Creede Repertory Theatre’s Young Audience Outreach Tour is coming to The Arts Campus At Willits on Monday and Tuesday to perform a bilingual musical play for elementary school students in the Roaring Fork Valley.
With a mission to bring high-quality musical theater to rural and underserved communities, YAOT produces an original children’s show, geared toward students in grades K-6, that tours throughout the Southwest annually. In its 39th season, YAOT presents a production titled “Casa Alfonsa,” a 50-minute, upbeat musical that features song, dance, puppetry and powerful messages.
This marks the second year that Creede Repertory Theatre and TACAW have joined forces to bring YAOT’s educational performance to the valley.
This year, the number of participating schools from the Roaring Fork School District has doubled from three to six — including Glenwood Springs Elementary School, Riverview School, Crystal River Elementary School, Two Rivers Community School, Sopris Elementary School and Basalt Elementary School.
Over 450 RFSD students in grades 2-4 will be attending the YAOT program at TACAW during its two-day run. Art Williams, TACAW’s education and community partnerships coordinator, believes the field trip carries value beyond the performance itself.
“One of the reasons that partnerships like this one with Creede Repertory Theatre is so valuable to us is because it’s more than just the performance, it’s supplementing education,” Williams said. “A teacher has standards that they have to teach or a curriculum that they’re trying to get through, and on top of all of these things, teaching students how to be humans is also important — and that’s where we feel super lucky that we can have this structure for teachers to make this happen.”
Williams went on to discuss the “Casa Alfonsa” storyline, emphasizing how the show presents a fun and powerful learning experience for students. The play follows a Latino family that owns a restaurant, and when the beloved chef and grandmother, Alfonsa, passes away, two young cousins are faced with processing the emotion of grief while keeping the family business afloat.
“Casa Alfonsa” offers a “relatable structure,” Williams said, and incorporates life lessons about emotional regulation in a family context. He mentioned the musical’s bilingual aspect as being significant, along with it highlighting a story about Latino communities.
In addition to the actual YAOT performance, Creede Repertory Theatre has developed a mini curriculum guide with lessons that range from visual art activities to recipes — all of which are meant to reinforce the learning of the themes presented in “Casa Alfonsa.”
TACAW has sent curriculum materials to each of the participating RFSD schools in order for teachers to continue the dialogue in their classrooms after their field trips.
Williams explained how the educational program with YAOT is part of TACAW’s larger mission to engage Roaring Fork Valley students in the arts, and specifically arts that are geared toward the social and emotional components of learning, he said.
“The arts really present a powerful entry point into talking about the things that you don’t get in your language class or your math class — the arts tap into all different aspects of life,” Williams said. “And so we want people, especially the youth in our community, to experience the arts, and by doing this [YAOT] program during the school day, it’s a lot more equitable and accessible for students.”
Equitable access to the arts is something Williams feels strongly about cultivating at TACAW. Williams expressed how growing up as a Latin American who attended a private school, opportunities to engage in the arts were sparse, noting that the in-school arts curriculum was limited to choir.
And while some students were involved in after-school theater clubs or other extracurricular arts programs, Williams continued, those activities typically require time and money — which unfortunately leaves a very large population out of the formative experience offered through the arts, he said.
Williams considers this equity issue when facilitating youth arts programs at TACAW.
“You know, we can say we’re gonna bring people to an evening performance for like a $10 show or something, but then, are students able to even come to the performance? Can their families coordinate transportation? Maybe not,” Williams said. “So this in-school format allows us to more easily access youth.”
Williams added that through partnerships with organizations like Creede Repertory Theatre, TACAW is able to foster impactful arts education experiences for the local schools, free of charge.
“They just have to get the bus contracted and bring their students here, and we’re able to do the rest, having this really fun, engaging musical performance,” Williams said. “And then they can go back to their schools and continue to talk about these things in the classroom — it’s an impact that doesn’t just last with the performance, it’s really opening up conversation.”
