Interview with the Zettler family: Rebecca Zettler (mother), Laura Zettler-Mann (seventh grade), Aaron Zettler (tenth grade) and Kit Zettler (father), audience members

By Mark McKenna

Mark McKenna: How would you describe your experience with Dell’Arte?

Laura Zettler-Mann: My most recent memory was a play we put on last year in sixth grade about this guy who gets this magic power to clean up everybody’s trash and eventually he teaches the townsfolk to clean up their trash. This whole play with all these special effects. I think it turned out well.

MM: Did you all write it together?

LZM: No. Donald had the idea of what he wanted to do and had it all set up. The only thing we did was, like, "Hey, what if we put this here?" Just to make it look better.

MM: And you performed it as a production for the school?

LZM: Yeah. For some of the school, not all of it. We have a video of it here.

MM: So how did you like doing that in school?

LZM: I think it’s fun. It is interesting how we can just go in and act all these things. And we’ve done it for a long time, not just that year, little mini-plays to get across some idea, or for classes in school.

MM: Do you always work with Donald [Forrest]?

LZM: Mm-hm. Always. Sometimes we work with one of his assistants or something, but always Donald as the main person.

MM: How long do you work with him?

LZM: Only for about half an hour to 45 minutes, if it is the whole group. When we were doing the play in sixth grade it was 30 minutes for each section ,and he would work with different sections instead of all of us at the same time.

MM: Over how long of a period of time?

LZM: There were lots of days in between things and work parties on Saturdays. I don’t know, maybe three weeks.

Rebecca Zettler: What I remember is going into the classroom when you were in third grade. Charlene Sanders brought the parents in who wanted to come, and grandparents. They did a whole thing with sound and those rain tubes that have beads that trickle down, and had us divided up and each little group making a different jungle sound, and then she would point and, oh, man it was an incredible sound. That was one of the many highlights with Dell’Arte. The one in second grade was fun. That was the one about what if the world was all blue, all red, all green.

LZM: I remember Donald trying to urge me to be the main guy, but I didn’t want to. I was embarrassed.

RZ: At the last minute she got scared. They kept calling, going, "Can you talk her into it?" But we said no. She’s a behind-the-scenes kinda girl.

MM: Is this your only experience with theater, when Dell’Arte comes in?

LZM: I go to see all of their plays, every one I can, but I’ve never really said, "Hey, can I perform in this?" If it is school I do it, if it is not, I don’t.

MM: How do you think it effects the atmosphere of the school or the kids?

LZM: I think most of the kids enjoy it. It’s fun to go and watch people put on plays. Last year the eighth graders did "Romeo and Juliet." I think it makes the school happier.

RZ:. One of my favorites was the children’s book "Run with the Fire." It is a Native American story and the animals are learning about fire. One animal steals it with another. They did it in the community hall across the street and the kids did it on roller skates.

LZM: I remember another one where we set it up in the school cafeteria. It wasn’t a play. It was when we were learning about, like we each got an ocean, and we would have a little short skit poem about the ocean. You would step up, and I think he said whoever said it the loudest would be the winner ,so we all were like, "Okay, you have to say the loudest so we can be the winner."

MM: Mr. White said that it isn’t a very cliquey school, that everybody is pretty much open to each other. Do you find that?

LZM: Yeah.

MM: Do you have friends in other schools?

LZM: Yeah. For awhile, I think, Steve went to other schools. Friends would say, "Do you know Steve from Dell’Arte?" because they knew that I did Dell’Arte a lot. Most of the time I’ll talk to someone and say, "Have you ever heard of Dell’Arte?" And they’ll say, "Yeah," and I’ll say, "Do you do that kind of stuff?" and they’ll say, "No." So I think it is mostly just the schools.

MM: Do you think Blue Lake Elementary is different than other schools?

LZM: Yeah , sometimes I do. We’ll go and visit other schools to watch them put on a fair or something at their school, and it’s just everything about them makes our school seem a lot – I don’t know how to put it – richer. Everybody else looks so different from us, and we stand out as one of the more popular schools.

MM: As a parent, having your kids be involved, do you see any kind of a difference?

RZ: We’ve never not had it. It started when my son was in kindergarten. We were the first class. I was on the school board at that time and I thought it was pretty darn important. And the fact that there had been no involvement between Dell’Arte and the community or the school, even though it is world-class theater right in our own town. For whatever reasons, it just didn’t match. At that time, we had a different superintendent who saw this as an incredible resource. Maybe that was also a time when funding was available. The times were right to bring it together. Tapping that resource, whether it is industry or theater whatever resource it is, it makes a whole lot of sense. It is a low-income community, it is a low-income county, this certainly is a low-income school. And a lot of these kids, even though Dell’Arte is there, will never see live theater. They’ll see all the videos, but they won’t see live theater. So, the fact that they have the opportunity to see that happen is pretty remarkable. One of the things that gives me pleasure is that they walk there. When you want to go see theater, you don’t have to get on a bus and go way the heck downtown, you just walk down the street.

LZM: We don’t even need a permission slip. Most of the time, when we go to the beach, we need a permission slip two days before and it takes forever to count all that stuff. But now it is like, "Oh, okay, today we are going to see a show at Dell’Arte." We walk there. It takes five minutes.

RZ: The kids have all met and all recognize other theater people. There is just another level of adult influence that is not teacher or parent or relative. That’s pretty neat. We are not low-income, both my husband and myself are well-educated, so I know in some ways we are not real, real typical, but both my kids are not afraid to talk to grown-ups, to be recorded, to be on video. Neither of them are particularly theatrical, they don’t want to be on stage themselves, but I don’t think there are very many people at that school who are afraid of standing up and saying hello. And then the language skills, the verbal skills, the creative skills, all that stuff that comes with a different way of learning, other than a book, other than a teacher. It is a pretty poor school, so we don’t offer foreign languages and a lot of the stuff that some of the bigger schools in the area do, but we have a theater. We have our own theater, that is pretty amazing.

LZM: Also Donald, I’ve been working with him for all of the time since I’ve been at Blue Lake School. Basically, I’ve been with the same people all of my life, and I know how they are, if they are shy, or really stand out, or are into sports. It is interesting, because Donald knows all of them, too. How they are with theater, how much they like it, cooperate, do what they need to do and not goof off. It’s also fun to watch how much they improve or don’t improve as they get older. I think it is cool how Donald knows everybody there and is not just "I don’t know your name, but how ’bout you do this?"

MM: Aaron, you have had a whole history with Dell’Arte. Did you enjoy it?

Aaron Zettler: Yeah, I do very much. I remember third grade was the first time I was in a play. All the way through eighth grade, I enjoyed it very much. Working in groups to create something and then showing it. I like acting, so the chance to do that through school was nice.

MM: Do you work with groups like that during other parts of the school year?

AZ: You might occasionally, but you would with Dell’Arte always be working in a group, and you always knew it would be very interactive, getting ideas from other people and feeding off those ideas..

MM: Do you go to their shows? What show sticks out for you?

AZ: The "Korbel" series has been fun. "Shotgun Wedding," their last one, was fun. I had just been thinking a couple of days ago about that scene where Donald jumps out of that cake.

RZ: With a negligee on. Can you imagine Donald in a negligee? That was a piece of work.

One of the things that we have done is make a commitment to do some kind of volunteer service as a family. For five years, we have volunteer at the Mad River Festival. We take tickets, or usher.

MM: You talk very excitedly about your experiences, but you are not really interested in becoming performers, right?

AZ: No, not particularly.

MM: Do you make connections to what you learn with theater to other things that might not be related?

AZ: Yeah, a lot. In school presentations in front of the class, or at graduation giving a speech, just knowing how to look at the audience and not be really intimidated by people..

LZM: I’ve been able to speak in front of people, mainly my class. I am not afraid at all. I might make a mistake, and people laugh, but it isn’t really important. I just am a lot more free and open, I guess. I’m not afraid, out on the playground, to say something no one else would say. I’m just not that worried about it.

AZ: Me and one of my friends who have had Dell’Arte together over all these years will sit together at lunch and just act ridiculous. Some people look at you. Some people laugh at you. It is acting, it is goofing around, it is fun. That ties into Dell’Arte. You are not really worried about it. Show. Have fun and let people come to their own conclusions about whatever it is.

RZ: Kit’s been enslaved by Donald when it comes to Dell’Arte. It’s the "I need some help on Saturday with this work party. Think you could bring your drill and your saw over? Have you got any plywood? And cardboard? Any fabric?"

Kit Zettler: I’ve learned. You make a very clear commitment and then you stick to it. It can easily get out of hand. I am the cardboard-saurus, and fabric, big cardboard boxes. I’ve got it all the time.

MM: What are the ways that Dell’Arte has changed things, effected things? If they hadn’t done the "Korbel" series, the trilogy on the environment? Did that make a difference with the salmon?

KZ: It is preaching to the converted. The people that would go to the series are already environmentalists. You are not going to convince anyone. I think where they have had greater impact, though, is where they have researched. They are very much into research and having their historical references correct. Donald spent lots of time with an old Indian woman who knows the stories and can talk about stuff. In that process, they remove some of the alienation – first of all, it is a bunch of clowns coming to talk with them. Then they begin to see them as this group of people, or this group of people that have this message they may not like. But they are going to tell our story, so there is this support thing. It is almost like Dell’Arte itself has cross-pollinated the vine a bit, even though you are not going to get a logger who is going to come see this play and walk away saying, "I’m never doing that again."

MM: But the logger comes to the play.

KZ: Exactly, because their friend got interviewed or was talked to, and they know they would be respected. I have to tell you the snapshot that I hold: Last year the clowns – full red-and-white striped spandex, diving into a bucket of coke, silly slapstick stuff – they did a show outside in the street. I was sitting on a bleacher, and looking up, I saw the entrance to the Logger Bar. The show is going on and these two guys stagger out of the bar and their mouths fall open and, "Oh my god, what has landed?" It used to be that they had animosity towards the clowns before. Now they are seen as a vital part of the community. I may not agree with their politics, but they are the only game in town. They are what brings people into Blue Lake. The town went through a visioning, and the downtown area had walking space and creekside development ,all centered around the idea that we could create a little microcosm here and people would come to spend a day at Blue Lake, maybe go to the festival. I think they really do contribute to the economic vitality of Blue Lake, obviously the cultural vitality.

RM: And the sense of community. Those "Korbel" plays have pulled in a lot of people. Like it or not, the good, the bad and the ugly. You can see yourself up there, or parts of yourself up there.

KZ: Here is another interesting tidbit. We have this Annie and Mary Day. There were some craft things and a dunk tank, but it was just sort of a drunken-brawl kind of thing. You see how much beer you can drink. Then someone came up with this idea of a Fiddle Festival, and there was a whole other twist to it. Then Dell’Arte started wrapping the [Mad River] festival around it and bringing in a whole theater thing. Now the parade is amazing. You get a whole bunch of people that have just come out for the town’s festival, and you put buckets of masks out. And suddenly everybody has got a mask on and they are dancing down the street behind the samba people. Wow! You just turned all these people on. They would never do it. I think that is magic.

LZM: One of my really, really good friends, her dad is the fire chief in the Blue Lake Fire Department. He drives one of the old fire trucks. They have the huge parade, and it starts at 10 in the morning. You wake up and hear the sirens and look out and see all these trucks with kids loaded on them. They throw out candy. Then come all the people on their horses, and then the people on their four-wheelers and little kids, people playing in bands, old antique cars. When that is all done, you can buy necklaces and jewelry and make wax hands. You can go on Jolly Jumps, there is food set up. You’ve just taken out the drunk people and added in masks and samba dancers and jewelry.

KZ: The dimension that Dell’Arte adds somehow brings those people together, so you have people that would dance in a samba parade – people that never would do that in a million years. They do a little show on the stage and the last part of the show is "Come Follow Me." Pretty soon you are walking behind them and you don’t even know where you are.

Mark McKenna is artistic director and an ensemble member of Touchstone Theatre, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of the Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris. He has taught theater classes at Lehigh University and the University of Pennsylvania, and the MFA Theatre Program at Towson State University. McKenna is active in the growth of the Network of Ensemble Theatres. He is a board member of Alliance for Building Communities, a regional community-development corporation.

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