The same month their dad moved out, Olivia Howell's two little boys put on a play. It was August 2019, and they were three and five. Olivia's cousin, a children's theater costume designer, sat down with them to write a script, make the costumes, and hand out roles to the entire family. Olivia still has the video, and it still gives her chills, because in the middle of their family changing, her kids got to see that they were part of something bigger. That memory opens this conversation with Lynne Streeter Childress, a playwright, teaching artist, theater director, and the founding artistic director of Building Better People Productions, a theater company for young audiences based in Annapolis, Maryland. Everything Lynne makes is about treating yourself and other people better, and she makes a case most parents have never heard: sitting in the audience is not passive. In her words, "audiences in live theater are part of the production." She tells the story of a recent night at You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, when the actor playing Lucy turned one line toward her own grandmother in the crowd and the whole room lit up. "It felt like we were being invited in." Olivia connects the dots in real time: the skills that make a child a good audience member are the same ones that make them a good friend and a good listener. Then Lynne shares the story behind her one-person show, Feeling All the Feelings. During the pandemic, her son, then in second grade, was asked to write about something good, something bad, and something that could be better. His answer: "Nothing's good, everything's bad." It stopped her. How often do we tell kids what we want them to feel? The show follows a fifth grader who senses that people only want her to be happy, so she hides behind giant emojis everywhere except one corner of her house. It is a tender, funny reminder that it's okay to "feel everything that you're feeling and own all of your feelings," and that the grown-ups are often masking too. Listeners will leave with two simple shifts: start small with community theater where kids are expected to speak up, and when you get there, as Lynne says, "Let them laugh." Feeling All the Feelings, a show for families about emotions, has two free performances on Saturday, October 24 at 11 AM and 12:30 PM at Highwire Improv, 400 South Conkling Street in Baltimore, as part of Free Fall Baltimore. Reserve tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/feeling-all-the-feelings-tickets-1999393228970?aff=oddtdtcreator 🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry: The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/ 📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry
