BERLIN – “How is the shoulder of mutton doing? Is it holding up?”
It was a perfectly logical question to the cast and crew members scurrying around the stage between performances of the 38th Annual Children’s Theatre at Stephen Decatur High School.
Eighteen performances during the first two weeks of December were expected to allow close to 10,000 kids to see this year’s Children’s Theatre feature, “Lazy Jack.” The presence of a film crew added a new element to the already hectic schedule of teacher Gwen Lehman and the 30 students putting on the production.
“The best thing for me is they haven’t let it influence their work ethic,” Lehman said.
Lehman and the Children’s Theatre, a program she created and has perfected during the last four decades, will be the topic of a documentary being produced by a group from Frostburg State University. Professor Annie Danzi and five mass communication students will spend the spring semester editing the nearly 100 hours of footage from their five-day stay in Berlin. They are aiming for a 53-minute final product that they hope will air on Maryland Public Television.
“I like to do stories about women in leadership,” Danzi said. “Ms. Lehman is an incredible role model for educators, artists and women. Her story could inspire people.”
Danzi, a Stephen Decatur High School graduate and former student of Lehman’s, said she has kept in touch with her mentor through the years and came up with the idea of featuring her in a documentary when she found out Lehman would be ending her 46-year teaching career in June.
“The Children’s Theatre audience is so huge I felt like this was a story that needed to be captured,” she said.
Lehman was excited by Danzi’s idea.
“She’s a real go-getter,” Lehman said. “I thought if she’s talking about it she’d actually get it accomplished and it’d be terrific.”
And so Danzi and a hand-picked group of Frostburg students joined Lehman and her cast of high schoolers last week.
“We’re here to capture the passion and magic she brings to the theater department,” Danzi said.
She and her students filmed Lehman at home, in the classroom and backstage as she directed this year’s production. They got footage of the veteran teacher advising her actors, interacting with her peers and even eating lunch.
“We’re really immersed,” Danzi said. “Her schedule is exhausting.”
They also made sure to catch the young audience’s fascination with “Lazy Jack” and the children’s excited glimpses of cast members as they headed back to the buses that would return them to schools from across the region. Students from 40 schools typically make the trip to Decatur for the annual Children’s Theatre ever year.
“It’s going to be different because you’ll get to watch different kids in different capacities,” Danzi said. “It speaks to the need to keep arts alive in the public school systems.”
She says what makes the documentary on Lehman and the Children’s Theatre a unique project is that it involves students and educators from every level of Maryland’s public schools — from elementary school to college. It’s given Decatur’s drama students a chance to see how filmmaking works and has provided Danzi’s college students with their first experience filming outside a studio.
“Working in the field, having my name on a film — I’d have been an idiot to turn it down,” Frostburg student Thomas Gailey said.
The other college filmmakers shared his excitement. Andrew Richardson said that though he hadn’t known exactly what to expect of the Children’s Theatre, he became captivated by the project once filming began.
“Even high school is an epic experience,” he said.
Shalaan Powell said Danzi’s passion for the project had inspired his interest in it. Having once thought about pursuing acting himself, he has found himself wishing he had access to a drama program like Lehman’s when he was in high school.
“Seeing all she’s done is really enlightening,” Powell said.
Danzi says she and her students will spend the entire spring semester in post-production, cutting and editing their footage, and hope to have a finished product by the summer. Her goal is to enter the film in some festivals and share it with a larger audience on Maryland Public Television.
“It’s a strong Maryland story,” she said.