Some 40 elementary school students from Montessori Center School’s theater specialist program will perform story scenes, songs and poems from Free To Be You & Me, the book and musical production by actress/author Marlo Thomas.

Free to Be You and Me will be presented for free at 6 p.m. Friday, May 31, in Montessori Center School’s multi-purpose building, 401 N. Fairview Ave., Goleta.

A key message of the performance is that a person’s success is not based on his/her gender. Anyone can achieve anything.

Directed by Montessori Center School’s theater instructor Garrett Blair, a theater artist and educator who studied at Columbia University and worked in New York for 17 years, the show is an ensemble production that encourages values such as individuality, tolerance, and comfort with one’s identity.

Together, the students in grades four through six selected which scenes, stories and songs they will perform — all part of learning group collaboration.

The premise of Blair’s teaching style is embraced in a quote from Constantin Stanislavski, founder of American Realism: “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.”

“I want my students to learn that the collective process — learning to work together and embrace each other’s ideas — is more important than the self and more important than anyone’s personal agenda,” Blair said.

“Whether I’m working with lower elementary students (first through third graders) or upper elementary students (fourth through sixth graders) the goal is the same: to learn actionable skills for collaboration that the students can take into any setting in life.”

Some of these skills include learning humility, letting go, and combining ideas with others.

“The philosophy of ensemble collaboration is: Yes and … ,” Blair said. “In other words, your idea might be great. Now let’s take that and add other people’s ideas as well. The result? The sum of the ideas become greater than any single idea.”

The rules to Blair’s collaborative theater process are:

» Ideas flow freely and evaporate easily. The children learn to freely express and explore their ideas and then let them go.
» Yes not no. While not every idea is used, every child’s ideas are heard with an open mind.
» Active Ears — Look, listen and think. Everyone is taught to pay respectful attention to others.
» One mic at a time. One person at a time gets to speak.

“These rules form the collaborative process,” Blair said. “The children learn to see the gem in each idea.

“Initially, most of the students come shyly into the classroom, hesitant to express their ideas. But shortly, they’re all excitedly sharing and listening to others.

“And from this process, they learn to have a voice, express their ideas, and have confidence in themselves. They also learn what group success is all about — how to support one another and have fun doing it.

“In the end, they all find ownership for some of the ideas in the play.”

There are no scripts for the Free to Be You and Me performance; there is only repetition and rehearsal.

“The children memorize quickly,” Blair said. “If they rehearse a scene a few times, they usually have it memorized.

“Because they are not learning a full musical, the pressure is off to memorize so much. But they do get together outside of rehearsals and that results in their bringing in more ideas for the show.”

The students also take on other roles outside of performing, such as stage manager, lighting operator, set design, and switching out props.

For more information, visit https://mcssb.org/ or contact Montessori Center School, 805-683-9383.

— Jonatha King for Montessori Center School.