Theater introduces kids to Holocaust

Finding youngsters at the theater is like spotting a $20 bill on the street. It happens but not nearly often enough.

So developing tomorrow's audience is crucial.

Enter GableStage. For 22 years the small Coral Gables theater has worked with school groups to introduce theater to younger audiences. Starting with a special presentation today in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day and through June 1, a revised version of The Diary of Anne Frank will be presented in special morning performances for Miami-Dade County Public School middle- and high-school students. In addition, GableStage also travels to schools with a presentation of As You Like It, Shakespeare's comedy about love and mistaken identity.

"It's part of our mission," says GableStage's producing artistic director Joseph Adler. "If [children] don't get into a regular habit of going to the theater they won't go later and the arts will cease to exist. That's a big reason to do these kind of things. It's essential."

Educators say it helps them too.

"It supplements our curriculum," says Robert Strickland, executive director in the division of life skills and special projects for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. "It's an invaluable resource. Many of these services we can't provide ourselves so we go to outside providers to assist us."

Think of it as the "show me, don't tell me" theory in practice.

"There's something like a switch that turns on for kids when they see it live," Strickland says.

"For some of these kids it's the first time they have seen live theater. Movies they'll do at $7 a pop, but live theater, some of them are not used to doing that."

And no one seems to enjoy playing before young audiences more than the actors themselves.

Take John Archie, a veteran Miami-based actor, who won a Best Actor Carbonell Award last year for his starring role in GableStage's Educational Program production, A Lesson Before Dying. Archie portrayed a teacher who helped a wrongly convicted young man cope with death in a tale of injustice set in 1948 Bayonne, La.

"I've been an actor for a long time and there is no more wonderful an audience than children," he says. "There is nothing more glorious than the look in a child's eye when they suspend disbelief -- which children do infinitely better than adults. They go to this place you take them. When they get older it changes a bit but those elements are still there.

"The trend with the government ... is to put the arts in the trunk, not the back seat. That will be a severe misfortune for the consciousness of our country if this continues to happen," Archie adds. "Something like Anne Frank... there's no greater history lesson than watching those actors put their souls and hearts on the line to reveal this story. This is as important as the FCAT, trust me."