[00:00:00] Debra Lawrence: In the theater space that we’ve created, I love that part of what we’re doing is helping kids have a place to put feet to their faith. One, we do a lot of conversations with our kids around the stories we do.

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[00:00:25] Gretchen Roe: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe. I am so excited to welcome Debra Lawrence. This is a conversation five months in the making, almost five months. We met this summer in July at the AFHE Convention in Arizona, and we had a terrific conversation. I was nosy. I wanted to find out about what MoezArt Productions was. We’re going to tell you a lot about that today. The reason my conversation with Debra resonated so thoroughly is because I was a theater kid. I grew up in the little theater.

I grew up doing theater as a high schooler and even into college. I wanted that experience for my kids when they were homeschooled, and I was blessed to be able to have that. Even doing 18 conferences a year, it’s rare to find someone who’s doing it well. I’ve invited Debra today to talk about MoezArt Productions, to talk about its evolution and what they’re doing, how she got to here today, and then where you might be able, as a parent, to see yourself creating something like this very cool program they have in Maricopa County, Arizona. Debra, I’ll let you introduce yourself, and then we’ll get into our discussion.

[00:01:56] Debra: Thanks, Gretchen. I’m Debra Lawrence, and I’m CEO for MoezArt Productions. We teach theater to the homeschool community in Maricopa County. Our founder, Sharon Moe Rodriguez, was 19 when she was asked by a local homeschool co-op, “Would you come teach a speech and debate class?” and she said, “Okay.” One or two semesters in, she said, “You know, I was a missionary kid growing up in Africa, and we did some theater. What if I taught a theater class?” They said, “Okay, we’ll try that.” Some parents helped her navigate some of that. Her sister was a playwright.

Her sister wrote a couple plays, and it just has grown now. It just grew and took off. The name MoezArt is from her maiden name, Moe. She and her sister were the Moe sisters, M-O-E. That’s why it’s M-O-E-Z. Anyway, that’s how MoezArt started was with that, and really, just the Lord gave Sharon a vision for what this space could be, and she would say every kid deserves a chance to do theater, to try theater, and be in a space. We do educational theater. We teach theater classes from 12:00 to 4:00, one day a week, at various locations around the valley. It’s first come, first serve. Who signs up for the class is in the class, and they do a full production at the end of the semester with two to four performances a weekend, depending on the age and lots of details.

[00:03:42] Gretchen: Do you do this all ages together, or do you do younger kids and older kids?

[00:03:47] Debra: Yes. We have our elementary five- to nine-year-olds that we call our Mini-Moez, and they only do two-hour rehearsals. Then we do the 10-to-13 middle school age, and then we have high school 14 to graduated. Occasionally, if we’re starting a new area, we might combine 10 to 18. Just until we get big enough to separate those.

[00:04:10] Gretchen: Tell me what a theater class means for you all. It’s from learning all the things that encompass set direction all the way through production.”

[00:04:23] Debra: We focus in our classes on teaching acting and teaching the performance component. They don’t do a lot of learning the design components of the technical theater. That’s actually one of the areas that we’re working to improve on because we want to teach our kids that component, but we’re nomadic. We don’t have our own space. That has been the thing we’ve been trying to figure out, is how do you teach lighting when there’s not lighting set up anywhere? It shows up. We show up on a Monday, set it up for three days. The kids perform for three days, and then we tear it down.

It is a little bit of a crazy schedule. Our classes are four hours, and we teach different skills like improv, or we talk about script analysis, or we teach character development. We work on those while we also rehearse the production they’re doing. We do devotions with the kids every week, and do prayer time with the kids every week, because we are faith-based; for sure, we’re a Christian organization. For four hours, that’s what we do once a week with the kiddos.

[00:05:45] Gretchen: I think it’s really important for a parent listening to us to understand how empowering it can be, particularly for a child who perhaps is reticent in a group of people, to learn the skill of improvisation, to learn the skill of stepping out of who they think they are and into who they might want to pretend to be. This becomes a sophisticated form of pretend, but it’s fun. I’ve seen kids who would not– One of my neighbors was part of one of our productions at one time, and we used to make bets on how many sentences Jason would make in as few words as possible, because he was just that shy, until we got him involved in theater, and then people were like, “Can you believe that kid?” [laughs]

[00:06:48] Debra: We have so many of those stories. Something we do that is unique is that kids aren’t in our shows because they audition and they were the best one for the part. They’re in the show because they signed up for the class. They do audition so we can help figure out where to put them, where they’ll be the most successful. One of the things I tell our parents all the time is that we’ve never had a kiddo who we’ve given– Maybe they’re capable of some giant part, and we’ve given them a smaller part. They might be discouraged because they wanted the bigger part, but they have fun, and they come back and try again next semester.

When we’ve given a kiddo who wasn’t ready for it a too big part, they get so discouraged and burned out and embarrassed and humiliated, and they’re done, and they never want to do theater again. We’re very cognizant of if we’re going to err, we err to this side of, “Let them feel confident and like they should have had more,” instead of feel like, “You gave me so much, now I’m humiliated.”

We take these kiddos who come in and say, “I won’t say one word on stage,” and let them be the little redheaded girl in Charlie Brown who has not one line, but walks in shy and aloof for a couple scenes and walks off. She directs with us, and she performs, and she’s dynamic. She’s still quiet in one-on-one, but is confident to have a conversation. We have so many of those stories of kids just waking up.

Really, theater becomes a primer for social skills. I think so often as parents, we tell kids, “Go share, go be nice, go ask your friend, go say you’re sorry, go accept their apology,” and think that that direction is enough to help them know how to do it. Theater, because it allows them to step into this space of, “Here’s the story with the conflict, here’s the story with the problem, and this character is mean to this character.”

One, they’re feeling safe because we do a lot of work around how do you have hard scenes with a partner that you can trust, that we’re working to develop this story and create this story? Then they are practicing, how does this conflict resolve? They start building some social skill muscles for how to resolve things in real life. We found with our Mini-Moez program that that’s one of the best outcomes for our Mini-Moez program. We do it a little bit different format than we do the older kids, but that has been such an impactful thing for our five- to nine-year-olds is, what happens when the rabbit’s mad at the cat and the cat gets sad and walks away? What lesson does the rabbit learn? [chuckles] Then it helps them translate that to their life.

[00:09:57] Gretchen: One of the things, I think, that we have forgotten as parenting has become perhaps more digital and maybe a little bit more frenetic is, you and I learned our first social interaction with people we didn’t know when we had to answer the phone in the kitchen.

[00:10:17] Debra: Yes.

[00:10:19] Gretchen: Nobody has a phone in the kitchen anymore. Often, our kids have no necessity to interact with someone outside of our family, unless it’s in church, and that’s a different space because we’re kind of all there for the same goal. It’s different than learning those opportunities to interact when conflict is present. Part of performance art is, “What’s the conflict, and how are we going to resolve it?”

[00:10:56] Debra: You’re going to get me on all my soapboxes about why I love theater so much.

[00:11:02] Gretchen: That’s okay. This is why I wanted to have this conversation, because you and I had such a great conversation in Arizona this summer.

[00:11:10] Debra: I love church, and I love going to church, but the reason we go is to sit and learn and also to find some community in that we’re going to sit and learn together. In the theater space that we’ve created, I love that part of what we’re doing is helping kids have a place to put feet to their faith. One, we do a lot of conversations with our kids around the stories we do. “Why did they make this decision? What do you think drove that? What decision would you make? How do you think the Lord would look upon that decision versus this decision?”

We do a lot of those conversations around plots and choices and characters. The kids have to interact with each other when they’re frustrated that, “This kid didn’t go learn their lines, but I learned my lines. Why won’t they just learn them?” The conflict is built in, but we have these adults around who are helping them see how we navigate stressful tech weeks because our tech weeks are stressful. We show up on Monday, have to build everything, put it together, rehearse, throw in costumes, quick throw the lights and sound together, rehearse Tuesday, rehearse Wednesday, boom, you have an audience Thursday.

That is an intense place, and they’re watching all these adults and other people interact with each other with kindness and with grace. “Okay, we had asked for these props. Why aren’t they here yet?” “I’m sorry, I didn’t see that. I need to go get those for you.” There’s some of that chaos that happens in the million details of theater. I actually used to be a children’s pastor, and there is a book that I cannot remember the author, but the name of the book was called Sticky Faith. I may have to look it up.

[00:13:08] Gretchen: I will do a little bit of Google researching and make sure that we include it in the show notes.

[00:13:14] Debra: Okay, great. In there, I don’t remember all of the things that it said, but one of the things it said is, in the research, for kids who have a faith that sticks and stays past childhood, those kids need to have at least five non-immediate family member adults who they feel are all in for them. “They’re on my team, they get me, they’re somebody I can go to, they show up for me, I can trust that other adult.” I remember reading that book when I was a children’s pastor and asked my kiddos who were little, “Who are five people that you think are on your team, all in for you, not counting our family?”

Every name they mentioned was an adult from the theater space because they were the people who, when they were discouraged because they couldn’t learn their lines, showed up in the bathroom when they were crying to go, “Oh, how can we help you? Why are you discouraged? You’re going to get this. You’re going to have it. It’s okay. We all have bad days.” They just came to understand, “These adults are all in for me.” It was fascinating. I said, “Not your aunt and uncle?” My daughter goes, “You said not our family.” I said, “I meant not our immediate family.” She said, “Well, yes, all of those aunts and uncles too.”

These are the people that she was like, these are the people that are in the trenches with her, and she just felt it. I think that happens in sports too. You can have coaches that really are in there for the kids, and the kids know it. “This coach believes in me, and I want to show up for them too.”

[00:14:58] Gretchen: I also can tell you, as a theater kid kid and then a theater parent, there is something about being wholly seen by parents in that space and the adults in that space that is different. It’s unique. It’s something that I would encourage parents to either go find or go create-

[00:15:21] Debra: Yes.

[00:15:22] Gretchen: -because it is so different for kids.

[00:15:24] Debra: It’s so great. The way we found MoezArt was because, at the time, my son was 11, and again, I had done a little bit of theater as a kid at my church growing up, and I had done a little bit of theater in high school. Then I thought, “Well, this is fun.” Then I almost have a minor from Grand Canyon University in theater. I would’ve had a minor, but I was also minoring in Christian studies and majoring in psychology.

[00:15:50] Gretchen: You had your hands a little full there, Debra.

[00:15:52] Debra: I did. I walked into my last class for the minor, which was theater history, and they’re like, “We’re going to read all these books and write all these papers,” and I said, “I cannot. I have too many things. I’ll audit.” I’m one audited class away from a minor. I loved it and just had fun in that space, not as a performer. I actually don’t have fun performing, and I actually don’t consider myself really an artist. I’m not a creator of those things, but I’m the person who so greatly appreciates art and what it means and how impactful it is. I have more leadership skills to help develop a good space so artists can develop well.

Anyway, I know a little bit about theater, and I enjoy the space. My husband is a musician, and he is an artist, and he’s music educator, and he had started a theater program at his school. Anyway, we realized pretty early on our oldest son was pretty gifted, and we’re like, “He needs to be in theater.” We started trying to find a space, and actually at the AFHE Convention in Phoenix one summer, I walked by, and I turned a corner, and there was this booth for this MoezArt Productions that had these beautiful pictures of the theater that they had done.

I was like, “Who is this?” [laughs] We signed our son up and thought, “We’ll see how it goes.” It is a homeschool thing, and even though I was homeschooling, I was a little bit jaded and thought, “Is this going to be lame and terrible?” The pictures were pretty impressive, so I thought, “I don’t know. We’ll see.” My son was 11 when we walked into MoezArt, and we just fell in love with it, and our family’s stayed involved.

I have four kiddos, and they’ve all gone through MoezArt and been involved at different levels. Three of my kids are dynamic performers. One of them, she is a dynamic performer, but like me, that’s not the part she loves. I love being backstage. I love running a show. I love calling a show. My daughter loves being backstage and managing.

[00:17:55] Gretchen: Many hands make light work. If it wasn’t for the people who loved that aspect of a production, a production would never happen because you have to have all those people to figure out what that is. I think it’s also important for parents to understand your kid doesn’t have to be under the spotlight to have a life-changing experience.

[00:18:18] Debra: Yes. Sharon, she was a great costumer, too. That was really where she was the most artistic, I think. My daughter was helping her. My daughter, just one day, chaos is happening, and where were the other frog costumes? She couldn’t find them. She’s like, “Where are the frog costumes?” My daughter said, “There’s one over there under the jacket on a chair.” She’s like, “The other one’s backstage with the whatever.” My daughter, who can track details like it’s her superpower. Sharon saw that and was like, “Oh my gosh, she’d be amazing at working costumes or stage managing or whatever,” because she saw that.

That mattered so much to my daughter, who was quiet and who already knew she despised improv and was like, “Don’t ever make me do it again.” Liked being on stage well enough, but it just wasn’t the passion the way it was some other kids’ passion. Sharon saw that, her ability to manage detail. That’s one of the things we talk a lot to our volunteers because we are a homeschool thing; it’s parents who come in, and we do some work to help train them, but they direct and teach and choreograph and music direct and use their gifts and abilities to help pull this together.

We’re a little bit of a hybrid homeschool co-op situation. We talk to them about, see those kids and those gifts and those talents that they have and that we can use those and put those to work in helping with costumes and being backstage and running the tech, that kind of thing.

[00:20:02] Gretchen: Because you guys are a bit of a vagabond as far as where your productions will happen, in a way, that keeps kids flexible in their thinking, because they can’t go, “Well, this is where we’ve always done it.”

[00:20:18] Debra: This semester, we’ve been struggling. When MoezArt first started, it really was 25 years ago, and not everybody was renting spaces from churches to do all of their homeschool things, but now, it really is. There’s a million churches in Phoenix, maybe literally a million, and everybody’s renting space from them, so we’re like, “Oh, no.” We’ve been struggling to find a place for our high schoolers to perform. It’s funny that you say that, because I’ve been saying to my directors, “I’m so sorry. We are going to have to take our very square peg and make it fit into some very small round holes this semester.” [laughs]

Everybody’s like, “It’s okay. We’ll do it. We’re still going to tell this story.” I was like, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s tell the story.” Even the kids are watching our directors go, “Okay, it’s going to be tricky, and we’re going to figure it out.” Showing up together, and in that, honoring the Lord. We talk a lot about how reflecting the character of Christ is what honors Him, and so we want to do that with each other, and we want to tell a story that reflects truth and beauty at some level for our audiences. Just all those conversations that get to happen in those spaces is amazing.

[00:21:31] Gretchen: Debra, if I’m a parent and I’m not in Maricopa County, but I think something like this would be terrific in my homeschool community, what are the things you would recommend? Who are the folks you would recommend I gather, and what are the things you would recommend that we talk about first so we could look at doing something like MoezArt Productions? Granted, you guys have 25 years of longevity. You’ve made all the mistakes. You know what didn’t work. There’s a lot of that “Well, we’re not going to do that again,” [laughs] kind of thinking that happens.

[00:22:15] Debra: Yes, I’m thinking through one of the things, we’ve had a few people outside Maricopa County who have been like, “Come do this up here.” I’m like, “I don’t know that we–” Theaters, we figured out a way to make it portable within about a 60-mile radius. [laughs]

[00:22:32] Gretchen: That’s huge, though.

[00:22:33] Debra: It’s huge, but it’s pretty hard to make it portable outside of that, because there’s some costumes and lighting and sound and all of that. We’ve gathered that over 25 years, and when we first started, it was with Sharon, who had a gift in costuming, and that was the piece that she knew the best, and she knew something about the teaching theater and the directing piece.

Then there wasn’t sound, and there weren’t lights, and so a couple years in, she met her now husband, who actually came with the tech knowledge, who started throwing in some, “We could put some lighting on that.” [laughs] “We could put some sound in there.” [laughs] He really brought that tech element and helped train some people who carried on that in MoezArt.

I think the thing I want to say is don’t think you’re going to start and have all the things out the gate, especially if you’re doing like we did. We were a homeschool co-op. We weren’t trying to create another giant youth community theater where– We have some beautiful community youth theater in town that they meet after school, and they audition a million kids and pick the very best ones.

We wanted something different. We wanted a space where every kid got to experience memorizing lines, learning blocking, being on the team, knowing what it is when you mess up, and someone helps you out with a line or reminds you. We wanted kids to get to have those experiences, even if they weren’t the most talented and weren’t going to be the kids who were going to get a part in the youth community theater.

[00:24:16] Gretchen: The other thing I think that’s important is the subtext of those things of learning those lines, learning to be humble when you’ve forgotten a line and letting someone give that to you, learning, “Oops, I missed my mark. I need to stand over here.” Learning those kinds of things helps you, I believe, learn to interact more generously with people in your circle of influence in all aspects.

[00:24:48] Debra: It does help, again, with empathy, with grace for others, because not only is there the primer of the script, but there’s the primer of, “I had to have grace for this other kiddo who, for the sake of them, cannot remember where they’re supposed to stand.” I’m like, “I need you to stand where you are because I can’t do my part if you’re not there,” and working that out. There is a graciousness that I think they learn it’s okay. An ability to say, “We don’t all learn at the same speed, but it’s going to come together at the end. We’re going to get there, and it’s going to come together.”

[00:25:24] Gretchen: I have lost count of the number of dress rehearsals I have attended between high school productions that my kids did, the ones I was in the summer stocks that I did, the plays my kids did, where you sit in a dress rehearsal, and you go, “Oh, heaven, come, Lord Jesus, and soon, because this is not going to happen.” Then production happens, and it’s amazing.

[00:25:53] Debra: So often, we have parents sitting in the audience just with tears in their eyes because they’re quiet, calm, or erratic, frenetic kiddo who they can’t get to focus on anything; all of a sudden, they’re all dialed in, and the shy one saying lines that you can hear, even. The frenetic one is focused in doing the thing. They’re in tears, like, “How did you get my kid to do that?”

I’m like, “Magic of theater, and a lot of really amazing volunteers who love your kids.” We say those parents don’t even know the half of it. As the people who get to work with the kids, we see so much nuance from where they start to where they end, especially two or three semesters in. Man, the directors, it just fills our heart to watch this growth and this development and the friendships and their ability to be good friends. It’s beautiful.

I would encourage people, don’t think you have to start with everything. Start with what you know. Gather a couple people, even two of you, that know enough about theater to care about teaching some good skills for acting and blocking. It’s okay if the costumes aren’t the best or you don’t have the lighting or the sound to start with. If you have someone who knows that part, let them do that part. Let them shine, let them go for it, let them make it. Let them do it.

Trust that there’s a process of growth for your co-op or whatever you want to call it. There’s a process of growth, and allow that, just like we allow growth for our kiddos to come in quiet and then develop and become these dynamic stars that they become; allow that when you start your co-op. You don’t have to have it all together to start it. Michael Kary is a professional actor, theater educator. He’s at a school in Alabama. Samford, I think, is the name of the school in Alabama he’s at now. He was at GCU for a while.

He said one time, one of the fun things about theater is you see absolute brilliance at every level any day. Sometimes it’s a five-year-old, and there’s just this brilliant moment, and it only happens this once, and everybody in the room gets to share this brilliant memory. Sometimes it happens at professional theater that there’s this moment of absolute brilliance, and you’re in the room when it happens. He said it can happen at any level, anywhere. It’s just fun, even in young theater, to see those moments of brilliance. “That was a brilliant save,” or “You delivered that line in such a powerful way that you’ve never done it before. It really resonated with the audience.” I just always think about that.

[00:28:56] Gretchen: The next question I wanted to ask you is how do you find materials? Because that’s not an easy thing to do. How do you find the production you want to create?

[00:29:11] Debra: We do sit and read a lot of plays and a lot of musicals. We just sit and read through, and there’s several production companies, and so we buy scripts or rent perusal scripts so that we can sit and read through them. Now we’ve been doing it a while. Once kiddos start to catch the theater bug, then they enjoy going to see theater, and they like watching theater, and they listen to musical theater, and they do all of that.

Then we start getting kids who are like, “We should do this show. I saw this show; we should do it.” Then we go read it, go look at it, go decide. We haven’t even touched on this, but a lot of times in the art space, people want to push the limits of decency, or push the limits of acceptability instead of trying to use the arts to be a reflection of truth and beauty. There’s lots and lots of laws around what you’re allowed to change; can you change it? What can you change it to? You have to get permission to change it. There are some shows that we’ve asked permission. “Can we not sing this song?” or, “Can we change this lyric?” They say no.

[00:30:32] Gretchen: Really? Oh, no, that’s really fascinating. I wouldn’t have thought that. The edginess invites controversy, which creates buzz. When you’re trying to teach Christian kids, you’re a little self-limiting, and you’ve got to find the lane to be in that’s appropriate.

[00:30:56] Debra: I think we are not always 100% perfect. Now we have 300 students this semester across the valley. In 300 students, maybe that’s somewhere around 150 to 200 families, and not everybody has the same line.

[00:31:16] Gretchen: You can’t please everybody. You’re not chocolate.

[00:31:19] Debra: Right. Exactly. We even have kids who don’t like chocolate. We did A Wrinkle in Time. We had families who were really just like, “Absolutely not,” which was surprising to me because I know that the author’s a Christian, and I understood a lot, the beauty and the truth that she was trying to reflect in that. It was interesting how many families had a hard time and were like, “Absolutely not.” Even in that, we were like, “Okay.” I don’t know.

We’re looking at doing James and the Giant Peach next summer, and already some people are like, “Do you know the song the worm sings?” Because the worm’s being– He’s trying to be bait for the seagull, so he’s trying to be like, “Hey, seagull, come get me.” When you just read the lyrics, you could play that very sensuously, and you could use all the double entendres, but it doesn’t have to mean that. He’s trying to get the seagull to come eat him. Everybody has their, “Oh, no, are we allowed to say that? Do we not say that?” There is a sticky line. Sticky maybe isn’t the right word, but it’s just tenuous.

[00:32:35] Gretchen: Of course I would think you couldn’t add to a production. “Oh, we’re going to add a song here,” or something like that, because you’re working with copyrighted material, but to say, “You’ve got 20 songs in this production, and we’re only going to use 19 of them,” that didn’t occur to me.

[00:32:56] Debra: You have to have permission to do that. Sometimes they say no. For example, everybody loves Seven Brides for Seven Brothers until you’re realizing it’s your 16-year-old boys who are singing the polecat song. Then you’re like, “Hang on, they’re singing about how they can’t make it through the winter without a girl.” You’re like, “I don’t want my 16-year-old singing that.” We had to call the production company and say, “Can we cut the song?” They said, “Absolutely not. Can’t cut it.” What? The compromise we ended up making with them back at the time was we had to play the entirety of the song. They had to sing the first verse and the chorus. They were allowed to cut the second verse, which was the worst part.

[00:33:43] Gretchen: Egregious.

[00:33:45] Debra: People are like, “I don’t remember that at all, because we just go, “I get it. These guys are like, “Oh, we’re sad.” It is true. It comes across differently when you just hear it. It’s different when you have kiddos studying the lines and trying to learn it, that kind of thing. Anyway, we didn’t have permission, so we had to play the whole song. Then we ended up creating dance choreography to just the music of the song, and the boys just didn’t sing it. The working around it. I would say that’s one of the things that people don’t all know when they start to do theater. You don’t get to just buy a script and do it, especially if you sell tickets to it.

Even if you don’t sell tickets, they have a bunch of rules about you have to pay for rights, and you have to tell them where you’re doing it. How many people are there? There is a logistical side to that, but we just read a lot of scripts, and we try some that we think will work. Then we go, “I don’t know why I want to keep that in a rotation. Maybe that didn’t work out as good as we thought we wanted it to.” Other ones were like, “All right, we’ll keep that one in the rotation.”

We just did Shakespeare, which we don’t do very much of because, again, the man was pushing the envelope of decency. We have a rule you can’t say lines you don’t understand, and some lines are crude a lot. We just did much to do about nothing at our adult level, because now we’ve grown into having an adult community theater level. That is public domain, so you are allowed to cut lots of things. We cut lots of things.

[00:35:21] Gretchen: We look at Shakespeare now, and so much of it seems so staid, but if you understand it for its nuance, it can be a handful. It really can be.

[00:35:32] Debra: Even that, it’s like, “Ugh, okay, what do we change it–” Sometimes you’re not allowed to change all of it, and we have to go, “Okay.”

[00:35:43] Gretchen: Look at how you all adapted. Here was a song that was going to be an interesting dilemma for your audience, and the parameters of the contract you signed to use the materials said you had to use the song, but it didn’t give you the parameters of how you used the song. You were able to creatively do that.

[00:36:08] Debra: We had emails back and forth to get it. [crosstalk] we finally get permission to, “Yes, you can do it that way.”

[00:36:14] Gretchen: That’s amazing.

[00:36:16] Debra: It’s okay to portray evil and corruption on stage when you’re also portraying truth and beauty and what happens on the other side of that as well. Stories aren’t interesting when there’s no conflict. When there’s no poor choices, the stories aren’t interesting. There needs to be some poor choices in some. In real life, poor choices happen, and how do we work our way through them? There is value in that as well.

[00:36:51] Gretchen: If we don’t ever present that kind of material to our children, how do they learn to discern?

[00:36:57] Debra: How do we discern? There is a place like that, but there’s also the balance of, “But it’s also a 14-year-old, and what are the lines and the words and the dilemma I want my 14-, 12-, or 8-year-old grappling with? That line changes as we get to adults. For example, we’re navigating– I really want us to do Mark Twain’s play that he wrote. It’s a comedy.

What is the name? I’m going to forget the name. Is He Dead? It is hysterical. It is so funny, and I want to do it at the adult level. The gist is the protagonist is in trouble, and the mob of the time is trying to come get him, and they want to take his life. His friends, through a whole bunch of silliness, figure out he needs to go into hiding and pretend to be his own twin sister. He spends much of the play dressed as a woman pretending to be his twin sister, trying to sell off all of his art, because of course nobody buys art from an artist until they’re dead. He has to be dead.

He has to sell off all his artwork, get enough money, pay off the mob, get them off their back, and then magically he wasn’t really dead. Anyway, I think it’s hysterical. Our board is really grappling with, “How do we do that with a guy dressed as a girl in today’s climate, and what does that look like?” I’m like, “It’s still comedic gold. That’s what it is.” [laughs] We’re just grappling with that. Do we do it? Don’t we do it? What’s it look like? What he’s willing to sacrifice to protect the girl he loves, because he goes into hiding also to protect her and her father. Yes. Anyway.

[00:38:58] Gretchen: Having the opportunity to have those conversations with kids about the deeper messages, what is he willing to protect for the people he loves? That’s a wonderful conversation to be able to do that. You have 300 kids that you’re working with right now. Obviously, they’re not all in the same production, so how many productions do you have running in a year?

[00:39:32] Debra: What we do, all the high schools do the same show, so it’s cookie-cutter. We have five weeks of high schoolers performing. One week, next week. Each cast gets a whole week. We currently have four middle school casts, so they do the same show. They’re doing a sweet little musical called Kilroy Was Here about World War II. Very cute. Super cute, and it’s historical fiction about how Kilroy came to be. They’re doing a little musical. We alternate. Everybody does a straight show once a year and does a musical once a year. Middle school’s doing the musical. High school’s doing The Neverland Project, a retelling of Peter Pan.

[00:40:16] Gretchen: Wait. The other brilliance of this is you put together a set of costumes that then apparently go on the road from production to production.

[00:40:29] Debra: The way we’ve organized it is we have moms who volunteer to be the costume mom, and so they all help fit their cast. Five casts of kids; they don’t all wear the same size, and they’re not always the same gender. Sometimes this pirate’s a boy in this cast, and this pirate’s a girl in that cast. We do share some costumes. We’ve come up with this brilliant system with these colored ribbons that we safety-pin into the costumes, who’s wearing this costume in which cast, so it’s color-coded by cast.

We’ve developed some systems for growing it big, but I wouldn’t recommend somebody start like, “We’re just going to start with three areas across the valley.” I would say start with one cast. Work out some kinks. Figure out your thing. If you have another homeschool co-op who’s like, “We want it. Let’s do it over here on this side of town,” we grow into it. That is my recommendation. Don’t think you have to start where MoezArt is 25 years into it.

[00:41:34] Gretchen: Sure. Your website is so beautifully designed. People will be able to find lots of things on your website. Even if you’re not in Arizona, this is a worthwhile study project for you to see the production of something that is well done, and done well.

[00:41:56] Debra: Thank you.

[00:41:57] Gretchen: Those are two different things.

[00:41:59] Debra: Shout-out to Sean Price for our web design. He was brilliant.

[00:42:05] Gretchen: Where do you see yourself in five years?

[00:42:08] Debra: The thing we’re grappling with and praying about right now is we really want to get a permanent home and get a space. We’ve been praying about that, working on that. Then we want to develop our ability to teach technical theater to our students. We just last year started our own local chapter of the Thespian Society. It’s like the International Thespian Honor Society.

[00:42:41] Gretchen: I was one of those once upon a time, as my children would say, when rocks were soft. [laughs]

[00:42:49] Debra: Yes, and we love that. We love offering that to our students, and a lot of the doors that that opens for us to get them some extra training and experience. We really want to be able to start teaching them the technical side of theater. To do that well, we need a space where lights and sound can be set up, and we can pull them in. In five years, we’d love to have our own building and be able to anchor some things and expand the educational component of what we do with our students.

We have some local businesses that have started reaching out to us to hire our students because they do develop so many amazing soft skills with being on time, knowing that someone’s counting on you. They know the value of hard work. They have a strong work ethic. They’re flexible. They do pivot. They can problem-solve. They just love hiring our students.

We have a local Chick-fil-A owner who’s like, “Any more MoezArt students for me?” We have a– who’s now on our board. He runs a UPS store, and he almost always hires MoezArt students. He’s like, “I need a new one. I need another one.” Just those kiddos, what they learn, where they grow, how they grow, I love theater. I love theater for all of the things it teaches, and we laugh.

I was just talking with a friend the other day, and his kiddos used to play hockey. Now they’ve gotten more into theater, and he said, “Can I tell you, we’ve had more injuries in theater than we ever had in hockey. This is our new team sport. We’re having to navigate all these injuries.” [laughs] I was laughing, and I said, “I think that’s a compliment coming from a sports family.” He said, “Yes, it’s a compliment.”

[00:44:45] Gretchen: Debra, in these last few minutes, what should I have asked you that I have not asked you?

[00:44:51] Debra: I had looked up just a couple of articles because I was thinking through how do I want to say what I want to say. There’s this beautiful blog on the National Endowment for the Arts that talks about why the arts matter. I was like, “Every one of these.” People just need to go read that blog. It has these beautiful quotes in there that I was like, “This is why they matter. The way they help us tell stories and grapple with big ideas is unique in the space of storytelling.”

Whether it’s theater, movies, storytelling as a craft, as an art, the value of that is important. Yes, one of our board members, we’re looking at a fundraiser that we have coming up. She said, “I thought of another thing.” Let me see. She said, “It’s not that we’re just giving kids a place to belong, but we’re teaching them how to create belonging for others.”

[00:46:03] Gretchen: Oh, I love that.

[00:46:04] Debra: Isn’t that beautiful?

[00:46:05] Gretchen: Yes.

[00:46:05] Debra: I know one of my board members, Tanya Schultz, just sent that in an email and I was like, “Yes, that’s what we’re helping them do is learn how to create space for belonging for others too.” That shows up in every space. Maybe the last thing, I don’t know if this is what you could ask me, but years and years and years ago, I was in an education space, and somebody was talking about how it’s such a disappointment that schools have cut shop and choir and home ec and all of these places because those were the classes where kiddos found the careers they wanted to be in.

[00:46:47] Gretchen: Yes.

[00:46:49] Debra: I thought that’s part of why arts, metalwork, shop, mechanics, that’s where people find their passion and their career. I know, just in our family, my son, he said he would help teach a little Mini-Moez class when he was 15 and fell in love with teaching. Now he teaches third grade in the public school system. That’s it.

[00:47:13] Gretchen: Amazing.

[00:47:14] Debra: He always says, “I figured out that’s what I fell in love with, was teaching kids.” Yes, give your kids a chance to explore the arts and explore theater and try it even for a couple semesters. Give them a fine arts credit and let them explore it for a couple semesters.

[00:47:36] Gretchen: Absolutely, because I think sometimes in the homeschool community, we think speech and debate is really important. I’m not saying it’s not. All of my kids participated in speech and debate. Goodness knows we’re German and Irish. We don’t argue about anything here, but giving them the opportunity to engage in stepping out of their own persona and into another persona is a remarkable experience. The way you all have done it is just amazing.

[00:48:15] Debra: Thank you.

[00:48:16] Gretchen: Will you guys be doing a production during AFHE next year then?

[00:48:21] Debra: Ironically, we are always opening our community theater show during AFHE. [laughs]

[crosstalk]

[00:48:28] Gretchen: I think that’s unironic because I think what needs to happen is that needs to be promoted. I know that had I known in advance that there was a production happening, I would’ve made shift to be in attendance at that production. This here, I’ll make sure it happens.

[00:48:47] Debra: Next summer. It’s going to be James and the Giant Peach. You’ll see how we navigate the worm singing his song. I think, too, some people, every theater company does it differently, and some theater companies lean into, “How much can we lean into the sensual part of this?” or “How much can we lean into–” and we don’t. I teach. [laughs]

[00:49:11] Gretchen: You have a demanding audience to satisfy as well.

[00:49:15] Debra: We do. There’s some navigating, but we talk a lot to our kids about they have an audience of one and that the gifts and the talents that God has poured into them, that it is their responsibility first to give back to Him. Then, in that, it will bless and honor the audiences that come. That is a shift that we have to make. Maybe that’s what I would recommend to somebody starting this, is remember your audience of one, and start with that and go, “Lord, does this story reflect something of truth and beauty about who you are, or about how you want us to be, or how you want us to be with each other?”

If I can stand before the Lord and say yes to that, it’s okay if other people’s lines are different and we have to navigate that differently.

[00:50:10] Gretchen: Absolutely. I think now our audience can see why I wanted to have this conversation with you so much, because I came away from our conversation last July going, “Oh man, I can’t wait to do this.”

[00:50:25] Debra: Thank you so much.

[00:50:25] Gretchen: Because I think it is so terrific what you all are doing. I wish you joy for the future and 300 kids. Obviously, you all have a handle on something very, very special. For those of you who aren’t in Arizona, I want you to think about how you could create something that is sowing this kind of legacy. Obviously, they started this in such a way that they’ve got 25 years of longevity. They’re doing something really cool. Debra, thank you so much. I want to thank our audience for allowing us into your living rooms. We don’t take that privilege lightly. I hope you found this conversation as exciting and entertaining as I did today. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Have a wonderful afternoon.

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