Stories That Move

The Art of Community: Kira Lace Hawkins' Journey

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What happens when artistry meets community service in a small Midwestern town? The story of Kira Lace Hawkins and the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts reveals the extraordinary magic that unfolds when creativity takes root.

Kira describes theater as "mental floss" that helps us see the world with fresh eyes—a perfect metaphor for the transformative work happening at this unique theater-in-the-round in Warsaw, Indiana. As the Outreach and Education Director, Kira nurtures both emerging talent and seasoned performers while building bridges throughout the community. From her conservatory classes that welcome everyone from second-graders to adults to professional summer productions that rival Broadway quality, her work epitomizes how the arts can become the heartbeat of a community.

The Wagon Wheel's seemingly modest venue belies its outsized impact. With 836 seats circling performers in an intimate arena, productions require innovative staging solutions—actors crawl through underground tunnels nicknamed "Shawshank" and elaborate sets emerge from beneath the stage floor. But what truly distinguishes this organization is its legacy of launching careers. Alumni have gone on to perform on Broadway stages (including a current Eliza in Hamilton), creating a remarkable artistic pipeline between rural Indiana and the nation's theater capital.

Kira's own journey weaves together unexpected threads. Growing up in a musical Minnesota family (the "Von Laces"), she found her way to Indiana after meeting her husband, whose fourth-generation family farm now operates alongside her theater career. This intersection of sustainable agriculture and performing arts creates a unique perspective on creativity—as her husband says, "the farm has truly become his symphony."

With an exciting season ahead featuring Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, South Pacific, Sister Act, Steel Magnolias, and Grease, now is the perfect time to experience the Wagon Wheel's community-centered magic. Subscribe to their newsletter or visit wagonwheelcenter.org to discover how this nearly 70-year institution continues to prove that the arts aren't just entertainment—they're essential to helping us connect with our shared humanity.

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Speaker 1:

The arts is something that speaks to every vocation. I think it's one of the quickest ways that we can connect ourselves to the human experience where, whether it's seeing a show or hearing a piece of music or looking at visual art, I almost feel like it's that kind of mental floss that helps you to let go of. Maybe you know what you've been experiencing over and over and see everything with fresh eyes.

Speaker 2:

Hey everyone, matt Duhl here, welcome back to Stories that Move, brought to you by Dream On Studios. Today's guest is someone who embodies creativity, community and legacy in everything she does. I'm excited to introduce you to Kira Lace Hawkins. Kira serves as the Outreach and Education Director at the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts, where she builds community partnerships, teaches classes through the Wagon Wheel Conservatory and acts in professional productions.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you're not familiar, the Wagon Wheel is one of those places that just feels like magic. For almost 70 years, it has inspired audiences, launched artists careers and strengthened the local arts community. What started as a dream under a canvas tent many years ago has become a legacy of community-minded creativity and strength and service. This episode is a celebration of the arts and the people who help communities thrive. So let's jump into the conversation and welcome Kiaralace Hawkins to Stories that Move. Welcome back to Stories that Move. I'm your host, matt Duhl, and so excited to have you join us today for this episode where we have Kira Lace Hawkins. Kira, thanks for joining us for the show. Thanks for having me. Matt, absolutely so. Kira is the Outreach and Education Director at the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts. That's right and we're going to dive into that, and I also recently found out you are part of the Hawkins family farm.

Speaker 2:

That's right so just a whole range of things happening there between theater and farm life, so excited to dive into that. Well, kira, why don't you take a moment, introduce yourself to our audience and just tell us a little bit about what you are doing, what you're up to in the world today?

Speaker 1:

Sure, so, so nice to be here. I do serve as the Outreach and Education Director at Wagon Wheel. In my education director side of things, I run Wagon Wheel Conservatory, so I'm developing programs for students ages grade two through adult. So we have classes available twice a year in our conservatory sessions and I've worked really hard to make sure that the offerings are wide ranging and affirming for the students and just get people in our doors experiencing theater, sometimes for the first time, but always just with a mind on taking anyone, wherever they are in their theater journey one step farther. So we get people who are super experienced that we get to take that step farther, and then people who it's their first experience ever in theater and they get to just, you know, feel those lights for the first time. So it's pretty great.

Speaker 1:

I've been acting at Wagon Wheel since 2007. So I came to Wagon Wheel first as an actor and I continue to act during the summers and in the holiday shows, and I just recently added outreach director to my title. So that happened last May and we came to a new leadership structure at Wagon Wheel. After our former executive director left last May, our amazing board president, emily Illingworth-Kosnick, decided to take a step back and say is executive director in the nonprofit of Wagon Wheel the best structure for our leadership? We had run into some things, some separation between front of house and back of house that we thought maybe could be alleviated if we just spread out the executive power among people who have been at Wagon Wheel for, in my case, almost 18 years.

Speaker 1:

And then in Scott Michael's case, about 30 years. So we have that institutional knowledge and the passion and the history with the theater. And so we spread out the executive director to managing director, education director, outreach director and artistic director. And then our finance director is Holly Lance.

Speaker 2:

And so she rounds that out, okay.

Speaker 1:

So I take care of all of the maybe. I'm meeting with community partners, I'm reaching out to people to engage with us from the community and, along with my coworker, sam Engel, who is the coordinator of donor relations and communications, we run all of the fundraising efforts for our nonprofit.

Speaker 2:

Okay, excellent, excellent, and it seems to me that the new leadership structure is working well. I recently met Sam and I feel like I've been here in Warsaw for 10 years. I feel like I've been hearing more about Wagon Wheel this last year than I have, you know, the previous nine.

Speaker 1:

Well and that's a huge testament to Sam, who's a Warsaw native, who just gets out into the community, so effectively tells our story, which I think at Wagon Wheel, we would agree is something that has been really difficult for us to fully tell the whole scope of our not only local impact but our national impact to our local audience. We're so blessed to work with these amazing company members every summer and then they go off and they, two summers ago, is now on Broadway, wow yeah, performing for so many people. So that's a difficult, that's a disconnect, right, that's a difficult thing to effectively tell and I think Sam has made leaps and bounds forward in order to better tell that story.

Speaker 2:

Tell the story. Yeah, yeah, no, that's excellent. So I'd also say with the wagon wheel, there's a lot of layers to it, Again, things that I don't think I was aware of. So with the conservatory, again I think maybe people are hearing for the first time there's an opportunity to come in and learn about theater, right, that's so true. So peel back some of the layers for me?

Speaker 1:

Yes, I'd love to when we think about the wagon wheel, like what all is happening there, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So of course, I would say, first and foremost, our professional theater has been the thing that's been here since 1956. So that's the established home of Wagon Wheel in the Warsaw community. In 2010, we made the transition to a nonprofit, and so the professional theater then added on to it what we call our spokes of the wheel. So we're taking that wagon wheel and making it into a metaphor. So we now have the Symphony of the Lakes came underneath our umbrella. The Symphony of the Lakes had been a masterworks which is an old arts institution from Wagon Wheel, but they have since dissolved and when that happened, wagon Wheel said okay, we're going to take the symphony under our umbrella. We have Wagon Wheel Community Theater, wagon Wheel wheel junior, which are professionally produced um productions for youth in the area, and we have wagon mill conservatory and then our concert series, which has been a little dormant the last couple of years. Uh, the concert series. It's really interesting. At wagon wheel, we're a theater in the round yeah with 836 seats crammed into.

Speaker 1:

if you've ever been at Wagon Wheel, I think it surprises people that it seats that many people yeah right. So it's a really small space. It's not really conducive to the touring bands and the touring shows that are going around that are used to kind of more traditional proscenium stages.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's hard to perform in the round, it's true, it's true, I mean, I love it as an actor.

Speaker 1:

I think it's such a such a unique experience to be able to just stand and stare at your scene partner and just live in the moment rather than worry about you know where's the audience and where am I looking, and so as an actor, it's great. But then, yeah, it's been. We were really renegotiating what we want the concert series to look like, and until we can make effective and intentional decisions, we've just kind of let that one sit for a moment.

Speaker 1:

Um and yeah, so there are six total spokes. I think I hit them all. Can anyone verify? Yeah, yep and uh. So Wagon Wheel Community Theater has a rich history also, um, they were titled Center Street Community Theater under Jennifer Kay Shepard, who ran the organization for probably around 10 years and then she very tragically passed away. And we continue the legacy of her amazing artistry with Wagon Wheel Community Theater. And we continue the legacy of her amazing artistry with Wagon Wheel Community Theater and it's just an amazing space and an affirming space for adults to come and put on productions on our stage and feel just kind of part of the Wagon Wheel family.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, awesome. I love it. I mean such an amazing beautiful venue, such a great place to see a show I mean highest of high quality shows too.

Speaker 1:

That is our goal. I was talking about the theater in the round. I think it's such a unique opportunity for us to take a Broadway show that might look very similar stage to stage, and particularly the touring productions, and then the regional houses, and so we're a regional theater that gets to take a script. Yes, in making sure that our storytelling, even though it's kind of all involved in the round and in the center, it needs to give the impression to all 10 rows in our audience that they're being enveloped by the story. And so we have amazing scenic designers, amazing lighting designers that come every summer and just transform our space so quickly too.

Speaker 1:

We have four days between one show getting torn down and the next opening, and so it's just this, and I'm sure you can imagine, but it's just such a thrilling artistic place to be.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Where you know a show comes down and then the next one goes up, and we're just fully ready to then start rehearsals for the next show the day after we open.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's just so thrilling. No, it's amazing and, and you know, I remember my, my, my first time to go in for a show and just again coming into this round environment thinking how are they going to do this and how does this going to work? And it's there's stuff coming out of the ceilings, there's stuff coming out from under the floors, and then there's just that intimacy of the actors are coming down through the aisles and so they're right next to you and it's right. Yeah, it's just awesome.

Speaker 2:

I mean such a fun, very cool experience.

Speaker 1:

I have the unique I got to come to Wagon Wheel first as an audience member before I was ever hired there, so I have that unique perspective of I fully remember I think it was 2007, summer I think, and I came to see Anything Goes and I thought, how, how are these people going to put 20 tap dancing ensemble members up on that stage? And then it blew me away, and so I will often think back to seeing that show and just remembering how lucky I am to continue to work there.

Speaker 2:

So cool, so cool. Ok, so let's back up a little bit. So, with 17, 18 years of experience here at the Wagon Wheel, obviously you've connected with just a deep passion in the work that you're doing. So we'd love to know where that comes from. So take us back. Where are you originally from. So we'd love to know where that comes from. So take us back. Where are you originally from and what was childhood like for you? And maybe where did some of the first beginnings of this come together for you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I'm from the suburbs of Minneapolis, so my parents both grew up in different suburbs of Minneapolis. They both went to a little college called St Olaf college in Northfield, minnesota. Um, and I ended up going there as well. It's like a big tradition in my family to go to that college. Okay, um, but yeah, my dad was a high school band director and my mom was a middle school choir director. So I grew up, we I have one sister and my family, and my family and I grew up singing four part harmony just everywhere, all around town. We were known as the Von Laces and we would go perform at church, of course, mostly, and then lots of weddings and we would. People would just ask us to come and sing, so much so that we would end up writing our own jingles for our answering machine. No way, we had a whole litany of original compositions that I would nerd out on and make everybody learn their four parts, and then we'd record them.

Speaker 2:

I love it.

Speaker 1:

But theater specifically. I remember I grew up in a great ELCA Lutheran church in Minnesota and we had this pastor who was just insanely talented and he would write these original musicals Drummond musical. A lot of them were called Be the Story, and every summer would focus on a different biblical character Be the Story of Matthew, be the Story of Mary Magdalene, be the Story right. So that really ignited my passion. And then I went to a specific high school in Minnesota that did three musicals and one play a year. Choose you.

Speaker 1:

You had to choose either sports or musicals and that was that was it, so I almost feel like I was pushed toward a professional career in musical theater just because of, uh, where I landed at high school sure so, um yeah, and then I didn't know if I was going to study, uh, theater or music, and I ended up up studying both when I went to St Olaf.

Speaker 1:

But theater has just, you know, I've always appreciated the way that theater is such an immediate way to engender empathy in the audience to tell a story, to become a character with someone who has experiences outside of your own, and to tell stories to the audience and encourage people to think about the world through the lens of different characters and just understand the way that different people make decisions, different people operate, and I think it's one of the best ways to create community unity in the world.

Speaker 2:

I love that. I love that. So then take me to the next steps of the journey. After those experiences, what was next for you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so after studying music and theater at St Olaf, I stayed in Minneapolis with the mind to perform as much as I could and just audition as much as I could. So that meant being a Starbucks barista and then I would just do auditions after auditions. So I was able to do a few professional contracts and then ended up meeting a boy from North Manchester, indiana, okay, but he was living in Minneapolis after he went to kind of a rival Lutheran college in Iowa called Luther. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So he had studied in Tanzania for a semester with one of my best friends from undergrad and then they started an indie folk rock duo after college called Jaber Crow, and so I went and saw Zach in his performing element and certainly was enamored right away, and our two year courtship led to us getting married on Hawkins Family Farm in 2007, 7-7-0-7, because I like numbers.

Speaker 1:

And then randomly we just didn't have. We were both artists, he had been pursuing his indie rock career and I'd been pursuing the acting thing and we didn't have anything tying us down to Minneapolis but we both loved it and maybe wanted to stay there. But then there was this couple in North Manchester who had this idea to create a community owned coffee shop in North Manchester. So the thing that initially brought me to Indiana was this couple who wanted us.

Speaker 1:

Zach had worked at a different coffee shop in Minnesota while doing the Indie Rock, so we were both baristas with no ties just newly married and they wanted to start this community-owned coffee shop in North Manchester using one of the old Victorian mansions that exist right on our kind of not quite main street. But there's this Victorian village in North Manchester.

Speaker 1:

if you've ever been, there's tons of Victorian houses that are just gorgeous and it had kind of fallen into disrepair and this woman had a passion for renovation so she enlisted us to. They had renovated the apartment above and so that became our first home and then we helped them renovate the space below and uh ran and managed the coffee shop for a couple of years called kinapoka mocha.

Speaker 1:

Um, it still exists as a as a coffee shop yeah um, but now it's called travel bees and they actually work with ark of wabash for their, for their workers, and so it's still a really cool space and you can still see a lot of our elbow grease in there.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, what is Kinapoka Moko? I get the mocha part yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker 1:

Kinapoka Moko is the oh, forgive me if I'm wrong. I think it's the Miami Indian name for the Eel River which runs through. North Manchester. And so Kinapokamoka is so close to Kinapokamoka, so we were trying to do a play on that Got it and yeah, it was a random thing, but we certainly had the barista skills and we knew what we were doing, so we helped outfit them, and this is a winding way to say that.

Speaker 1:

Then, while we were living there, I happened to be cast in a Wabash area community theater production of Hello Dolly, with my new mother-in-law playing Dolly Levi and I played Irene Malloy, but the director at the time was Roy Hine, who had been the artistic director at Wagon Wheel for years at that point, and so I developed a great relationship with Roy and he said hey, you should audition for the Christmas show at Wagon Wheel.

Speaker 1:

So I did my first Wagon Wheel audition and was cast as the queen opposite Mike Yoakum, local actor extraordinaire, as the king in Cinderella in the winter of 2007. And that was my first show at Wagon Wheel and during that show Roy tragically passed away three days into our rehearsal process and that was when Scott Michaels, who was the choreographer at the time, stepped up and directed that show and then came back as artistic director the next summer and directed that show and then came back as artistic director the next summer and he's stayed on as artistic director ever since. So I feel incredibly lucky especially now given that this has become my artistic home that I, at the very last minute, was able to establish such a phenomenal connection with Roy Hine and just really the legacy of Wagon Wheel.

Speaker 1:

And that I feel a connection to that, even though I came in right at the end of his tenure there.

Speaker 2:

Okay, okay. So an opportunity for you to just get into the roots and some of the history and be a part of carrying that forward. Yeah, definitely, oh, I love that, I love that, so good, okay, so tell us a little bit about the farm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so the farm. I'm going to wind around a little bit because after working the coffee shop and working at Wagon Wheel a bit and doing some education programs, I actually decided I wanted to get a higher education degree, maybe to teach college.

Speaker 1:

I think that was kind of my initial thought, and so I ended up doing an MFA acting program at Penn State University. So I was there for three years, three very intense years, with a cohort of there were 10 of us actors, all adults, making our way through traveling. We traveled to London together, to South Africa, to Toronto together. So it's just these adults. I almost feel like there should be a reality show written about us, because crazy kooky things and I happened to have a Wagon Wheels staple, carrie McNulty, in my class in my grad class Both of us had connections to.

Speaker 1:

Wagon Wheel and connections to Roy and we were both kind of cast in that grad class. So that was an incredible experience. And then my husband, who's also he's an indie rocker, but he's also a writer in the fourth genre, creative nonfiction. So he got into an MFA program at Iowa State Creative Writing in the Environment, and he did one year there and every now and then Zach would be back and forth to Hawkins Family Farm and then, after a year of studying for his three-year MFA writing program, he said do you know what? I am so called to join my dad on the family farm and I just feel like this is my life's work, and so it was never really a part of our grand scheme to move back to the farm.

Speaker 2:

Sure, I mean, that's quite a departure. Yeah, and we were fully 30 years old at that time.

Speaker 1:

So, um, this, this, it was a late in the game decision, and so then, when I realized that that was his, his decision, I just couldn't thank my. And I happen to be able to still plug into a theater that keeps me connected to the broader national theater community at the highest level, and I get to work with these kids as they're just starting out before they go off and do incredible, amazing things. Hawkins Family Farm. We're the fourth generation now we're newly renovating his childhood home to move in, so now we'll be the fourth generation to live there. His great-grandfather, leo Hawkins, john Leo Hawkins, bought the farm in 1957. Okay, so one year after Wagon Wheels was established.

Speaker 2:

I was just saying, yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, love it and he did more of kind of the traditional soybean corn rotation. We're on, I think, officially 101 acres. A lot of the times we'll say 99. I'm not sure why Somewhere around 100 acres.

Speaker 1:

And Jeff was a Lutheran, so Jeff is Zach's father and still works with Zach on Hawkins Family Farm. Jeff was a Lutheran, so Jeff is Zach's father and still works with Zach on Hawkins Family Farm. Jeff was a Lutheran pastor and accepted a call in North Manchester, near the farm at Zion Lutheran Church. Randomly, I grew up in Zion Lutheran Church in Anoka, minnesota, and now I attend Zion Lutheran Church in North Manchester, so that's a little weird story as well. But so Jeff decided well into his call that he was also called to the farm. He wanted to tend the land, he wanted to be a steward of sustainable agriculture on the farm, and so he and you kind of call those farmers a little kooky, a little crazy, because it's not conventional, it's really a mission and a calling to farm in that way. So, yeah, he kind of took the land and started to tend it in a way and put animals on the farm. So we have cows and chickens and pigs and geese and a rotating number of animals that were really.

Speaker 1:

I say we. I really should say I do hardly any work for the farm. I did deliver eggs to the River Wynonna Lake today for the farm but that's about as far as I go.

Speaker 1:

But I do feel very connected to its mission, and the mission is to treat animals, to take care of them before they take care of us, to take care of the land for the generations to come. So, yeah, that was Jeff's great plan. And then Zach now has come and joined him, I think officially in 2013, 2014, to take over the garden program. So Zach's big thing is all of the vegetables that we do and Jeff still maintains the livestock. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. So cool.

Speaker 1:

Oh, and I should say Jeff also continues his ministry. So part of the farm is a nonprofit called Hope CSA and I wanna do that acronym. Nope, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do it. Pastoral Education is the P-E, pastoral Education for Community Sustaining Agriculture. So he runs, he gathers groups of pastors to the farm and they do continuing education, reading things that help them think about their congregations as a working farm where you know how can you strengthen your congregation, in a way, and then uses the metaphor of the farm to to say here's how you contend this and here's how you can help this grow and so it's really.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if you've ever heard of Wendell Berry, but that's, that's how you contend this, and here's how you can help this grow. And so it's really.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if you've ever heard of Wendell Berry, but that's that's a real. Um, he's an author and a farmer from Kentucky, and a lot of what he writes resonates with the way we run our farm yeah.

Speaker 2:

Very cool, Very cool. Okay, so I love this with your, your family, because here we are in our community. We have the Wagon Wheel, which is just this unique, like awesome venue doing so much great work in this small Midwest town, but then you're part of this farm, part of agriculture, which is a big part of our culture and our community. Talk to me about why the arts are important for an ag small northern Indiana community.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and oh gosh, yeah, this makes me think about so you mentioned. You know, Zach is an indie rocker, he's an artist right.

Speaker 2:

He's a writer.

Speaker 1:

He's a creative writer and I'll never forget, I think a couple years in I thought so how is this feeling? You know, you've really given yourself over to this farm and now you know he's not writing as much music, he's not performing as much, and he said that the farm has truly become his symphony, where you know, I mean it's a little corny, but when the carrots are crescendoing, the the spinach is decrescendoing, you know. So he, he really thinks of the farm as a symphony. And I that's where I went first in my head when you asked that question and I think that the arts is something that speaks to every vocation.

Speaker 1:

I think that it's one of the quickest ways that we can connect ourselves to the human experience where, whether it's seeing a show or hearing a piece of music or looking at visual art, I almost feel like it's that kind of mental floss that helps you to let go of maybe you know what you've been experiencing over and over and see everything with fresh eyes.

Speaker 1:

I know back in the Greek days that Greek theater was known as medicine, so people would come and see theater and it was known as kind of like a cathartic experience where they would feel so deeply and so passionately that then once you leave, it's a transformative experience and you feel refreshed and you feel renewed Property to it. Wow, and of course I've. I've now come to believe that theater is such an important part of that. But I'm looking at the work that's being done in this community, such as C Grandin with our Atelier Gallery and even community arts programs with their music and just this dedication in Warsaw to give our community experiences like that too and opportunities not only to see you know, see, hear, experience, stories and art from all over the world and feel that, not just hear or learn about it, but experience it Absolutely Well, and it's been so exciting too with Main Street Warsaw which just released their you know Vision 2030 plan.

Speaker 2:

And a big part of what they heard from the community is more art more creativity, more entertainment, like we want more of those things to be brought here, which I think is just so exciting.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and I think we're well on our way. I think, yeah, terry Sweeney's doing amazing work with that and just the conversation of it's thrilling to be a part of the community conversation to think about how can we infuse the people of our community with these opportunities, how can we provide them with the opportunities but then also provide them with the experiences that can then enrich the very niche things that they're doing in the community. And this idea of community connection is just thrilling. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I love it. I love it. Okay, so I want to pick your brain on something from the conservatory side as you're training and connecting with, with students and people interested in learning. Here's what I have found in the work that we do putting people on camera. People always assume that it's the big personalities like the well-spoken people who it's like put them on camera because they're going to kill it.

Speaker 2:

And a lot of times, that's true. But there are these also just very quiet, introverted people that I find to just be like these silent assassins of like they kill it when they get on camera they give a great soundbite. So I'm just curious from your perspective, like the range of personalities you see, because I think with drama, people assume it's a certain type of person. Sure, and my guess is that's not true.

Speaker 1:

I'll agree with you because, yeah, I had to dig deeper and deeper into what is my truth and what is the essence of me, so that I can bring that to each character and then, you know, discover the way in which that character might think about the world or might operate. And so, when you're so interested in investigating your personal truth, I think that's a really exciting thing for every student, no matter what kind of personality they're bringing into the room, because I think somebody who might be more, uh, more attuned to giving a performance in their daily life, um, they're going to have the same difficult process of digging into what is their truth as someone who might not be giving performances in their daily life. Right.

Speaker 1:

It's a very difficult process to go through and um, and then it's thrilling to be able to take a character from a work of art or either a play or a musical, and to then be practiced in digging into what is their truth and, you know, coming to the character with authenticity. Authenticity, so I think authenticity is a word that is so important to an actor, and I think that's a little bit what we're getting at here, right? So maybe even a quieter, more introverted person, if they're able to tap into their authentic self and bring their authentic self into the room and tell the truth under imaginary circumstances, that's when magic happens on the stage, yeah, awesome, awesome.

Speaker 2:

So for maybe somebody that's out there, maybe one of our listeners, who they're just they're looking for something to connect with, um, you know some, something to to add into their story. What would your sales pitch, in a sense, be to the conservatory of why they should come be a part of what you're doing?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think I've been talking about that a little bit. I think that there are the technical things that you can learn in a theater class, such as projection, which honestly can help you command a room in an interview situation. It can help you just even communicate, maybe with family, communicate with your friends. But this tapping into your authentic self and telling the truth, I think also helps you in job interviews, in any life situation, in mediation situations right, so that you can really negotiate with people and get to the heart of the problem.

Speaker 1:

I think that also there's just something so important in play in everyday life and joy and being able to come into a space, an affirming space, that has no agenda for you and has no expectations of you other than to try and to experience. I've seen adults come into our classes very nervous and afraid and I totally understand that if they have no experience with who we are as people, you'll never know what kind of space you're walking into. But then just the sheer joy of what it might be like to play an improv game and not have the pressure of coming to a right answer, but just to try and to tap into that creativity. It's thrilling to watch.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, so walk me through. Just you know, if I were to sign up for that, what should I expect? What's going to happen?

Speaker 1:

Right, so we offer acting classes for adults. When you come in, we'll spend the first day doing what are called open scenes, so you and a scene partner will decide who your characters are and what might be going on in the scene. So the lines might be something like hi, hello, what are you doing? You?

Speaker 1:

know, and there's some conflict written in there, but it could be anything.

Speaker 1:

You could be brother and sister and you know, something just happened in your life and you have to work through it. So we'll use that as kind of a quote unquote audition. And then after that day, I source an established scene from the canon of theater to then cast everybody in a short scene and then we work on that scene throughout the six weeks. And then we just this past Sunday, did our spring showcase performance and so we had probably over 400 people in our audience watching all of our students somewhere around 90 students perform the thing that they worked on for six weeks and it is like I said, we're watching second graders through adults just pour their hearts into works of theater and it's a huge celebration of community, of art, of storytelling and of skill that they picked up in the last six weeks. So I really feel strongly that we've come to a formula that helps everyone feel really accomplished and affirmed and that gives them some skills to move that one step further in their journey as an actor.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, I love that. I love that journey as an actor. Oh yeah, I love that. I love that so obviously for you. I mean this this has been, um yeah, just life-changing work for you and deeply meaningful for you. Can you think of a? Time or a story where you saw that spark ignite in someone else. Where it was, it was moving to you to see almost the transformation of what the theater meant to them.

Speaker 1:

There was a student who came to us, I think he was somewhere between 45, 50, from Fort Wayne and he had just always wanted to perform and always wanted to be a part of a theater scene.

Speaker 1:

And so he signed up for our adult acting classes and he actually works at Sweetwater. Signed up for our adult acting classes and he actually works at Sweetwater, and I assigned him a scene from All my Sons where he got to play kind of a really dramatic scene with someone playing his son and they really dug into it. And when I tell you that this man then has not stopped working in community theater in Fort Wayne. So he's worked at, you know, arena Theater, first Prez, all of the big community theaters in Fort Wayne he's been a part of now. So he just, yeah, took that and ran with it and I think, you know, it's that little bit of confidence that the experience gives you, that gives you the authenticity to then go into those audition spaces and say, no, I know what I'm doing and I know who I am as a performer and I'm ready to to try.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I love that, I love that. Okay, crazy theater stories, I know stuff happens, stuff goes down you know whether it's with props or forgetting lines, or even things in the audience like tell me something you can recall.

Speaker 1:

That's just like hey was not expecting that to happen was not expecting that to happen. Um well, I you know. Something we talk about in the theater is the white room, and the white room is a space you go into when all of your lines just leave your brain and I had a really fun white room experience.

Speaker 1:

We were doing the comedy of errors and I had gotten through a long and so this is Shakespeare, so one of my loves. I don't get to do enough Shakespeare. So I was so thrilled to be able to dive into some Shakespeare and got to the end of a monologue and all I had was a rhyming couplet to end the monologue. But it was just gone and so I just stared at my scene partners for a little while and then, and then it came at the last minute I also have stories of. There was a time we were rehearsing Smokey Joe's Cafe and I was a part of a scene shift and thankfully we were still in rehearsals. We were not in performances yet, but I leaned down to pick up a table and it just whacked me in the face and the lights lights came up and I just had blood all over my face People are like.

Speaker 2:

Special effects are amazing.

Speaker 1:

I didn't know this was Carrie. And then a fun story about Wagon Wheel that I think might be interesting. We have this tunnel underneath our theater called Shawshank. We call it Shawshank lovingly, okay, very cool. So anytime you mention things coming up out of the ground, or going down into the ground.

Speaker 1:

So in order to get there. So I'll give the example of the Wizard of Oz. The last time we did Wizard of Oz, I played the Wicked Witch and so I started as Elvira Gulch and did my little turn as her got back into the dressing room and had to put all that green makeup on and change the costume and everything. Then you have to go downstairs into the scene shop and get into the Shawshank, so get into a tunnel. It's about 25 feet long and for anyone wearing a dress, you have to put your dress up into your teeth and crawl through this 25 foot long tunnel into our orchestra pit and then you get to get up onto the elevator where crew members are lifting you up onto the stage. So that's a little behind the scenes peek of something interesting at Wagon Wheel.

Speaker 2:

That is so cool Very very cool, okay, so tell me, as you think about Wagon Wheel this summer. What are you excited about? What's coming up that people should know about?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a great season. We very intentionally picked this season, uh, as something that would draw the audience in, and so we're starting with joseph and the amazing technical or dream code into south pacific, into sister act, into steel magnolias, into greece.

Speaker 1:

So it's just kind of a star-studded season to begin with um, I'm very excited that my one of my very best friends, who I made working at wagon wheel in 2012, is coming back to direct South Pacific, so David Schlumpf will be here to direct that. We just have incredible people coming back and a lot of returning actors from last summer, which we feel really great about because that's a testament to they had a great experience here in Warsaw. They love the community, they love the opportunities that we have around here, because these actors, they have this love for Warsaw and they they carry it across the country so they get to tell the story of northeast Indiana wherever they end up. So the fact that we have so many that wanted to come back after last summer is is really great, and we're on route to have a record-breaking season subscription year. So the last time we sold this many season subscriptions was in 2019, and I'm sure it's no surprise that the pandemic hit the theater world rather hard. Sure.

Speaker 1:

So, it's felt like a long, steady climb out of that hole and it feels like this summer is going to be a real celebration of getting out of that.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love that. Yeah, so exciting. What about you personally? Any projects, anything specific for you that you're really excited about?

Speaker 1:

Definitely so we, as education director, I get to run summer workshops throughout the summer and I have the blessing of hiring people to come in to lead those, and so I always like to get guest artists in to work with our students and give them an opportunity to work with someone else other than me. So we've got Matthew Janisse, who led the tour of Something Rotten and was in Kinky Boots off Broadway and was just an understudy for Beetlejuice on the Beetlejuice tour, and now he's going to come back and direct Adam's Family for our high school youth and then other great guest artists that are going to come in and lead those workshops. Personally, I'm excited to do Sister Act. I get to play Mother Superior again. So the last time I played Mother Superior was in 2016. It's the last time we did Sister Act and I was seven months pregnant at the time, underneath the habit.

Speaker 1:

Oh my goodness, so that nun had a secret, but, um, but, uh, I'm very excited to play the role not pregnant, Um, but it's also really fun because the last time we did sister act uh, the amazing woman we had here to play Dolores, who's the Whippy Goldberg character, Her name was Morgan Anita Wood and we would sit at the top of all of our aisles, have names. If you've ever been at Wagon Wheel, we have four aisles and they all have names that are kind of familiar to us. But we were at the top of Dog Isle waiting for an entrance and she would put her hand on my belly and we'd maybe feel I was calling the baby Baby Hawk at the time and we'd maybe feel I was calling the baby Baby Hawk at the time Baby Hawkins, so she would feel Baby Hawk and it would get the hiccups every now and then and it was just really sweet.

Speaker 1:

And now Morgan is playing currently Eliza in Hamilton on Broadway. So it's a really fun connection to Sister Act and to be able to revisit that material. And the awesome girl that we hired to play Dolores this summer, Armani Ponderkeith I think, just visited New York, I think with maybe her senior showcase and I think she goes to the University of Northern Ohio. I think that's correct and she just met Morgan and saw Morgan play Eliza in Hamilton on Broadway. So we have these two wagon wheel Dolores's meeting at the stage door. So I'm so excited to kind of bring that full circle.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, awesome. Well, as we wrap this up, any final thoughts that you would have. Anything you wish the community knew about the, the level of theater and the the connections that we get to make to actual Broadway, to actual national tours.

Speaker 1:

And we have them here, yeah, so quickly performing five different roles, and I think that I would love it if people would understand more the experience of being seasoned subscribers in order to see the transformation of the space, like we were talking about that artistry of these beautiful sets going up and down, the costumes changing from show to show, but then each individual actor maybe they're a lead in this show and then the next show they're going to be in the ensemble and then they'll be a lead character and to see that transformation and the level of dedication and artistry that they lend to each role it's really exciting.

Speaker 1:

Uh, so that's kind of more of like the the professional side of things, and then I very much hope that the story that we're telling in the community now is that we are here to serve the community we. One of the ways that we do that is with our professional productions, and we love welcoming the community in um to experience those with us. But then we love working one-on-one with the community. We also love uplifting community partners, um, and telling the story of what they're doing for the community. So, yeah, I hope that the well-rounded story of our national impact and our community service gets out there.

Speaker 2:

Wonderful. I love it. I love it. So somebody that is interested in attending a show you know being one of the subscribers coming to the conservatory how should they get connected to what's going on?

Speaker 1:

So wagonwheelcenterorg is your best place to go. Hopefully the different tabs can tell you the different spokes and where to go to what you're interested in. I would also very highly suggest that they subscribe to Sam's newsletter so you're able to do that on the bottom of our landing page. If you scroll all the way down to our landing page, you can subscribe to our newsletter, and Sam is just incredible at kind of telling our story once a month.

Speaker 1:

So it's not, it's going to overload your inbox but once a month, you'll get to hear about all of the things that are going on, all of the opportunities you might have to engage with us, all of the things that are going on, all of the opportunities you might have to engage with us and, yeah, come see us.

Speaker 2:

Perfect, perfect, all right. Well, kira, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing your story and thank you to you and the leadership team for the work that you're doing in our community to provide such an incredible service.

Speaker 1:

Well, likewise, thank you for providing the space to tell our story.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. All right To all of our listeners and viewers. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Stories that Move. I cannot stress enough Go to the wagon wheel, check out a show, you will not be sorry. Thanks for tuning in today. We look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios.

Speaker 3:

Make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode. And remember, if you or your organization have a story you're eager to share with the world, Dream On Studios is here to bring that story to life.

Speaker 2:

Don't hesitate to reach out. You can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or visit our website at dreamonstudiosio. We understand how overwhelming it can be trying to bring your vision and story to life, but that's why we exist, and we've walked alongside hundreds of clients doing that very thing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we believe every story has the potential to inspire, to move and to make a difference.

Speaker 2:

Let's make yours heard. Until next time, keep moving forward and keep telling those stories that matter. Take care everyone. We'll see you next time on Stories that Move.