Roswell Players presents…
What is Roswell Players? How does theatre support goals and needs of disabled actors? Here at Perfect Harmony Health, we utilize theatre to support both inclusivity and therapeutic goals for each actor!
Let’s start with what Roswell Players is. Roswell Players is an inclusive theatre program that culminates in a multimedia performance of a musical each season. This past season, the troupe performed Schoolhouse Rock Live! and sang their hearts out to classic songs like: Just a Bill, Noun is a Person, Place or Thing, and Interjections! This grant-funded program offers a way for disabled teens and adults to showcase their theatrical talents through song, instrument play, and acting. The troupe gets together weekly to rehearse and record their parts.
How does theatre support therapeutic goals for the actors? In so many ways! Let’s take a look at them individually:
Cognition
Did you know that students who engage in drama-related performance activities have higher achievement in academics? While participating in a theatre program, students are working their brains in a variety of aspects that support their learning! Not only are they reading their lines, but oftentimes memorizing as well (even non-purposefully)! This supports story comprehension, fluency, and speech production/understanding within their frontal lobe! Last season, Roswell Players performed Schoolhouse Rock Live!, which focused on a variety of academic subjects, such as grammar, history, and science! Actors and even audience members recalled all about subjects like the preamble, different planets, and how to multiply by 3!
Social Skills
Unless an actor is performing a one-man show, theatre is very much a group activity! In each performance, actors work alongside each other to make scenes, understand each other’s roles, and respect the learning process during rehearsals. Roswell Players is an inclusive group, meaning any and all teens or adults are welcome to participate! Each year, actors with a variety of skills join the program. These skills may vary from each actor and not all actors have the same set of skills! For instance, one actor may be able to memorize a song in 10 minutes while another may utilize an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device to perform their lines. This requires each actor to be patient and understanding with each other as they all learn the show! Plus, rehearsals spark a friendship between each actor as they learn their lines and practice scenes with their counterpart.
Motor
Theatre requires a variety of exercise-based components: dancing, singing, posture, fine motor, gross motor, coordination, breathing, and more. These alone are equivalent to going to the gym and walking on a treadmill for 3 hours. Instead, all of that exercising is crammed into a 1.5-hour rehearsal! Exercising, like running, is solely aerobic (movement). Weight lifting is solely anaerobic (building muscle). Dancing, by itself, is both an aerobic and anaerobic activity that burns 200 calories in just 30 minutes! Actors are learning choreography, running each song multiple times in order to work on muscle memory. Plus, on top of the choreography, actors are working on breath control as they are singing alongside soloists! Singing enhances lung functioning and improves the cardiovascular system! So now, imagine walking on a treadmill for 3 hours while talking the entire time! That will surely have your blood circulating! This past season, our actors even lifted weights during Do the Circulation to get more exercise into their show routine!
Executive Functioning
Roswell Players puts on a multimedia performance, meaning it doesn’t quite look like a standard show! They utilize a variety of adaptations to support each actor’s skills, including pre-recorded vocal tracks, video scenes, and instrument play! While our actors could dance and sing all night long throughout the musical, they offer a unique and engaging performance by incorporating drums, bells, scarves, and more into their musical numbers. These additions require executive functioning skills, like impulse control, attention, and decision making, in order to learn their new musical part on top of any lyrics or lines! For instance, during Schoolhouse Rock Live!’s Three is a Magic Number this past season, actors were split into 2 groups: orange (D) bells and blue (G) bells. During the song, they had to show impulse control as they awaited their part to play (and those bells are hard not to ring!) and attention as they watched the lead music therapist. On top of playing the bells, they had to use decision making in order to shout the correct answer to each multiplication question! This multi-tasking number was a huge hit and the actors did a fantastic job!
Emotional Skills
Lastly, acting is all about portraying emotion! This is a huge skill that really impacts the performance. Our actors work on portraying and recognizing emotions within their parts. Like during Interjections this past season, our actors portrayed their ‘happy’ faces, sad, excited, mad, and more! These skills easily transfer into building better friendships outside of theatre and help our actors with empathy, as that can often be difficult!
We are so excited for the upcoming season of Roswell Players 2024-2025! Registration is now open and is first-come, first-served! Click the button below for more information on joining Roswell Players for a fantastic season of Willy Wonka Jr.!
Ahmed, K. (2022, April 11). Musical Theater as Exercise. Stage Music Center in Acton and Winchester MA. https://stagemusiccenter.com/music-school-blog-winchester-acton-ma/musical-theater-as-exercise
Benefits of Theatre Education. (n.d.). Www.aate.com; American Alliance for Theatre & Education. Retrieved May 7, 2024, from https://www.aate.com/benefits-of-theatre-ed#:~:text=BUILDING%20SELF%2DESTEEM%20THROUGH%20DRAMA&text=Playwriting%20original%20works%20and%20dramatic
