The Adventures of Princess Taco or All I Really Need to Know I Learned at Quest Theatre Summer Camp

By: Braden Griffiths

Theatre should be a core subject in school.

This is not to say I believe we should unseat the current quartet of reigning cores: Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, and Math. I am rather suggesting that Theatre (or, as it’s interchangeably titled in some school systems, Drama) be added to the docket of courses that students must, at-some-point, take.

(In all actuality, with some simple pedagogical edits, the arguments I’m about to make on behalf of Drama, could easily be made on behalf of other artistic mediums like visual arts, music, and, especially, dance. For the sake of this article though, and because it will be posted on a theatre-based blog, I’m going to make my argument on behalf of Theatre... thanks for your understanding ☺).

After 20 years of working with young people through the act of theatre-making, I have come to believe that it is one of the best curricular tools we have for teaching students to become independent, confident, autonomous human beings. In incredibly efficient ways, theatre creates humans capable of engaging with any community they find themselves in and that are equipped to situate themselves amongst their peers as both learners and teachers.

Broadly speaking, we make theatre to unravel the knot of uncertainty that is our existence. The act of theatre-making is really just a gussied-up form of storytelling; we add lights, and costumes, and sound effects to a thing that we have been doing since all we were doing was gathering around the fire after a long day of wheel-inventin’ and sabretooth-dodgin’.

Life is hard, so we tell stories about how hard it is, so it might not be so hard in the future. Life is funny, so we tell stories about how funny it is, so we might share in the mess and grow closer through laughter. As the legendary Canadian writer, Thomas King says at the beginning of every lecture they give, “The truth about stories is, that’s all we are.” So, we make theatre to discover, “all we are.” And we have kept doing it after all these millennia ‘cause there’s always a little bit more to discover.

And the ones who have the most to discover about who “we are”, are our kids, our students, the youths.

I believe a worthwhile theatre curriculum often pivots between two goals:

1) Build an ability to introspect and understand our imagination and emotions (and how they apply to and affect one another).

2) Take risks and share our introspective discoveries with the community around us.

 This sounds like serious stuff, and ya know, sometimes it is. But more often than not, especially when working with younger students (K-6), reaching for these goals is more whimsical than workmanlike, more hilarious than harrowing.

At my age, my core concerns tend toward things like taxes, gas prices, our bifurcating political systems and how much milk I may or may not have for coffee in the morning. Based on the twenty years of information I have gathered whilst working with young people, a short list of core concerns for the average Grade 4 student (living in Canada and attending a Canadian Public School or Theatre Summer Camp) might include: Tacos, Minecraft, Star Wars, Doggies, Dragons, Dinosaurs, Pokémon, Princesses, and the price of Bitcoin. Okay, not that last one... but the rest are “The Greatest Hits” of answers to the question, “what should our play be about?”

Now, acknowledging the above list, we come to the question, “how does making a play about Tacos and Princesses teach students anything about the skills they’ll need to enter the workforce and society?” ... the latter half of that question being one of the core goals of most (if not all) educational organizations.

“What should our play be about?” is actually just a quizzical synonym for the question, “What is important to you?” And the fact of the matter is, before we have to pay taxes and keep tabs on personal milk-stock, Tacos and Princesses often are the most important things to us. And once we (teacher and class) know that Tacos and Princesses are “the most important”, we come to one of the most delicate moments in any theatre-making process... things can go one of two ways... we (the teacher) can either say...

A) “Great our play will be about tacos and princesses!”

or

B) “Okayyyyyyyy... but couldn’t our play be about (insert seemingly more important topic here).”

 If we choose A, committing ourselves, as teachers, to a future where we must remain curious and unravel how we can tell a story about both tacos and princesses (two subject matters that seemingly have very little to do with one another), we, immediately, teach our students several things...

- We teach them that their interests are important.

- We teach them that their opinions matter and that their voice is worth listening to.

- We teach them that the risk they took in shouting “TACOS” at the top of their lungs was a worthy one, and future risks (which may lead to growth) might be equitably rewarded.

- We also might be laying the foundations for teaching them that there are multiple solutions to most problems... and, if they look inward, they might hold some of those answers.

 If we choose B... well, we teach them the opposite of those things above... but, most importantly, we teach them that “we had a better answer all along” and that, though we put a question mark on the end of the sentence, we didn’t really care what they had to say in the first place. I guess what I’m saying is: we shouldn’t choose B.

So! We’ve chosen A! Great! Now we have students who are excited about the play The Adventures of Princess Taco and the Vegetarian Dragons of Altadore (the community where our hypothetical Theatre class is situated)! Now we have students who are beginning to believe they have a voice worth hearing and who may be (even marginally) more likely to speak autonomously in this and other future settings. Now we move toward the next phase in any storytelling endeavour, inventing a conflict that needs to be resolved.

And, the students point to it right away, I mean, Princess Taco is obviously a huge fan of spicy ground beef, and the vegetarian dragons are... well... NOT! Now we have students who are considering different viewpoints and engaging with the frictional space between the two. Now we have students imagining disagreements, and possible resolutions to those disagreements, and possible flaws within those resolutions. And, at the end of it all, we have a story (a little piece of “all we are”), or, because we’re in a theatre class, a play.

Great! And now we need to figure out how we’re going to perform that play. In time. In space. Well, first we require lines, which requires a bit of writing, and a bit of memorization in turn. And well, we’ll also need costumes, which requires aesthetic considerations, and considerations of resource allocation. And well, we also require movement, because any dragon worth their salt, vegetarian or otherwise, is going to have to fly... and, wait a second, how are we going to pretend to fly? And once we’ve answered ALL THOSE QUESTIONS, we need to rehearse it, so that when our parents come to watch they’ll see and be able to celebrate just how clever, and cute, and funny we are.

Now we have kids active and moving.

Now we have kids solving problems with their minds and their bodies.

Now we have kids working together, creating community and encouraging the diverse voices within that community to step up, come forward, and raise their voice loud enough to be heard.

And, if we are good teachers, we rely on the students to lead this work, more and more throughout the process.

From the moment we cede control when we discuss what out play should be about, we continue to give more and more ground...

and we trust...

and, if we’re really good teachers, we trust completely...

we trust that there is a logic to even the most obtuse suggestions, and we do everything we can to structure our work around the offerings of the students and the tangents of their creativity...

 Because, if we work to trust that they know what they’re doing, they will begin, individually and collectively, to figure out what it is they want to be doing... not just in this Drama room, but beyond.

And at the end of it all, the adults around them applaud them for this brave and complicated act.

And so it goes, week after week, in every theatre classroom and summer camp forever and ever.

And (beyond all the above benefits) in practising the skills we need to tell a story about Vegetarian Dragons we practise most (if not all) of the skills we will need to exist in the workplaces and communities of adulthood.

In my experience, adult life is a perpetual string of the following acts:

1) Looking inward to decide what is important to me.

2) Considering the frictions and disagreements that I am having with those around me (or, even more commonly, within myself).

3) Making efforts toward solving those conflicts that I am facing... often in ways that don’t seem obvious at the outset.

4) Working with people (so. many. people.) some of whom I (maybe) don’t especially jive with, toward a common goal.

5) Picking my moments to step up and be heard and doing it in such a way that my comment might be seen as productive as opposed to inessential.

And we just so happen to practice each and every one of these things above, every time we enter in the drama room.

By learning to tell stories about Taco Princesses, we learn something of the skills necessary to tell the story of “all we are” ... and we practise the skills we need to become “all we are not... yet.”

And so, we return to the conjecture: Theatre should be a core subject in school.

To talk about science, we need to be able to tell the story of how chemistry, biology and physics work together to machinate the universe.

To talk about Social Studies, we need to tell the story of those who came before, the communities they built, and how they rose and how they fell.

To talk about math, we need to tell the story of how integers interact to weave the pattern of everything that exists. And Language Arts? Well, Language Arts gives us the words we need to tell all these stories in the first place.

In order to wholly engage with the other four, we vehemently need that fifth core subject.

In order to practice being all we need to be autonomous adults in the world, we need that fifth core subject to make our mistakes in the safety of a learning environment.

And, I mean, in the end, if Thomas King is right, if “the truth about stories is, that’s all we are” it’s probably worth taking some time out of every school day to learn to tell those stories with our friends... Even if the stories we choose to tell are about how the Taco Princesses and the Vegetarian Dragons worked together to find an alternative food source that everyone carnivore, herbivore and omnivore could enjoy in equal measure... pancakes... lots and lots of pancakes.

And they all lived happily ever after.

(Dance Party).

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Braden has been telling stories with young people for close to twenty years. He learned how to better support kids as they tell their stories by working with Quest for those same (almost) twenty years. He is an award-winning actor, an award-winning playwright, a sometimes puppeteer, who sometimes works for Jim Henson, and he has recently become an adult human with a teaching degree. He hopes he can continue to do all of the above forever and ever.