La Tiendita de Los Horrores came to an end, and I thought to myself, “NOO!  All the volunteers are leaving, the kids of Monteverde are going back to school, and nothing will ever be the same again!”

Haha.  Oh, how wrong I was.  This community is starving for more theatrical activities for the youth and even though the public schools are already in session and the private schools are about to be in session,  people are more than willing to help us continue our work.

Michelle, Sophia, Dario and I have been SUPER busy carrying on with various new projects that I’m dying to share.  Michelle’s Puppetry Workshop has been a huge success and is far from over yet.  The best part of her workshop is watching the way the kids have become independent puppet makers.  She set them up with such a strong introduction to puppetry along with many different styles and procedures of making a puppet, that all the kids were able to make their own choices and start working with little help from us, almost immediately!  Next up, a Parade of Puppets, a week from today, Saturday the 20th.  The kids will have the opportunity to show off all their hard work and the community will have a chance to see what’s been happening with FCCMT, since our big annual musical has been over...

We also had our first Noche de Improvisacion/Improv Night, Thursday night.  We had done some recruiting at the colegio público (public high school) in town, to try and get some new teens to join in the fun.  I have been anticipating this night for some time now and have been putting a lot of energy into this idea of a group of teens, trying to reach out to their community, through improvisation... speaking only in Spanish.  Another drama teacher here in Monteverde, Tricia, has reached out to me as a collaborator and I’m SO excited about the ideas she has and the ones we’ve come up with together.  She has much experience with teens and improv, and knows not only “how” to talk to teens so that they will listen, but she knows how to help them build up their confidence.

But back to the evening itself... the turn out of teens, not surprisingly, was relatively low.  However, we had a successful evening and some amazing ideas were born. In the dimly lit workshop space that we now call home, in El Centro Comercial (the mall), we gathered on our homemade, somewhat unstable, but AWESOME stage, in a circle, and proceeded to talk about our group, our intentions, and the best part, all the FUN theatre and improv games we would be creating together. 

So far, there are two teens in our group from the public high school.  They are incredibly motivated to recruit other teens from their school.   These two girls were also

in Little Shop of Horrors, so I know them already.  All I can say, is I’m SO impressed with how dedicated they already are to the group and how I was trying to walk out the door to get home to my host family in time for dinner, and they were like, “STOP.  WAIT.  WHAT time and WHAT day can you meet with us to plan our presentation for the school??”  They are serious about making this happen and that is the whole point.  This is not my group.  I’m just a facilitator.  Lisa and I spoke long ago about creating this group and how one of the main goals would be to help enable the teens to become leaders. Leaders of this group and leaders in their community.

It’s already happening.  That’s what theatre and a little bit of confidence does to people. :)

I feel so grateful to be in a community of artists.  Especially to Dario, Sophia, Michelle, and Tricia, for helping to get this off the ground and for just being there for the first night.  Tricia and I are meeting in the morning to further plan for going back to the public high school and for the second night of improv!  I’ll be back soon with updates.  Wish us luck for el segundo noche de improvisacion!  Anyone want to join us via skype?  I don’t see why not!  Haha.  Jueves.  4:30.  Be there.

-Rachel (outreach educator)