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Connor Khamis, 5, of San Clemente
Connor Khamis, 5, of San Clemente
Author

Recently, I’ve been enjoying the hilarious biographies of two of Hollywood’s most successful women – Amy Poehler and Tina Fey – detailing how they rose from childhood theater performers to improv artists to two of Hollywood’s most creative minds. Both give the bulk of the credit for their lives’ paths to early immersion in theater and learning the art of improvisation.

Poehler opens her book by recounting her fourth-grade performance as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.” She had a line, “Where’s Toto?” that she instantly realized she couldn’t deliver because she was holding the live-prop dog. Instead of panicking, the clever 9-year-old had a revelation: She could alter the course of events with her own creative choices. (In the end, she decided to deliver the line as is, adding comic flair to the scene.)

That power later led to a love of improvisation, live theater and creating in a safe environment that fosters collaboration, spontaneity and teamwork – crucial for actors, but valuable skills for any walk of life.

The STEM dilemma

With the world continuing to evolve toward a more high-tech global economy, there has been greater emphasis on stressing curriculums that center on science, technology, engineering and math, aka STEM. With only so much time and money in schools, arts education often falls victim to more “solid” academic subjects.

Yet arts and science are not, nor have they ever been, mutually exclusive. Leonardo da Vinci, to name just one example, was famously both an artist and a scientist.

“Painting is science,” said Jeff Sewell, artist and director of the education and mentorship outreach program with Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (lagunapleinair.org). “Every color is made from the primary colors and black and white; the paint compounds are chemistry, and mixing them to create every tone is all an element of science.”

Elizabeth Ramirez, a mechanical and biomedical engineer, mother of four and co-founder of Creative Kids Playhouse in Mission Viejo, agrees that the arts are not only integral to the core academic subjects but invaluable for reinforcing them.

“There have been numerous studies that prove students who participate in performing arts see improvement across all academic subjects,” Ramirez said. “A famous UCLA study of 25,000 students showed that those who participated in theater arts programs scored an average of 65 points higher on the verbal component of the SATs and 35.5 points higher in math.”

According to Ramirez, there are STEM principles throughout the arts.

“Music can be broken down to mathematical terms,” she says. “The visual arts rely on science – light, color, refraction, perspective – and things like sculpture and architecture are engineering, of course.”

Ramirez co-founded Creative Kids Playhouse (creativekids playhouse.com) when she realized how involved many of the theater programs in the region tended to be.

“I was trying to find something for my own child, and the rehearsal schedules and commitment for some of the other organizations are targeted to those wanting to become professionals. My daughter just wanted to be in a play,” she said.

An alliance with creative director and co-founder Michelle Bowren brought the education-based, nonprofit theater program to life.

The mission of Creative Kids Playhouse is that every child gets to perform and participate. Also, some of the productions are a little unconventional, such as its February production of “Sleeping Beauty From the Witch’s Point of View.”

“We have fun with it and try to do the unexpected,” says Ramirez. “Our passion is to bring the feeling to every child that says, ‘I can do this!’”

Creative Kids Playhouse offers courses and programs year-round, and kids get experience with various elements of theater – from ticket sales to starring roles, which rotate so every child gets a chance to shine.

Cross-subject benefit

Kristen Call, a fourth-grade teacher from Mission Viejo, recently took her class to experience the exhibit “California: This Golden Land of Promise” at the Irvine Museum. She told accompanying artist Jeff Sewell that it was the best field trip she had experienced in her 19 years of teaching.

“It was the perfect complement to our fourth-grade curriculum that is California history,” she says. “And here were all these paintings depicting everything we had been studying – Orange County history, the missions, geography – the kids were having one ‘aha! moment’ after another.”

Sewell visits schools as part of his outreach with the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association education program.

“He came to the fourth-grade classes and introduced what plein-air painting is and then gave each class a demonstration,” Call says.

“He showed the kids how to mix the colors and about basic composition and created a landscape painting while explaining that the works we have from past centuries are our primary documentation of that time, so it isn’t just art we’re studying, it’s history, science and social studies, too.”

As part of the association’s outreach, the students are given the opportunity to paint on their own canvases and admire the dynamics of the land where they live.

“It helps them to truly appreciate how Orange County was before and how it is now,” Sewell says. “Which I believe then makes them better stewards of the land.”

Developing an environment in which children are encouraged to dream, create and invent might be simpler than you think.

“You can foster a child’s imagination and creativity through simple, everyday activities,” says Cindy Peca, creative director for Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana.

“Watch classic movie musicals together, teach your child to cook a meaningful family recipe or host a talent showcase night where family members can sing, lip sync, dance, tell jokes, play an instrument, read a poem or act out a scene from their favorite movie.”