Texas Tech University: Burkhart Students Find Home In Unique Theatre Company
The BurkTech Players includes students from the School of Theatre & Dance and students who are on the autism spectrum to create high-quality performing arts
David Siegel leans back in his chair, feet on the table.
Dark sunglasses hide his eyes.
Sam Shreffler runs in, sidestepping
a small table before slamming his hands on the table in front of Siegel.
“Al!”
Siegel sits up, though his feet
remain on the table, as Shreffler sits down, looking agitated.
“I don’t get it, Al,” he said. “I
don’t understand it.”
Shreffler launches into a story
about aspirin and the New York Daily News and pastrami. He gets more emotional
as he talks. Siegel stays cool. Trevor Wise, a master’s student from the School of Theatre & Dance at Texas Tech
University, watches from the front row of the theatre, while Amanda Varcelotti,
another master’s student who plays a put-upon waitress in the play, laughs from
stage left as she waits for her next line.
All four are members of an unusual
theatre company at Texas Tech. Last year, as part of their community theatre
course, a number of students worked with young adults on the autism spectrum
and were students in the Transition Academy at the Burkhart Center for Autism Education & Research.
They rehearsed and performed together, and at the end of the semester, half a
dozen students from theatre and dance and Burkhart wanted to keep going.
“They came to us and said, ‘We are not done,’” said Wes Dotson, co-director of
the Burkhart Center. “‘We think this can grow. We think it can survive.’”
Dotson and Mark Charney, the director
of the School of Theatre & Dance, agreed, and the BurkTech Players were
born. On Monday the group will put on its third production, a collection of
three plays from playwrights David Lindsay-Abaire, John Patrick Shanley and
David Ives. This is the first time the group has used established scripts and
had the actors memorize lines.
“The theatre department was
wonderful about trying to structure the class to meet the students with autism
where they are,” Dotson said. “They understand the core deficits and struggles
someone with autism can have and created a structure and activity to help them
overcome that.”
Getting
started
Clay Martin, a graduate student in
fine arts, came to Texas Tech in part to create this partnership with the
Burkhart Center. During his stage career in New York he learned of a woman with
autism who, thanks to her brother’s connections in show business, found her
voice in music and theatre.
When he enrolled in the required theatre and dance in the
community class taught by Charney and Linda Donahue, he, Wise and
William Sinclair, also a graduate student, walked across the street to the
Burkhart Center and explained their vision. Dotson jumped at the opportunity.
He thought such a venture would be good because of one man – Sam Shreffler.
Shreffler was not afraid of the
stage anymore, as people with autism tend to be. He used to get stage fright,
but he loved dancing so much he overcame it so he could dance in the Burkhart’s
annual talent show. One day he showed up on a bigger stage.
“My daughter called one night and
said, ‘Turn on the TV! One of your students is on ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’” remembered Janice
Magness, co-director of the Burkhart Center. There was Shreffler, talking about
autism and the center before breaking out into dance. He earned a standing
ovation that night, and although he didn’t go to Las Vegas, he came back to
Lubbock with wildly improved self-confidence.
“It goes back to Sam and seeing what
that performance did for him, seeing that our students have amazing ideas and
just as much of a desire to connect and be part of the community as anyone
else, and they often struggle,” Dotson said. “This gives them a way to do
that.”
Shreffler also gave Martin a boost
of confidence. He wasn’t sure how to incorporate dance into the performances or
even if the students were interested in theatrical arts. He watched Shreffler
not only dance but also explain to the TV judges what autism is, how it affects
him and why he loves dancing.
“I really felt that acting just part of my blood, part of my
nature, you would say,” Shreffler said.
He is now the artistic director for
this show, and Shreffler isn’t the only one. Athos Colon, who graduated from
the Burkhart Center recently, participated in Moonlight Musicals and Lubbock
Community Theatre before the BurkTech Players. Siegel is a senior at Texas Tech
and part of Project CASE, a program to put students with autism spectrum
disorder (ASD) into mainstream university classes and provide resources and
support to help them succeed. When he’s not in class he prepares monologues and
songs for auditions.
“I took a few theatre classes and
decided I’d like to be an actor,” Siegel said.
Other students at the Burkhart
Center, like Katie Raney, Allison German and Morgan Brundrett, are
participating in other BurkTech projects. Raney is the co-director of one of
the short plays. Each woman said she wanted to give theatre a try, though all
have some stage experience already as participants in the Burkhart Center’s
annual talent show.
“I’ve had so much fun with Clay and
all of them,” German said.
Theatre
without qualifiers
Martin wants audience members to
know the performance on Monday will not be good considering it has a cast with
additional challenges. No, he says confidently, it will be good, no asterisk
needed.
“I don’t think it’s something you come see to see how this
student’s been helped,” Martin said. “It’s to see the absolute professionalism
and quality of their performance. It’s entertaining.”
That was the same experience Dotson
wanted the theatre classes to be for his students. Too often teachers of
students with autism lead the classes on theatre, music and art. The students
are just reading plays, not digging into intricacies of taking on a character.
“When I, as an autism specialist,
lead the theatre class, they’re still in an autism setting. They’re still in a
somewhat therapeutic setting,” he said. “We want the people partaking to
feel like they’re getting an authentic experience of working with actual
theatre performers and dancers and set designers, to actually see what it means
to do theatre and to have the opportunity to experience the performance at a
real level.”
They’re now providing that
opportunity even earlier for children with ASD. Although the BurkTech Players
are no longer part of the community theatre and dance class, those classes are
still happening. Instead of working with the young adults already there, the
classes, led by graduate and undergraduate students, focus on elementary,
middle and high school students. Dotson said both the children and their
families love the classes, which provide a place for children to be themselves,
even if that means the occasional outburst.
The classes have a side benefit:
although they are intended only to teach theatre and dance, many of the participants
get therapeutic benefits. One boy who almost never spoke said “goodbye” to his
teachers on the way out of a recent class. Children who struggle with body
awareness learned to mirror another person’s movements.
Additionally, theatre provides a predictable place for the
students to interact. Many people with ASD don’t like conversations because
they don’t know what to say or what the person will say next. Theatre, though,
is scripted. The students know what’s coming. They know what they’re supposed
to do next. They’re far more comfortable in such a setting.
“What I see, as someone who works on
social skills for a living, is they will try things in theatre class that’s
really hard to get them to do otherwise,” Dotson said.
Long-term
projects
The BurkTech Players will work on
another production when school starts again in January, but they have a
long-term project in the works as well. That will be a performance, though
neither Martin nor Schreffler know just what that performance will look like or
when it will be ready for the stage.
What they have so far is a
collection of interviews from students about their lives on the autism
spectrum. They’ve asked about social alienation, multitasking and their dreams
for the future.
German and Brundrett are part of
that project. They’re both looking forward to seeing their performance come to
life. Part of the excitement is seeing someone like them on stage. Part of it
is allowing other people to see someone like them on a stage and getting a
better idea of what life with autism really is – the good, the bad and the
ugly.
“I’m excited about seeing bits of
myself being put into a play,” Brundrett said.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m excited about
too,” German responded.
“It’s showing despite us having a
disorder, we’re all human. We all have flaws,” Brundrett continued. “There’s no
such thing as normal, as people would say. I hate it when society says there’s
the normal people and then there’s the abnormal people, and they clarify the
abnormal people as people with disabilities, ones who can’t walk, ones who are
blind, ones who can’t hear, ones who have intellectual disabilities or what we
have, autism.
“I’m excited for this, just so
people can see that despite being different, we’re all human.”
“Yeah, we all are,” German echoed.
That is exactly the message the
BurkTech Players want to send.
“We stopped focusing on what it’s
like to have autism and what it’s like to be human and the different challenges
we all face,” Martin said.
For Dotson, he loves the
performances and seeing his students past, present and in some cases future
excel. Mostly, though, he loves what the BurkTech Players means to these young
adults, many of whom feel like they’ve never fit in anywhere before.
“When they come to our Transition Academy, our
goal is to help them have a life,” Dotson said. “We want them to graduate not
just with a job, not just with the ability to shave and shower and cook a meal,
but to actually have a quality of life – to know what their hobbies are, to
have connections in the community, to have people they hang out with and things
to do when they hang out. The BurkTech Players is giving some of our graduates
exactly that. It’s a community to belong to.”
The theatre company will perform its
end-of-semester show at 8 p.m. Monday (Nov. 23) in the lab theatre at Texas
Tech. It is open to the public, and admission is free, though the theatre only
has about 100 seats. The selected plays have some adult content and are not
recommended for young children.
