited we'll just give him steven's address he's got a big power i get so nervous do you like yeah yeah why you've lived here forever my whole life yeah my whole life but i watched this model which one is that this is mike's weather page that's who i follow he's on tiktok too he is yeah and x whatever x is he said don't do three x's just do the one x well i don't watch anything it's a platform i guess yes apparently i don't know i don't know it must be new i don't know oh no three x's

what are we doing here oh no he said don't look at the three x's all right if you're looking for the weather so the x like singular x is like some kind of social media platform apparently that's what he said yeah oh right because they rebranded it to that oh is it i didn't know that so it's no longer a bird i forgot i forgot it's just x okay anyway i found on you for this guy i love that you listen to mike's weather page with it all and and dennis phillips yeah some point of an age out everybody else will freak you out but

did you listen to his thing well so he did one at 919 and he'll be back on at six o'clock tonight so listeners if you like weather mike's weather page is the place to be with one x with one x at least on aka previous tweeter he mentioned something about tweeter tweeter i i watched one of his like tick tock things about the storm and he was saying that there's like a full moon or whatever so the tides are actually higher yeah it's a balloon but i don't know if that's still in line with where it's forecasting because it slowed down that storm is slowed

down i haven't watched which is sad which is bad because it's just going to get bigger if it slows down more time over water yeah anyway i don't know we don't want to hype it just be prepared guys make sure everything is good some water now yeah but don't buy all the water in ev or drive an ev then you should probably go charge it can you plug it in like in my garage or is it a certain kind of plug um i we have like an adapter in the trunk that the car came with so you can do that okay yeah into just like

a regular plug your car yeah you can just plug it in but we i we have a charger at our apartment complex we just use that but yeah okay wow that's super cool let's talk about you still freaks me out an ev huh the evs do oh no no no hurricane hurricanes yeah yeah not and really i think it started um in 2004 oh well we got pummeled we had yeah oh one after the other yeah we lived in davenport yeah they all just kind of went right over us it was just too much yeah and then we went a long time without anything until

irma and what is it with these i name storms you know that's what they were saying and ian and now idalia i think this one's because they like that's just where we're getting now before our storms really matter we're naming them too early and then they build to like big strengths i mean how many have we had that got like they should have been over a five in the last decade we've had quite a few that got real big like that and ian were yes and the scary part about it like how mike was saying is that they were all three days out they were

only tropical storm like they were right they grew fast yes all right now i'm getting nervous no don't beat it you'll be fine yeah it'll be fine when we moved here and we built our house we came from fort lauderdale where everybody has hurricane everything so we asked to have hurricane windows put in and the guy literally laughed at us and was like nobody gets hurricane windows here and then one after another we've been yeah hurricanes that have come literally the eyes come over our house darn it i'm waiting for a cow to come flying in the window a gun twister a lot of them

in our backyard so did you end up getting the hurricane windows or no because he laughed at us oh peer pressure but you would have put that on this house excuse me you would have put that on this house you're saying okay like the ones that just roll up or like the old no no not shutters the windows the hurricane windows oh like oh yeah i get what you're saying yeah yeah because you don't build a house in fort lauderdale without those sure because you're right on the ocean you know that's the bad news well we're hoping and let's pray that everybody's fine we maybe

the kids will get a little day off school i don't know what that's gonna look like we shall see sometimes they even close polk county because they use um our schools as shelters yeah if it's coming into tampa or something there might with buses they can't run the buses like 40 or 45 miles with the wind the buses that's why schools get close too and the scary like timing wise if it's going to be overnight that's always not fun it's almost always like have we had one that actually hit during the day i think ian did last year no no that was overnight oh it

was listening to my roof yes yes yes there goes another one i feel like it started during the day because we were out playing monopoly out on our screened in lanai with the kiddos as like stuff was going by but yeah it did because it was slow right that was a slower it was yeah my mom lives down the street and we waited like five minutes too late to go get her to bring her here to stay with us and the wind had picked up significantly well you gotta be careful like there's not a lot to blow around out here you know when they do

these developments they just kind of pummel the land so you're starting as just houses and signs but you know the last couple that we had wrote out um you know in the neighborhood next year's we had signs like stop signs and stuff we had we had one that landed in our yard oh man like what do you do with it could have impaled somebody yeah we hung it in the garage scary you didn't give it back buy a new one it's fine yeah it's better for them to buy a new one okay yeah hey it's what our taxes do right so as a teacher his

cousin had one of those um like highway signs not your cousin your nephew had one of those highway signs and it said oh gosh which yeah i don't think his fell off in a hurricane oh oh my bad i thought that's what he said knowing my cousin that might be what he's telling oh no right right but he and they hung that and they're great he was huge they're a lot bigger than you think they are yeah that's what she said items appear closer oh geez now we're going there triple x let's talk about you yeah welcome steven we already got a true crime broadcast

it's just because we feel so comfortable with him yeah true yeah it's just like a regular lunch well okay so we the last time we kind of sat around and chatted with steven we were at the joinery and this was before the podcast started and you were like just sitting back and listening to this yes and you said probably a similar conversation started it is your fault i mean we toyed around with it like you know sitting around talking but never we're going to do it and then you suggested and i was like why shouldn't we let's just do it what are we waiting for

yeah well i mean you three are just i mean you're fantastic you're and you're fantastic individually and then when you're together you're just a force much like a hurricane i like that we're together we're a cat five people yeah all your families are wonderful your kids are wonderful and you support my kids i mean that it's just happy happy drama family we are that's so true the theater is our family yeah that's why we wanted to do this to help other people find that yeah yeah exactly it's a great place and it's like in my second home well okay so how long have you been

involved in theater like ever since you were young or did this happen with jordan yeah well i i was thinking about that earlier i don't remember a time when i was when i didn't sing i've been singing my whole life and um um whether it was in church or in school i was um i was a sickly kid so i couldn't do athletics so i basically studied and did music and so um i was in all the high school things and my first time on stage um i played george gibbs in our town my senior year of high school so i guess that's when i

caught the bug okay then um didn't do anything for several years and um then we went to church at when it was highland park church of the nazarene um during the 90s and the music director there he did big shows every for easter and christmas so i got involved in those and was in those they're not really cantatas i mean he had full-scale productions there in highland park oh yeah and um i wrote a couple plays that were done at the church and then um jordan was cast in chicago when lct did chicago and then she was going away for school and she said dad

you should get involved at lct we had been at lct we'd taken the kids to see a couple shows when it was pied pipers even and um she said you should get involved you should you should audition and and do it and i'm like yeah right yeah right and so the show that was coming up to audition for was les miz and i'm like oh of all things to start with wow let's just start with les miz it's a nice beginner yeah exactly i went ahead and auditioned and there were over a hundred people who auditioned for les miz i thought what have i gotten

myself into but um alan reynolds who you've had on was the director of of that show and he cast me in the ensemble i played about eight or nine different people you know in les miz sometimes you're a poor person sometimes you're a rich person and sometimes you're the guy under the cart that's what that's what i was and um so that i am coming up on my decade-aversary i guess it is because that was october of 2013 so oh wow 10 years and on my um on my theater resume which i think you've had somebody on the show discuss how you should have a

resume for the theater when you go like for auditions and stuff i keep it updated every once in a while and i counted that um margaritaville was my 24th show in 10 years so yeah yeah yeah it's it's like i said it's my second home it's like if i if i haven't haven't been at home then i was at lct so yeah that's a lot of full-time teaching job yeah yes it is i mean and some of those are the stage reads which i absolutely love yeah or some shadows really great stage manager that i've had my past two shows over here to my right

you can't see her but yeah no videos i like the stage reads because it's a short process and you get to use the script you don't have to memorize and i know as i'm getting older it's harder to memorize all this stuff so um and you get to be characters that you would normally never be or you know take some risks as an actor and so i really enjoyed them got to do that with pj that was fun yeah yeah so he had a great time with you he was excited it was a great show it was a great show i mean when you have

forces like grant reynolds and tom mooc that you're acting opposite of i mean they pull they pull it out of you they really do so it was it was a great um experience so grant really was orson wells he really was yeah it's like that uh what do they call it study of the character like oh oh yeah yeah i lost it for a minute i got you yeah have you had formal voice training no i just jordan tried oh yes i was gonna say that you you you got you know that one i never took any uh formal uh didn't have that you know

in high school way back in the black and white tv era that i was in high school um they really didn't have that like the kids get from harrison or or anything like that so um i didn't have any formal training but every once in a while you know jordan will fix something she hears me singing or like frida frida was the music director for mama mia and she helped me um for a couple things i had to reach an a and it had been a long time since i had to hit an a which was really high so she helped me do that so

you know nothing really formal just people wanting to give their opinion so and when it's your daughter i mean she was actually worse as a choreographer than a vocal coach yeah because you know i really can't dance and i know that um i like to move and i like to be silly and sell it from the waist up because the legs don't want to cooperate um so so she's my choreographer for shrek she was a little tougher on me yeah for that then uh then vocal vocally so oh my gosh you can't dance and yet your picture in that jumpsuit is oh the mama mia

one oh it is yes my banana suit i called that yeah every time i open that it makes me smile i was like why can we update that please i mean i don't know how many people have told me oh i went to lct's website and we saw you and i'm like yeah yes you did i know that was that was one of my favorite show um playing sam was on a bucket list of mine so that was a really great experience that show loved loved mama mia a lot yes that was an amazing show yeah it's hard to believe it was like two summers

yeah two years ago yes quickly yeah so you said you wrote some things some place yes for the church yes is that something you've always done or how did that happen yeah i've i've always loved writing i've always loved um playing with words and and making things up um i was an english major in college and like my parents said we're going to do with that you know whatever um so yeah i've always liked um running plays and i self-published a novel so i i wrote a novel was a it was just like a passion of mine just to write it back in 2005 so

i might never have heard this before yeah i have copies of my attic i'll have to go up there please because it's not something that i'm marketed or anything like that i just wanted to do it i set myself out to to write it and so i did i think like i said it was about 2005 so is it fiction okay it's fiction okay it's called maggie's miracles oh yeah we definitely want to um we need to and why is it not a screenplay and why are we not like producing it it's amazing yeah okay well yeah always we're not going to forget about that

okay don't don't think we are next time we see you you best have a copy note to self go up in the yeah where it's only 140 right now yes exactly i know where they are though at least i don't have to dig right okay good that's pretty cool i had no idea so you took that into teaching creative writing right well i started um i worked for 16 years in a travel company here in town um and after 9 11 then everything you know fell out the bottom fell out of the the travel business rightly so in the company that i worked for the

major destination was the holy land so of course first of all nobody wanted to fly and second of all nobody wanted to go to the middle east so yeah right right um i was uh i was vice president of the company and it was a family founded and family-run company and i was the only non-family person there so on october 3rd 12 of us would let go which included me and um so i had to like rediscover myself yeah back in 2001 and i toyed with the idea of either being a teacher or a nurse or going back to school to be one of the

other i had some college credits for education they gave me credit for like educational psych and developmental psych and some other classes and um so i worked for a year in between for a friend of mine who owned a hotel down of the beach and um so that wasn't for me so i started teaching so i i i taught um four years at valleyview elementary i started as an elementary teacher teaching fourth grade because i had the writing test that's why i wanted to be fourth grade because it's writing in it and um then i moved to highlands grove elementary when it opened and i

was there for eight years and i just started my ninth year now at lawton child's middle teaching creative writing and drama so i've got both of my loves that i got to put together in an elective class so that's where kids who want to do it right the majority of them yes um you know i teach sixth seventh and eighth so by the time they're in eighth grade they've been with me all three years and you know they're these are kids that either love to write and their pathway for high school is to harrison and so they either go in the creative right i have

them go in the creative writing program musical theater theater theater tech and motion picture arts so nice those five areas that harrison try to get them in if that's where they want to go prepare them to get in right yeah oh my gosh that's how i got all those kids lives you know yeah well you um you are working with your students again on something that's really cool that you do with those creative writing classes right yes i um a big part of my heart is lct's out of the out of the box program um i i just love that program i love those actors

uh always have and way back when i first started at lawton maureen who was the education director at the time approached me and she said um it's difficult to find scripts for our out of the box troop and for people who don't know what out of the box is it's a an acting troop for people with either physical or developmental disabilities and um she started that group i think it was 2011 i think is when it started with maybe a dozen members and now i think it's close to 100 and they have two classes now on mondays but she approached me she said i was

going to go to the creative writing teacher at harrison and see if they might be interested in writing some scripts for our out of the box troop because it's difficult to find material that number one can be modified because some authors will say no you can't change anything about you know it's copy written or whatever and you can't change the script at all so she said if it's something original that your kids could write for our actors and i said yes absolutely don't go to harrison i want to do this i want to grab my eighth graders and i you know i think they're mature

enough and we'll expose them to out of the box and so that's how we started was back in 2016 i think we wrote the first play which was from bully to buddy she would give us a theme that she wanted us to do and so we wrote that script and then um she got edited so that would fit and we give all the rights to the theater once we are finished we give it to the theater and they can do whatever they need to do to make it fit with um their their troop and the needs of people and so you know the kids know

that when they're writing it that it may sound a little bit different from how you wrote it when you actually see it performed but that's because it needed to be modified somewhat which now they can do that unlike with other playwrights that say you can't change it so it makes it and then the kids i don't want to keep going yeah yes please do please do the kids um when we introduced them to out of the box there is a documentary that was done by kirstie mutts that's our our mayor bill that's his daughter kirstie she did it as i believe as a project when

she was in college at southeastern and it's a documentary called people like us and it is about out the box it's fantastic and um she focused it on her sister emma emma mutts who is a member of out of the box um and so she centered around emma and and then she also interviewed several of the other participants of out of the box that and many of them still are acting on our stage so i show that documentary to my students first so they get an idea of what it's like and what it means and we talk about the title that why she chose people

like us yeah and she puts like in bold um and it has because it has a double meaning has a double meaning that they are people just like us they have needs they have desires they want to be on stage they want to have hobbies to perform they want applause they want a validation you know they're just like us yeah but then it's also people like us the audience like when we perform they they applaud right actually you know they bring us flowers they they like what we're doing that kind of thing so we talk about that and um and then some of the kids

become tk's some of my students become tk's and that stands for typical kids and those are students that come and help it out of the box and they either help the members remember their lines or physically help them on stage yeah they're kind of their buddy yeah exactly and sometimes they play characters too yes yes they immerse themselves in in with the out of the box members um and so we just started that again this year um i think last monday was the first out of the box meeting yeah i think four new students of mine went and i know i think another four or

five are coming tomorrow um for the out of the box meeting but then they get hooked and they stay for all during high school and some um have finished college and are coming back like i i know that one student that i had when he was in eighth grade and was part of out of the box is coming back told jordan that he would be back so it's it's um some kids go and they just get their community service hours that they need and that's fine um but then others find it a passion and a love of theirs and they continue it all during high

school when how can we watch that video is it available to the people like yeah yeah i have a dvd that i got i think maureen gave it to me way back when so you know i can i can let you let you see it because it's just in my desk i would love to see that yeah and then i used to show them um the from bully to buddy that we wrote but now i can show them jillian's island that we just did this past spring my my past eighth graders who are now in high school did jillian's island um for the theater in

may and so i showed them that one this year so they can get an idea and um jordan and i talked about a theme that i mean it was over christmas break and she was like i have out of the box coming up and i don't know what to do and we need to do you know something that would go along with finding nemo and with margaritaville that would be easy as far as sets or costumes and we had missed the um parody unit that i teach my eighth graders how to write a parody we had missed it because of ian we were out of

school and so i had speaking of hurricanes bring it full circle yeah yeah squirrel after turns out it was fun sorry that was a really loud laugh i still think that it's a hamster wheel but anyway um we had missed that and i and i so i started thinking and i said hey we could i could tie in the parody unit that i missed with sure writing the script for out of the box and so you know these kids in 2023 had never heard of gilligan's island so i had to go out and find crazy to think that yeah i know i lived on never

heard of it never heard of it's i mean it was gilligan's island and lost in space and you know three's company i mean they all these kind of shows that i but anyway um i found some uh gilligan islands gilligan's island episodes for them to watch they could get an idea and then so we made it a parody called jillian's island and renamed the main characters and um they had six different uh chance encounters with six different groups that trying to get off the island kind of thing so um this year the one that we're writing right now because my students are actively working on

it right now um jordan wants it by labor day oh gosh yes it's like a week away yeah labor day there will not be an out of the box yeah so she really wants it by september 11th which is the next time that they will meet after labor day um it's called turkey trouble because their show is going to be the weekend before thanksgiving so i have a central group that's that's writing about the turkey and the farmer family that it lives with and then it's and it's adventures with um six different kind of people around with all around thanksgiving themes um so i split

my my classes up and one class writes three scenes another class writes the other three scenes and then i have a group of core writers that write for the main characters so that worked it worked last year and seems like it's working so far this year so that is really cool do you give them the themes or do they come up with those um well jordan and i talked both about jillian's island and about this one we i was not clear like the the episode yeah jordan was we were saying what kind of uh people can they run into that has to do right what

type of story right so you're giving some of the story and letting kids fill out the rest yes okay so i i mean i don't want to give too much away in case there's a lot of people out there that want to come see um see out of the box in november but um like one of the um groups that the turkey that the students have named gary because they don't want to do the traditional tom you know the boring so they want to think out of the box see what i did there oh nice nice yeah so they've named the turkey gary and um

lives on a farm with uh the farmer and his wife and their two kids who are billy bob and betty sue because we are florida and we are pook county let's clarify or if we got that one voicemail left for you it was pooh county that's right did you get that one yes the automated voicemail yes anyway yep so um one of the first groups they run into are a bunch of people exercising in a park that are about to do a turkey trot run so um you know we we thought about what things have to do with thanksgiving so we did turkey trot and

we did um the macy's thanksgiving day parade black friday shopping oh my gosh you know all these different kind of so you like start with like a brainstorm cloud and be like what are these things related to like yes yeah and that helps kind of get the juices flowing and then they they divide themselves up into groups of writers like groups of eight seven or eight students and then i say which one do you want i let them kind of randomly pick what scene they want to write and they only argued over one scene there's a chef scene sort of like in the little mermaid

you know the ha ha after the crab except this time they're after the turkey yeah so that one they kind of battled over that scene because they wanted to write that one but other than that they were all they had a mind of ah that's amazing of what they wanted to do this is so cool yeah there's one rich family that they're going to run into and so they're naming them the car crashians instead of the kardashians the car crashians and all of the characters first name one's porsche one's bentley because they're all cars yes yes so yeah i'm very proud of them i'm very

very proud of them and they get a little carried away because they get so excited yeah and then i i said i will send like um drafts to jordan and see is this okay is this going all right and she'll say things like well we can't say that and out of the box so let's tone it down or she'll say things like um she said keep it simplistic but funny you know use puns use jokes and that kind of thing and um keep the dialogue short so you know we go through and edit it a little bit yeah the opening scene has already gone through

one edit and um we tightened it up and we were laughing even harder you know that we made it even better so we're trying to get that done so that's why i don't want hurricane days away from school i gotta get this done well how many days will you've had to work on it by the time you're handing it over to jordan with the kids probably actually physically writing probably two school weeks so 10 days okay yeah that's not because i took time it's not it takes like two two days to watch um people like us and then a couple days to watch jillian's island

because we have 45 minute classes i was gonna say you only have them for a snapshot of time right and then we had you know if you have a fire drill or you have a lockdown drill or you have um early release like we did on friday you know you have abbreviated time so i am pushing them a little hard but usually it's about five pages that they have to write okay that takes long enough for the scene to be five to ten minutes um so they're they're like on page two or three already so i'm oh they're gonna get it done yeah yes they're

i just i move around i have a rolly chair and i move around my classroom from scene to scene and i'm like okay you don't see me i'm not here i'm just listening and then if they say something oh no can't say that now i know you'd love to but it works and it's funny but no we gotta we gotta think of something else reel it in what a great um talent that you're teaching these kids what a great skill because writing just a paragraph or writing about you know a certain subject is totally different right than like screenwriting than writing an actual script yeah

i mean like the kids do a lot of essay type tasks yes this is different yeah this gives them a different way to go about thinking about how to write those stories and even if they never like make you know write a book or whatever later on i think if they learn how to brainstorm and they learn how to kind of creatively come up with those ideas like yeah how many different ways they can apply that in uh you know a job sometime in the future you know character development all of that where's that arc how does that you know and then to see because

they're all kind of working separately right now but then when they bring it all together how to see that it's just gonna create this one big great story i mean that would i love that that creative process and they hold each other accountable because the rubric that i give them they self-evaluate or they anonymously evaluate their team members okay so they you know one of the grades that they get is how is their team member as far as creativity or offering suggestions or taking criticism so they're all these things that i think are life skills yeah that we need to learn and so working as

a team to get it done because i mean i'll overhear them go no i think we should say well i think and that's it well let's vote on it i said that's the perfect way to handle it what is the group as a whole think that you should do for that so yeah yeah it's um they'll have plenty of working in a group as an adult too exactly it's nice to know going in how to help your group actually function as a group instead of going and being that person like i don't know i in school we did a lot of group projects and how

it ended up is i did the group project right because i wanted a good great names on there and then we turned it in yeah that's what happens when we're control yeah it's like we'll just take care of it exactly like i know that's what i was saying you did absolutely you're a perfectionist so yeah i know you did oh i did i did too yeah see but it's good to teach a skill on how to actually you know let go and let god or whatever to allow your group to flourish yeah are a lot of the kids have theater experience or some are coming

in pretty blind to it um by eighth grade because they're the ones writing the script they've been exposed you know through me talking to them about taking classes at lct or you know doing that kind of stuff some of them have experience on the stage um so i usually will ask my sixth graders from the beginning just getting to know them how many of you have done something either at your church or your school you know then because some schools put on shows so just to get an idea of their background but others have never seen live theater at all so that's why i'm so

happy that we can go on field trips again yeah so i have like my sixth graders we already are set to go see honk at lct nice for the student performance my seventh graders will see the happy elf in december and then the eighth graders going to harrison to see cinderella so i tried to expose them because again some of these kids yeah they might not otherwise well no and um and then some students will see it and fall in love with it um or the first time that they're in stage on class in class doing something i i had a student who um in

sixth grade got on stage to do one of the little scenes that we do at school and i'm like she's really talented no and so i asked her have you ever done anything she's like no i've never done anything before no and so i had a chat with her mom and i said you know your your child is really talented and maybe she should take a class or or do something and i what no my kids never done anything on the stage and but she did she took a class she auditioned at lct didn't get cast the first time got cast the second time got

cast the third time and is now at harrison oh my gosh so so i mean that the parents had an idea that all my kids gonna go on this path and then you know the it just she was such a natural um on stage that i was like wait this this kid had to have experience had to do something and no she hadn't just the raw nature she got in for both musical theater and creative writing at harrison wow and she was like mr jones i'm so afraid that if i pick musical theater i'll make you up disappointed and if i pick creative writing i'll

make miss jordan disappointed and i'm like no honey no we're not disappointed yeah we're just excited you got in yes exactly so she told me said i think i'm gonna pick musical theater and i said then just don't stop writing you know just in your own time journaling or or whatever because she she was gifted writer too so yeah you know it's like just keep doing that but do what you want to what you really want to love or really want to follow so that's awesome i'm having total flashbacks of when we did the podcast about the gap initiative because i feel like you're kind

of on that same wavelength he's picking up these kids that wouldn't never have maybe had had that experience or exposure and you're able to give that to them and you know because you're talented and you have that background yourself you're able to identify it you know and then you like just in this child's journey you were able to talk to the mom and luckily the parents were open to it the mom was my principal that was a really difficult to have with my principal i was like i'm not trying to push your kid one way or the other you know but but yeah she was

my principal at the time her mom oh that's kind of funny that's how lily kate started we had no experience at all with theater and somebody at a football game was watching her dance and they're like she needs to be in theater classes and that's she started jordan's class the next semester and you know that's funny that they saw her dance and go to theater like she's probably using her whole body was you know go to dance glitter in her veins yeah oh well yeah yeah definitely glitter in her veins that one yeah yeah so just recognizing that she can teach me how to dance

i want to plug out of the box real quick even more just make sure people know i believe it's november 17th 18th is the um friday night and saturday morning number shows if you want to smile laugh you if you want your heart to grow if you want to get in this season the spirit of christmas go to out of the box you will have so much fun and first time we went we loved it so much we got started volunteering it's just it's the best thing all year that you will see so get your ticket i don't think you even have to have a

ticket do you i think it's free it's free yeah yeah and if you can't just ask for donations yeah yeah give give a little bit to them because it's a really really neat yeah it's an amazing program program a lot of good in the community and uh yeah that whole make your heart swell yeah thing is oh it's real yeah if you're feeling grinchy and your heart needs to grow a few sizes it will happen before thanksgiving you might be feeling that way yeah exactly put yourself in the right attitude that's the place to do it yeah and you'll be thanking counting your blessings and

everything i mean those people are amazing oh my gosh and the people that help and we just um got involved with it for the first time with jillian's island and you know that was we did it as a family and it was so oh my gosh yeah that experience was wonderful we did yeah it's not a heavy tech show no usually not no yeah no we did uh you know i want to go to mars together that one the worst was that there were just a ton of chairs i had to go on and on yeah but yeah that was like oh it's my favorite

such a cute little story and yeah i'm just so appreciative that maureen reached out to me you know like she said she was going to go to harrison with it and i'm glad i snatched that away yeah yeah you're like no it's my baby yeah i want my kids to do that and um i'm just thankful that she you know even thought about me at that point yeah yeah and then when she stepped down and handed it over to jordan and it's like hey dad so i think we wrote for them we wrote for them in 2016 and 2017 and then we took a break

um because maureen had somebody else who was doing some writing for them and then coveted and so you know we started back up again and maureen stepped down and jordan took over then she's like i need something to do for out of the box for the may show i said okay well we'll get involved again so this will be the turkey trouble one will be the fourth script that are you going to do the next one too for the well she's planning on it jordan is planning on it well i mean i think the kids are enjoying it so much that you know i can

adjust my curriculum around what a great piece of curriculum yes i mean it is and i have very supportive administration at my school and they come and see it oh nice so um you know i think they'll be fine with me doing it again uh so and the kids uh you know when they're eighth grade they can't drive so it is a commitment that the parents have to buy into also and sometimes they don't know anything about out of the box and the kids come home and they they start telling them about it and they say i want to do this and you know and

then they have to work around do they play baseball or soccer or softball or dance or you know other things so it's kind of it works out with having a two classes sometimes they can volunteer for one and they don't have to be there for the other or if they can they go ahead and do both so and they have so many people that are involved in it they have to have to right like they have to split the numbers split the classes because it was growing you know it's such a wonderful yeah so jj who we interviewed pretty early on he was a member

of out of the box early years from the beginning yeah yeah and how many people did he say was in it it was i was a handful yeah i think it was less than 12 or something yeah around a dozen is what i've heard maureen say before and in the in the documentary that i'm going to get to you guys yes we'll have to find a dvd player to watch it on but yeah yeah if kirstie is listening if you got any more extra copies kirstie drop them off at the theater um but uh it mentions when it started because of pam mutts the mayor's

wife and mrs mutts um she had kirstie and emma both auditioned for a show at lct and kirstie was like you know emma can't do this she has down syndrome she you know we don't want people making fun of her but they were both cast and the director kirstie says um told the rest of the cast you know everybody stop and watch emma and be like emma you know put the energy and the enthusiasm you're just kind of walking through it you know be and so then kirstie said she felt embarrassed for herself that she would think that here her sister who has this disability

couldn't be on the stage with her and so pan mutts then went to maureen and said is there something that we can do um for other members of uh you know the downs community or um special needs is what they call them and so maureen said absolutely we can do that and that's how out of the box started and has just continued to to explode and grow and develop and every year it's bigger yeah it is i love the name too amazing out of box yeah it's just it's really a gem of lct absolutely you can talk all you want about the main stage or

theater for youth or anything like that but that out of the box just makes our theater stand out and i get i get frustrated a lot when people are like you talk about our theater and they'll say we have a theater in town is that the hulk theater you know i'm like no is that theater winter haven and and yeah dan if you're listening i love theater winter haven you know that uh too but no it's not theater winter haven it's right there by texas cattle company oh that auditorium no you have to try that it's in between i just don't understand how with a

city like lakeland they don't know that we have i don't know this theater that puts it's very frustrating yeah i was i was talking with one of the kids so i've been over at you know cinderella land with harrison helping mentor there and one of the kids is a theater kid not musical theater but he's a theater kid and he didn't know he had no idea about lct really which i i was just really like of all the kids to not know it right to not know it i was just so sad by that mm-hmm yeah we need to do a better job of helping

to push our theater yes we do we're trying yeah we're doing a christmas float i think ladies oh that's right oh i know i heard about that oh boy and i'm with alan on that one i was like nope don't get me i did one of those at um highlands grove one year and like no no more christmas parade for this guy yeah they're pretty rough they're pretty rough just to watch it to be in i don't even like i don't like crowds like that so i don't even i mean they start putting their chairs out like a week yeah do they put them out

i think we've only attended maybe one when the kids were right super tiny i don't even know if we've watched it you can watch it live from the comfort of your own bed that's that's what we do so i saw when jordan said dad i think i'm gonna do the christmas parade good for you no no i'm gonna tell you no on that one no no i'm with alan go right ahead just do it don't make me a part of it yeah don't involve me whatsoever yeah we'll do anything once we'll see how it goes yeah that's because she has such support from um parents

at the theater i mean you guys are just amazing i know there are others too that yeah aren't part of the podcast but right um you know who are just and want their kids to have a safe fun place where they can express themselves and be themselves you know explore new things that they might have never done before and it just changes their life sometimes changes the direction of their life yeah um yeah to have that environment it's priceless it is and we say safe right like physically safe for sure but emotionally safe and just you know loving and supportive and accepting yes there's nothing

like the theater for that yes it is the safest of places if yeah yeah you don't know until you try it no exactly no you don't so if you haven't tried it i urge you to yeah go get involved you have nothing to lose yeah you might fall in love it's been like a decade we could probably do a les mis again i know i'm just going to bat for you yeah i already know yeah yeah yeah yeah i think we're at least the music right we're coming up on season 30 six i feel like five or six six oh goodness i should know this

i think it's seven or eight actually i think it's eight i don't know lim is this coming to strass this year let's look at it in june but he's he was talking strass has an amazing oh my gosh do they ever yes they do yes but yeah alan if you are listening even though i've told you this many many times we're putting it out there um i think our 40th is not too far away our 40th so do it for the 40th yeah it's about to start okay so 38 is about to start so they're faster yeah yeah i mean i just have like a

few more dream roles left but i'm about to age myself out of that what are they let's talk about that i mean i've always wanted to um be daddy warbucks and annie and um i think i'm you know almost get i'm gonna be grandpa warbucks before too long so um but i think annie was done the last time in 2012 10 12 something okay so that's right about up there too so it's over the 10 years but um yeah and then sam was one of them so i got to do that one and you know there's and i would love i wish i don't know

when the rights would ever come out for come from away oh yeah that show is so powerful yes i mean for me because i've been to gander because um i've been to that airport i had to change planes or refuel or something one time during my travels um so i know what that looks like and what the people are like there and then of course 9 11 changed my life from what i was doing for my job into what i'm doing now um but uh that show is just so powerful and i wouldn't care what part yeah i they were all good i just would

love to be a part of yeah that show you know you can watch the broadway version of that is it hbo it's one of the like the professional report yes that's what we watch yeah oh yeah i think within a day or two of it being released we watched it i mean when a show i mean we saw that the strass but when a show moves you so much that you're in tears either chills or tears or something you know that that's a special kind of show so yeah those are some things that are on my list but i don't know i think i might

be going more stage reads so that i don't have to memorize as much anymore i do too i'm starting to notice that too it's like oh my gosh yeah what happened i used to be so smart stage reads and for people out there who don't know i'm still smart i just can't remember anything that's true i have to write it all down that's true because we have so much space but i am getting to be a really good note taker so there you go i got stickies all over my sixth graders i'll learn your name by october okay just right now just tell me your

name again unless you're really bad then i know your name by tomorrow yeah i led i led my introduction with all the harrison kids i led with i suck at names just laying it out there to start that building process yes i'm gonna ask you a lot sorry yeah it's just a thing yeah don't take it personally it doesn't mean i don't like yeah i mean i may have seen you four or five times over at lct and now we're here and i'm still like well you know by their roles like you were the mayor or you were but i don't know your name exactly

yes so you do something else fun with your kids you take them to performances and then have them write reviews or critiques or yes tell us about that um well i do either i know that i've got two different things that i do with them um because my school is well it's first of all it's a magnet school i can say the name of my school can i yeah okay yes i think i may have already said i'm at lawton child's middle academy so um we are a magnet school but we're also an ib school so we're an international baccalaureate school so what i do

is um part of the ib curriculum are called these ib learner profiles and they're 10 different ones of characteristics that you should have to be a better global citizens so they're like being knowledgeable and an inquirer risk taker caring balanced reflective no i'm a bad ib teacher i can't think of all the rest of them off the top of my head but so what i'll do is if they see a performance um and it's whether it's a live one that i take them to a field trip or also in class i'll show them like my sixth graders watch driving miss daisy with angela lansbury and

james earl jones oh my gosh and my seven um well i show them irving berlin's holiday inn and uh you know different shows during the year that they'll see then we compare the characters to the ib learner profile traits so we say tell me a time during the musical or the play where miss daisy demonstrated that she was reflective you know so they have to take notes while they're watching it to say oh there's where miss daisy or we're hoke or or bully was was one of these traits um and then the other thing that i do at times is when we go on a

field trip is i'll say you know i have a critique form saying you know does the did the choreography add or distract from your experience um did the set design i did this after uh the last time i did it was after mary poppins when we i took my eighth graders mary poppins at harrison last year and so we did a a critique of mary poppins and then they all they as if they were a a critic you know and then they give it how out of how many five stars and then i tally those up and we say okay this is what you as

a class what you think how you felt about this performance and they fill in about you know the lead actors and the the supporting actors and you know if you could give an award to one actor which one would it be and overwhelmingly the last year was interesting it was mrs brill they all loved mrs brill last year well she was great she was very consistent too like throughout the whole show like i felt like she kind of kept her character so it they liked miss andrew too they liked miss andrew too because everybody likes a villain yes and i love playing villains too those

are well that was the first time i ever saw you actually you were hook yes i was peter pan i i didn't know anything about the theater existing we had moved from orlando to lakeland and it had been here maybe a couple of years and we um befriended our neighbor and she knew you because you were both teachers together and she took me to come see you at the theater to see peter pan and i also saw greece there um i got to play sleazeball in greece vince fontaine so you were in both shows yes oh i didn't realize that i was in well vince

fontaine and greece was only about 15 minutes at the top of act two at the dance when i made out with marty on the proscenium which was really that can i tell that story real fast yes wait he's asking permission to squirrel yeah license to squirrel the the actress who played license to squirrel i love that really that should have been a margarita bill that should have many many of those rehearsals yeah um but the actress who was playing marty is the one marty maraschino you know that's yeah events fontaine goes after yeah well um she's a wonderful actress named laura modrell and uh if

you saw sweeney todd she was miss lovett in in that show but um we had been in a couple shows together and so she's like my daughter's age and i had to hit on her and we had to like make out on the on the proscenium so i was like you know we had to have this little chat you know as actors do you know how far is too far and i said i don't want to creep you out i'm not going to molest you or anything but we have to make this look real yeah so how are we going to do this so she

the trooper that she is she's like just go for it and i'm like wait no you're my daughter's age i can't do this you know did she say welcome to hollywood yeah that's just like saying happy birthday mr president she did she would put on extra lipstick before that scene and so while we're in we're at the proscenium she she would kiss my cheeks and everything because i i had to shave for that show and i just had like i called it the porn mustache yeah oh creepy vince fontaine yeah so she would kiss all over my cheeks while we were on the proscenium just

my cheeks yeah okay and so whenever um the principal you know got my attention and i pulled away from her then i had all these kiss marks you look like y'all were yeah i've been really been making out so um we were on the up against the proscenium one show and she was doing that and they had our mics off thank goodness because i told her i said my wife's in the audience tonight and she said good i'm gonna give you extra kisses so she she laid a few more on my face like that and we were like giggling laughing you know she's a dear

dear dear person um and so then the next show when we were up against the proscenium again and so she would she was putting her kisses on my cheeks and she goes my dad's in the audience oh no i was like oh my gosh i'm going to die tonight because your dad's in the audience and we couldn't stop laughing we literally could not stop laughing when she told me that her dad was in the audience because that that was worse than my wife being in the audience yeah yeah because all the kids will say i um when i tell them that you have to do

stage kissing you have to kiss i was talking about mama mia you know that i got married to donna i mean sam gets married to donna and so i had to kiss ashley who played donna dear friend of mine too her husband's in the audience for every show my wife's in the audience but you know shout out to the theater spouses who understand that your spouse is just acting so um because the kids are like but mr jones you're married and you were kissing another woman i'm like yeah it's acting it's called actually they're different yeah oh they are different how are they different as

somebody who's never done a stage kiss as i understand it like like a like a kiss you when you kiss your husband right yeah that that's that's different different more involved feeling more involved it's not just mechanical right yeah like you're you're just holding your looks together yes okay it has to look real from the audience or whatever it's like corner to corner right yeah or you can if you a lot of people like put their hands like on their cheeks you know so that and then it looks like you're kissing more or not but you know sometimes you just like i think donna and

i had to kiss like five or six times and mama mia it wasn't of course until the end because she hated me through the whole show it was really i mean she didn't hate me but she was mad at me through the whole show and just the end there where we had to kiss but there was an awful lot of that that was done when we were getting married yeah but i mean it was just like love exactly you have you can't for the audience to go i didn't feel any chemistry or that they were actually in in love because then that doesn't work and

it's a hard thing because like i feel like everybody that has to kiss on stage they're like siblings practically in the theater oh because they've done stuff together for so long or whatever or parental figures with exactly if ashley o'connor is listening uh we have a joke ashley and i because i have i've played her husband because she was mrs darling and peter pan so that was her husband with mr darling and hook i've played her husband i played her grandfather and um young frankenstein i was her grandfather but um i've played her secret lover in a stage read where i did have to kiss

her and she is again my daughter's age but yeah i mean so ashley and i have this thing like well and when we're in shows together you know who are we going to be this show right right you know what is our connection in this one so you know just when you when you are on the stage often and and you're cast with like people you don't know what that relationship is going to be and how you've got to build that so i mean that's what i try to tell my students is that now if you go do theater for youth you're not going to

have to be kissing on stage okay this is adult stuff and right and main stage but yeah um they they do get shocked they're overwhelmed that yeah that this really happens i'm sure pj never thought he was going to be kissing robertino oh they totally did when yeah in chitty chitty bang bang yeah because he played one of the spies i don't remember that yeah it was like a thing i blocked it out the only reason i went for the show was to see that one of the drops was in right it was like towards it was on the apron that they did it yeah

yeah i feel like it's there because he was like the king or the baron yeah he was the baron yeah and so pj's character i guess had a little how do i not remember with that i don't know yeah goodness yeah so as a parent of a theater kid does it ever get easier watching your child perform audition all of that jordan will say i don't know if she said when she was on here that we never sent her to the theater well yes yes very clear on that people make sure everybody knows that no we sent her to soccer camp and cooking camp and

you know she was putting on shows in your living room and still no theater camp yes i don't know you know i'm gonna i'm gonna defer on that one i don't know congrats to you for not blaming your wife because you could have totally just done that i don't know i just felt a deferral i said i deferred but she she would do all the talent shows in elementary and she took piano she did take piano and one year i can't remember it was third grade or fourth grade she came home and she said i'm doing the talent show we're like oh what are you

going to play this year she said i'm singing and we're like she'd never taken a voice lesson she had never done anything like that before and so tracy my wife and i were when we went to the talent show we were like panicked totally panicked when she got up there to sing she had every confidence in the world that she could sing this song and she sang reflection from mulan and i don't think i breathed to the whole time she was singing and i remember sitting there going she can sing yeah how did i not know this especially you being a singer yourself right yeah

i mean she was in kids choir at church and and i had a little solo every now and then and i thought well she can carry a tune at least yeah yeah unlike my wife i will and we all we all know that i know i know she she harmonizes without knowing it in church we would do that the kids would be like mom you harmonize really i didn't know so so whenever i tell people that jordan got it from me she did really just legitimate but anyway um so then she just kept going with with music and drop piano which i think she wishes

you would stay with it but and and then by the time she got to middle school in eighth grade she was cast as cinderella yeah when lakeland highlands middle school did that um and then i started working like backstage and i became the theater parent and she went on to which is really interesting she did not get into harrison as a student house she yeah so she went to jenkins and they had a really good musical theater program when she was there and um we did little abner in her ninth grade year she played daisy may um we did little women in her 10th grade

year and she was joe march and we did seven brides for seven brothers her junior year and she was one of the seven brides and then we did footloose her senior year when she was rusty so i was involved all four of those years helping i couldn't i really can't build anything i'm not good with mechanical tools but i can direct people and help change sets and all that kind of stuff so i was a backstage parent for those years and then she said this is what i want to do and then as you all know because you know her went on got her bfa

in theater a musical theater and then her master's and um is now using her love and and to really get back to your question angela i'm sorry about that i went on the wheel there for a little bit join us um it's a fun ride to be with you guys yes but i what i feel now and tracy and i have talked about this is when we watch her now it's it's just absolute pride in watching your kid do what they love to do that they found what they really love to do and i went a couple days during camp this summer um because dad

i need you to pick up something you know and i'd run by because i was out for for summer for this from school and i would just sit in the back and watch her with the kids and i've watched her without the box and and i've listened to many voice lessons and i knew all of you guys at one point that she's a life coach too oh gosh yes last wednesday and they just unload and and they feel comfortable enough to talk to jordan about those things so as a parent that there couldn't be anything better than to feel that your kid is making a

difference in other people's other kids lives must be so proud and i'm very proud yeah yeah i mean like we're about to go to the volunteer um recognition and i know that she's going to be her first time going up there to recognize some of the youth and you know in the theater and yeah she just i mean i just love her of course i love her but i'm so proud of her and um and what she does to help with with kids whether it's at lct or whether it's at harrison when she's teaching boys there i watched what she did with jania yes and

i know you have you've had jania on here and jania honey if you're listening you're probably too busy at ball and wallows but yeah if you're listening jania um she was so invested in jania and so proud of her and um that's that's what's really cool as a parent um and being in shows with her that's a lot of fun i think we've done like four or five together and mamma mia i was a lead she was an ensemble in margaritaville she was a lead i was in the ensemble so it's fun to to watch each other and um you know i'd be sitting in

the wings on stage left and she'd come off stage and she'd come around to go dad was that okay was that all right all right oh i totally screwed that up i forgot my backpack all right you know just telling me things and so being able to do that with your whether your child is young or they're i'm not going to put out her age or they're an adult yeah yeah i mean it's still we have that in common we have that love for live theater and music and everything in common so that will forever bond you you know that's a really special relationship it's

not going anywhere and a lot it was funny because when i started lct because jordan had been involved and i was jordan's dad and then she left and went away for school yeah and then when she came back she was steven's daughter yeah yeah she wasn't you know she she had to get back in doing shows and stuff and now i'm yeah they couldn't even remember her name true i know trudy she got trudy yeah she got trudy when she was she said i should always be true to get at lct but um and then of course when she came back and took over now

i'm miss jordan's dad you know and that's fine yeah i like being a theater dad i think i'm a theater dad to a lot of kids or adults there yes because you know they're just all my kids yeah we feel the same yeah 100 yeah for sure gabby knows she can always find you if she needs something or whatever you know you'll always give it to her straight you know that's important it's important well that's the cool thing about the theaters there's so many people that love your children they're safe places all around if they need somebody to talk to or you know even if

they question about their uniform costume or anything there's so many people they're willing to just jump in and help yeah exactly yes that family experience thing yeah well and like a lot of the people that we've interviewed they've all had strong parents behind them or or a mentor or somebody investing time and energy and you know working backstage and those things so say it again get in there and volunteer well and and not even just for that like if you're looking for a way to you know sort of get in into your kid's life you know more than just being a parent getting to know

them as a human that they're growing into like this has been the perfect experience for that for us for both kids even though mikaela's not a theater kid you know she has loved teching and getting involved in that side so much and now she's run sound and yeah she really loves that oh she's really good so course on that one yeah yeah um you know she was thrown into the fire there for margarita oh my gosh and thank god for her i mean she was so patient with it yes you know she's autistic so like i didn't know to go one way or the other

that would be and she just she's a cucumber yeah all six of your kids i mean they're they're also different in so many ways but they but it's obvious that they have parents that are supporting them as a teacher you know i look through a different lens and so it's obvious to know when there are kids who have supportive parents and those who don't i mean my parents my personal parents um didn't really support me in in pursuing they wanted me to have a good job and they wanted me to make money and you know all of that kind of stuff which is still very

important um but like i had a job offer to be um assistant cruise director on royal caribbean cruise line how cool when i was working at the travel company i went ahead and just applied for it and went to a recording studio recording but recorded myself oh my gosh singing that's pretty cool god bless the usa i mean other than not what you're doing now is wonderful but like retirement gig our company would charter cruise ships and fill them with our passengers so i went to alaska that way we did the inside passage in alaska and i got to be with the um the cruise

director and he put me in the shows and everything like that on the cruise line so then right after that i went ahead and applied and royal caribbean offered me a position so i was trying to decide and my parents like no you can't do that and i said but you know i don't have to pay rent i don't have to pay for a car i don't have to pay for anything but my underwear yeah yeah and you never know who's going to see you on a cruise ship and we could lead to something else yeah so i decided against it i turned it down

the next month i married my wife i mean i met my wife not married her met her so i guess it was meant to be yeah but it's kind of a joke in our family that uh if tracy and i are having one of those you know spousal disagreements the kids will say you should have gone on the cruise dad you should have gone you should have gone on the cruise your boat sailed without you without me so that's a that's like a family joke with us that i should have gone on the cruise whenever whenever that happens but so it's great to see parents

that are you know supporting kids and of course jordan always reminds us that we didn't put her in theater camp yeah but look she's still she's still turned out yes yeah she's strong her journey is exactly the way it's supposed to be well she's passionate about it yeah she is definitely yes yes she had and she had a a professor that um that kind of tore her down right um unfortunately and luckily when she went to get her master's in oklahoma she had she had barbara yes she had barbara and that she named her wig and gave her confidence that had been stripped away and

and developed her um her the the thing about jordan that i is she she's all about performance but she what to me that i i like the most is that she's about technique she wants you to be healthy she wants your voice to be healthy she wants if you're going to belt she wants you to do a healthy belt she wants you to breathe correctly and those are when you talked earlier about things that she might have said to me she'll say you need to get it in your neck dad you need to get it in the front of your your the front of your

face and until you've actually experienced when your teeth are vibrating that is finally in the right place you don't know what that means so what i like is that she's not just there to put on a show to direct kids in a show she wants them to learn she really is about the education process and you know as as my wife and are both teachers so you know that that's cool to see her do that kind of role but also to really focus on the health the health of your everything that's connected and especially with your your voice and when she hears people singing incorrectly

she's like they're going to damage their vocal cords and you hear about these singers that have to go on vocal rest or you know whatever because they're not doing it correctly so she's also trying to put that in there too well and as horrible as her experience was at the one college we won't name she's been able to use that to know what kids need they don't need to be torn apart they need to be built up yeah so even at their worst moment she finds a way to build them up so it was i'm sorry she had to go through it but it was

hard that was hard as a parent to see your child i mean she had had such a good high school you know going through um that program there and and doing those shows and everything and then um having all the self-esteem right right and then immediately within the first semester at least in the first year that she was there have that all torn apart yeah and you know not given opportunities that and then we would go see the shows to be supportive of her um and then see the people that were cast and like wait a minute you know and i know every parent thinks

that but we also knew the background about how she was being um demoralized by this woman that never should be allowed to teach but still is and um geez so for her to overcome that and and to decide number one that she wasn't just done with it it was still a passion right and and to say i want to get my master's in this and uh you know we're thinking oklahoma but you know you think about people that have come from oklahoma yeah you know carrie underwood and kristen chenoweth garth brooks and blake shelton and reba you know you think about there's a lot a

lot of vocal talent out there in oklahoma but then she met barbara and uh barbara de mayo her who was her voice teacher there and she would we would talk to her when we would go out to oklahoma and she would say i see so much potential in jordan and to hear that instead of what we had heard for four years at the other school um to hear her say that it's there and to watch jordan change yeah and i think like you said angela i think that when kids are faced with people who are not being as supportive or um are trying to tear

them down or not give them confidence i think she knows exactly how they feel and so she wants to correct that yes yeah and then that comes back on the wheel to your question about being a parent you know that makes you very very proud that as adults they're they're trying to change lives too yeah they are that you may actively you made a good human yeah yeah you did the other one that we made he was in one show we had to stick him in one show we needed to fill in so he always talks about that was ed jenkins and he was in

sixth grade i think i mean he just had a walk-on role yeah and he's like that was my mom i should have won an award for that you know all he did was walk on but no we had one we had one in theater and we had one in athletics and so it was we were either at the at the theater or we were on the soccer or football field so yeah you know he's made his life and in his direction too so you know you just gotta you you you gotta there's a lot of praying there's a lot of hoping and there's a lot

of of having a support community around that that whole takes the village is not a lie it's not just bs that is that is true it does take a whole group of people um who love your kids and you know i've mentioned it to you guys separately and together you know thanks for loving my kid and thanks for supporting her and being there for her while she's doing her job because it means a lot to me as her parent so anyway she means a lot yes she does oh goodness yes i'm gonna give you how much well how did i made your interview about out

of the box get onto jordan talking about jordan right that's kind of weird yeah it's the wheel um we got to kind of wrap it up because we do have a thing oh gosh that's right yeah i don't even know what time it is time flies guys oh wow when we are talking about the stuff that we love i know i know um so next podcast i don't know we'll be a surprise for everyone yes it will us included no plans yet but i've got i've got some things we could be yes the squirrel thanks for coming of course i feel like a squirrel needs

to be like our plushy logo revamp again forget the microphone yeah get rid of the mic squirrel or with a microphone oh that would be perfect yeah that would be perfect oh geez thank you guys for letting me um thank you so much on my kids my students my own personal kids too i have um one quick question for you before we do wrap up what where do you see yourself what are you doing next creatively retiring oh on the cruise ship yeah yeah uh yeah actually we did find out that we can retire soon so i think just one more year in the classroom

for this one so oh my gosh we want to do something else but i don't know we can't do this anymore yeah i i love i can't get political but i love what i what i teach i love teaching the kids it's all the other stuff it is really and it just gets worse it's gotten worse and worse and worse i think we've kind of touched on that in our last you know people trying to get involved in your curriculum and they have no business because they don't know what they're talking about all that kind of stuff it's just it's just too hard yeah so

i just want to do something interesting for the like yeah and then just retire retire but you asked for me yeah like performing because edwin drood right those um auditions are coming up monday and tuesday actively be in teaching and it is it is it is hard but um i mean i'm looking at the stage read the humans i do love that place so i'm looking about at auditioning for that okay um when is that one in the year it's in the fall oh yeah it's in the fall it's coming up i think like it's right it's between drood and what's after drood yeah i

think yeah yeah so it's the in between before fantastics so um i don't know i was looking um fantastics is a question mark okay um that is an an old and goldy one that has my interest um just real fast a real fast story when chandler was at ucf um he had to take a summer class before he started and so he said i'm just going to take a fine arts class and dad and jordan can do it for me because it was like online and everything but he did have to go see a performance at ucf and he goes oh my gosh he comes

in one night and he says i have to go see this show it's called the fantastics because the way that they the way they spell fantastics has a k in it right she called it the fantastic so jordan and i about fell out yeah you know with him calling the fantastic so anytime that i see even the the promotional information for the show coming up i have to say fantastic fantastic fantastic oh no it's fantastic for now on this show so but that that's probably only gonna be it this season just because there's so much so much going on um that that probably will be

it well that'll fill your plate anyways yeah i mean yeah well we're volunteering whenever i can yeah we love seeing you at the theater thank you thank you oh no thank you guys thank you so much for being on i love listening to your podcast when i'm driving to school at six in the morning you know it's always fun in parts because they're in parts oh yeah in parts oh yeah we talk this one's no exception yeah of course not now all right goodbye everybody all right guys have great sundays keep an eye on the weather oh my yeah pray it away please yeah i'm

already stressed yeah bye y'all