For this season’s fall production of Frank Wildhorn’s Wonderland, a modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland, YAA has partnered with Comfort Cases, a nonprofit that provides backpacks filled with comfort items to children in foster care.
At our performance on December 3rd at Strathmore, we are hosting a stuffed animal drive, asking all ticket holders to bring new stuffed animals (12 inches or less in size) to be included in these comfort cases for children in our area’s foster system.
Why stuffed animals you may ask? Rob Scheer, Comfort Cases’ founder, is 56 years old now and owns nothing from his own childhood. Having entered the foster care system himself as a child and placed in his first foster home at 12, he remembers arriving with a trash bag filled with a few necessities but nothing of sentimental value (watch his inspiring Ted Talk below the break).
“Things keep our memories for us. When you look at, hold, smell a thing from your childhood, you are transported back into a memory.”
“Sure, your connection to people is what matters most,” Scheer says. But he contends that things hold immense sentimental value as well. “Things keep our memories for us. When you look at, hold, smell a thing from your childhood, you are transported back into a memory.” This is why he ensures that each one of the Comfort Cases that his organization distributes to children in the foster care system includes a book and a stuffed animal. “We want all of our children to have something of their own,” Scheer says. He hopes they will hold onto these things for the rest of their lives if they so choose, and it will help them craft their own story.
Rob (back row, second from right), his husband Reese (third from right) and their five children, all adopted from the foster system. (Photo Credit: Canvas Rebel)
Crafting stories is something that Young Artists of America knows a thing or two about. When we mentioned the stuffed animal drive to Kristina Friedgen, YAA’s Director of Education and Stage Director for Wonderland, she connected deeply with the power of childhood items. She explained that for one of the first rehearsals of Wonderland, she had asked the cast to each bring in sentimental items, and many of them brought in items from their childhood.
Kristina Friedgen directs student (Photo Credit: www.KristinaFriedgen.com)
The purpose? Friedgen was instructing them on Essence Work, a playmaking methodology created by Shana Cooper, used for collective visioning of a script in the rehearsal phase. Essence Work asks the directors and actors to perform an interpretation of the essential truth of the play - the story’s themes, morals, lessons. For this Essence Work, Friedgen asked the cast to use these sentimental items as props in their rehearsal process - allowing the cast to tap into the emotions that come from these items.
“Connecting with these items, the cast tapped into emotional moments from their own experiences with their parents, friends, and loved ones and explored these through Alice’s journey in the script” Friedgen said.
She then filmed these mini-performances and used screenshots of them to inform some of the blocking of the show.
And so, with this stuffed animal drive to benefit Comfort Cases, we are not just asking for things, we are asking for you to help create memories for a child. Who knows, perhaps they will use them in a rehearsal of their own one day!
See you in Wonderland! Get tickets now!
Use Amazon Smile (and choose YAA as your charity of choice) to purchase your stuffed animal and support both YAA and Comfort Cases simultaneously!
WATCH FOUNDER OF COMFORT CASES ROB SCHEER’S TED TALK