00:20:34.720I don't think people, like, who aren't involved with the arts are as, or I don't think they really understand that it's just, like, as valuable as, like, team sports in terms of, like I said, relationships and, like, making friends.
00:21:04.720I feel like from someone who's done both, like, I've made close friends with both and
00:21:30.500And I felt that, like, that community aspect with both.
00:21:36.960I think, you know, people are going to participate in things that they're interested in.
00:21:46.680And that's what, that's one of the reasons why people click with each other, like, in the play.
00:21:54.460Because everyone's interested in acting.
00:21:56.580i do feel like there's like this view that sports is more important than like arts
00:29:18.580But for now, just like, my gut reaction is,
00:29:21.180maybe the same isn't quite happening for boys pursuing the arts.
00:29:25.160So what do we know about boys in theater?
00:29:28.040To continue the conversation, I spoke to a friend I know through Partners for Youth Empowerment's Art of Facilitation, Jen, who has a background in theater choreography.
00:29:37.480My name is Jen Kuhl, and I was obsessed with theater and dance as a kid.
00:29:43.300I danced from the time I was pretty young and then was in a kids theater company from the time I was eight until I was 13.
00:29:52.040and then I did as much musical theater as I possibly could in high school. Um, and then
00:29:58.180when I was in grade 12, I was asked to go back and be, um, the assistant choreographer for that
00:30:03.320same kids theater company. Um, and so then I worked with them as the assistant choreographer
00:30:07.740for, um, I think five, five or six years, and then took a bit of a hiatus. And then the artistic
00:30:15.980director from that company went and, and started a different company and hired me on, um, as the
00:30:21.020beautiful choreographer. And I worked there for another six. So I've got about 12 years of
00:30:27.800teaching dance with this Keats Theatre Company, in addition to my many years of loving performing.
00:30:36.400The first thing I told Jen when we sat down to record was the first thing I said on this podcast
00:30:40.860about what I saw in Evan when I saw him on stage. And I didn't tell her this, but writing it now
00:30:47.140made me think of a kid who I first saw dance, um, on stage when he was like about 10 years old.
00:30:52.760And it was again, like just watching him having that sense of like talent and passion. Like this
00:30:59.880is what he was meant to do. And that same kid, seven years later, um, just won best teen male
00:31:06.780dancer at the dance awards, which I don't know a lot about, but like there are capital T capital
00:31:11.820D capital a, a really big award show or another boy. I know who I photographed as part of a
00:31:17.120photography project in university who is again at that moment like starting to explore dance and
00:31:22.380and decide like what like what value does this hold for me and where where does my passion lie
00:31:27.420and he ended up graduating from Canada's National Ballet School like there's something to these boys
00:31:32.300and there's something that you can see when they're on stage it's not every kid but it's a lot of kids
00:31:40.740for whom they get on stage with like they're feeling like they finally found their pack
00:31:46.000and they are just having the time of their lives and I think it's especially true for kids
00:31:55.000sometimes kids who really love theater might have a flair for the dramatic that makes it hard for
00:32:03.120them to connect with kids who only want to play sports or kids who are very serious about school
00:32:07.360So I think kids really feel it when they haven't really found a sense of belonging in their school community and they get to be on stage singing and doing a thing they love with peers who accept and celebrate them and are singing along with them.
00:32:25.580I think that's when you get kids to be really, who really radiate it. And then you also get kids who are like meant to dance or meant to sing where they are like their truest self when they are belting out that high note or like, you know, fully embodying that character.
00:32:46.800So I think there's like lots of different ways that kids get to be and young people get to be radiantly happy when they're in theater.
00:32:53.500I think maybe in a different way than like visual art um I don't I don't know if musical theater
00:33:04.800particularly gives as much space for like full self-expression and exploration because there
00:33:14.460is sort of like a rehearsal schedule and a structured character you're playing but in
00:33:21.140teaching the dance skills for um the for the show I do try to allow space for kids to learn ballet
00:33:31.260and contemporary and jazz and tap and try within that to build space for kids to be expressive and
00:33:39.800explorative with their bodies in dance performance um and then I think you do see some really
00:33:47.840interesting you see some really interesting exploration when you give kids uh really
00:33:54.720emotive music and give them permission to just like move and explore and tell a story with their
00:34:00.180bodies lots of big feelings that are cool we know that for evan it's not just about the performance
00:34:08.400but about the group the friendships that he finds himself in along the way and like i said
00:34:14.200And this is consistent with decades of research about adolescent boys.
00:34:18.520If we go back to Niobe Way, she wrote in an essay about exploring diverse cultures of boyhood.
00:34:25.760Stories of yearning for intimate friendships with other boys are not stories revealed exclusively by acutely sensitive boys who are isolated in school.
00:34:32.680They're stories told by popular boys who are members of athletic teams, as well as boys involved in theater arts.
00:34:37.800They are told by straight A students, as well as by students who are struggling to get by.
00:34:41.260the language of yearning for intimacy is used by boys looking hip-hop cool laid back and macho in
00:34:46.580their low riding points this is a little bit dated walkmen around their necks baseball calves drawn
00:34:51.000low over their brows sneakers untied boys who have been portrayed in popular culture as more
00:34:55.880interested in shooting each other than in sharing their thoughts and feelings they spoke to us about
00:35:00.480male friendships that you feel lost without about quote deep depth friendships and about wanting
00:35:06.060friends with whom you share your secrets, tell everything and get inside. So this experience,
00:35:14.700that's the end of the quote, this experience isn't unique to Evan is the point, but the story he
00:35:19.120tells is his. And through it, he gives us this window into the kinds of relationships you can
00:35:23.820find within theater. What I wanted to know in talking to Jen, what, and I'm not sure if I'll
00:35:29.900be able to articulate this as well as I want to, but basically if theater is about putting on a
00:35:35.080persona putting on a character that's not yours how does that create vulnerability um to be blunt
00:35:43.340like how can evan spend months pretending to be someone else and then say he's comfortable being
00:35:48.400himself i think i have definitely experienced that personally and then seen it in kids that
00:35:54.540i've taught and i think part of that comes from to make theater that people are going to enjoy
00:36:00.500watching, you have to be very vulnerable. So even if you are, and you have to be vulnerable
00:36:07.460collectively as a group, like particularly with musical theater, you have to decide together
00:36:13.380that it's not ridiculous to like throw your hands above your head multiple times and like0.89
00:36:18.860give jazz fingers and have these ridiculous grins on your faces. And all of you together0.98
00:36:24.100be a way that would be like super ridiculous and unusual in public. And you have to decide that0.83
00:36:31.960this place is an okay place to do that. And if you decide as a group to take that risk together,
00:36:37.240what you're going to give the audience is this incredible, magical, sparkly experience of joy
00:36:43.200and music and energy. But in order to like do that, every single person in the commit in the
00:36:49.040group has to commit to going there, to taking that risk, to feel a little bit silly. Cause if
00:36:54.300you did it on your own in the middle of the street, what we're asking you to do is usually0.98
00:36:57.680a thing that would make you feel silly. And in theater, you're like collectively deciding to
00:37:02.300take that risk together. And then I think the other thing that happens is like theater has
00:37:07.720like a lot, theater has a lot of dead time. So, um, the kids spend a lot of time like waiting to
00:37:14.720go on or, you know, wait, um, doing their makeup before the show or in between rehearsals or
00:37:21.040running a number again. And so there's like a collective creative project with lots of space
00:37:25.720built in between where you do get a chance to develop and build relationships. And it feels
00:37:32.220really good when you've accomplished something together. Like when you, when you nail a number
00:37:36.100as a group and you, particularly if you've had to work on it, cause it's hard and you come off
00:37:40.060stage and you're like wow we killed that that's a really amazing unifying feeling and you get
00:37:45.900instant feedback from your audience if it went really well when you have
00:37:53.360put work and time in and energy into creating the character that you're going to perform with
00:38:03.760um and there have been moments like nobody nails it every time in rehearsal so
00:38:15.660even if you are playing a character that is not yourself some of your again most vulnerable
00:38:22.060moments will have happened with that group so um the first time this is like gender the other way
00:38:30.900but um a couple years ago we did beauty and the beast and the young woman playing the beast had
00:38:37.320to get up and sing this incredibly emotional number um about losing bell um we could have
00:38:45.120another conversation about why that musical is problematic but that's not what i'm here to do
00:38:48.820but so the the character playing the leading man had to get up and sing this incredibly emotional
00:38:53.860song. Um, and it was like, it's hard vocally. It takes a lot of emotion. And also she didn't do
00:39:07.480it perfectly every time in rehearsal. Like sometimes she missed a note. Sometimes she
00:39:11.700forgot her words. Sometimes as she was figuring out, she like her voice cracked a little bit
00:39:16.760because like, or, or, you know, like a person forgets their lines or on a more mundane level,
00:39:22.040person forgets their lines person gets in the wrong way when you're moving like people have made
00:39:26.580a lot of mistakes together before they ever get to the stage and I think that that allows for
00:39:35.940you to maybe bring a more a less perfect version of yourself and I also think again it comes with
00:39:42.900that like playfulness that you need for theater that when you've been vulnerable in a playful way
00:39:47.640with people, it's easier to bring than your other parts of your vulnerability. And, and I think
00:39:52.960you've gotten, you've gotten to practice vulnerability with those people in a character
00:39:58.200that is not yourself. So it's safer. So you might go further. You might never cry in front of that
00:40:04.920group of people, but you have to pretend you're crying in a scene, but then it sort of feels like
00:40:08.800you have practiced letting them see you cry anyway. So then I don't know when your partner breaks up
00:40:14.240with you two weeks later you've already practiced crying in front of them and maybe you actually
00:40:18.180do i'm not saying that that will happen but i have been in casts where when kids were slightly
00:40:23.240older there was like a lot of relationship drama but i think there's this practicing
00:40:28.500you get to practice performing feelings in a character that isn't yourself and that allows
00:40:34.880you to then even though it's been experiencing the feelings through another character it's you
00:40:41.140get the relationship as if you experience them in yourself possibly if you ask jen or me or evan
00:40:50.540for that matter there are so many benefits to participating in theater uh like though like
00:40:55.060those close friendships for example that sense of belonging like identity development the joy
00:40:59.300of performing the confidence that you get the skills that you get in in public speaking like
00:41:03.140there's so many positive pieces to that experience and so how does that compare to sports does it
00:41:12.000compare to sports and how do we address the fact that this incredible space is limited in access
00:41:18.500for boys um I just think that they are I think both have value I think I would love to see both
00:41:27.000kids get the opportunity to do both because I think you do get when you're exploring a different
00:41:32.740character in a way you're practicing empathy because you're imagining like what does what
00:41:38.120would this person do in this situation and you're getting a different kind of teamwork that is not
00:41:43.480teamwork in competition with or in an adversary relationship with another team um and I'm not
00:41:52.060knocking like competitive sports but I I think that there's value in both types of teamwork
00:41:56.540And I think, yeah, the ability to collectively play and access joyful exploration through music and movement is super important and is a very different thing than you get, again, playing athletic sports.
00:42:21.680I know a kid that is was in the company that I used to teach with since I moved away and don't teach there anymore, whose parents were very into the sports that he played and really celebratory of the sports that he played and didn't understand why he wanted to why he what he was enjoying in theater.
00:42:47.180and I saw him at a rehearsal I dropped in on and he like lit up like a Christmas tree when he did
00:42:54.220a Russian split in the end of a number I don't know many kids who can like just randomly pull
00:42:59.660off a Russian that's like when you jump straight up in the air and split your legs just like0.86
00:43:03.700straight up it's like it's hard so one it was very impressive but more than that he was
00:43:08.300like yeah so happy being on stage and had this sort of feedback from his parents that they sort
00:43:14.520of like just didn't get it um and so i do think stereotypes for sure um regulate who feels like
00:43:24.420musical theater and the arts and artsy spaces like i think that there might be more space for
00:43:29.880um like traditional roles for boys in like music because you have rock bands so it's like okay if
00:43:38.880you do the kind of arts that are like sanctioned by general society. Um, but I think, um, choir
00:43:46.300and theater and dance and musical theater definitely, um, are, are stereotyped as a thing
00:43:56.580that is, um, for girls and for, um, like queer boys and like only that. Um, and if
00:44:08.820If you if yeah, if you're if if you're a boy who's in theater, you must be gay, which I think as people are navigating their identity, whether they are or not, nobody ever wants to have somebody decide what their label is.
00:44:24.900And I think that that turns a lot of boys off because they don't want to be perceived as something that they haven't like figured out what they are yet.
00:44:32.980Um, and they don't want to be perceived as something that has, is still, I mean, when I, I think is still stigmatized, even though we've like worked to bring down barriers, I think there's still a lot of stigmatization in school.
00:44:46.980So, um, yeah, I think it's much, uh, there's much more space for boys to play sports and to like play electric guitar than there is space for boys to, um, do like more fluid, like fluid and evocative arts.
00:45:03.320talking about sports brings us back to nike uh because i wanted to return to evan's description
00:45:09.360of that nike commercial with serena williams that came out last year and he has a remarkably
00:45:15.820good memory of it which kind of to me shows how evocative that ad i mean i found it evocative that
00:45:21.640ad campaign was about um raising the visibility of women in sports and also sort of challenging
00:45:27.060the cultural narratives that criticize women's participation both in like amateur and professional
00:45:33.620sports if we show emotion we're called dramatic
00:45:39.840if we dream of equal opportunity we're delusional when we're too good there's something wrong with
00:45:50.060and if we get angry we're hysterical or rational or just being crazy but a woman running a marathon0.88
00:45:59.120was crazy officials tried to pull her off the course a woman boxing was crazy a woman Duncan
00:46:06.800coaching an NBA team landing the impossible or winning 23 grand slams having a baby and then0.99
00:46:14.600And coming back for more, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, and crazy.0.98
00:46:22.600So if they want to call you crazy, fine.0.99
00:48:32.940So the dance school where I danced as a kid
00:48:37.340started with hip hop classes just for boys. And because hip hop is less seen as like less feminine
00:48:44.940than ballet, they opened this space for boys to take hip hop. And then some of those boys were
00:48:53.080like, I want to take another class. And then they took jazz. And then a few of them took
00:48:57.420some ballet. And once there was one older boy in ballet, it was safer and easier for younger boys
00:49:06.560like they could go and see the older boys doing ballet and then they also took ballet so i feel
00:49:11.260like you need being like bringing the barriers down in what the space is and like what you're
00:49:18.320teaching as kind of like a like low bar entry um if you can do that like i don't know if this how
00:49:25.240this would how it would work out but like if you bring in really cool dancing role model dudes
00:49:31.540to, uh, an elementary school gym class, I think young boys are going to feel very differently0.83
00:49:39.420about participating in that gym class than if it's a woman. Cause it just feels better to see1.00
00:49:43.340somebody who looks like you teaching the thing. And there are some like extremely cool male,
00:49:49.080uh, dance teachers. So I think like, that's one thing. And then I think, um, yeah, uh,
00:49:56.680mostly it has to do with numbers. Like, again, you kind of need, like, you need your one first
00:50:01.520kid in a theater company. So that, so again, the theater company that I helped start, um,
00:50:07.940when I left, I think we had two boys. Um, and now three years later, they have six.
00:50:18.820Um, but it's because boys came to see the show and then they were like, Oh, I can do that too.
00:50:23.180So you kind of need to, you need in some way to have one brave person be your first person to lead the way for the others, which is hard. But I think they're, I think they're out, like there are kids whose passion is so great that it overrides the stigma.
00:50:44.640And so once they're there, try to do everything you can to find them friends.
00:50:50.860But I also think bringing in teachers into like bringing in people who look like them in to teach them helps.