By Madeline Orton
NJ Today

On a Saturday afternoon, in performance spaces filled with kids and teens, hands that might otherwise be occupied by cell phones were filled with paint brushes, puppets and swords — all part of New Jersey Theatre Alliance’s Stages Festival.

Asha’ Decosey, a high school student from Newark, was excited to try her hand at stage combat. “It’s fun and it makes you want to do it more and see what you can do and what you can’t, so I would like to do it more,” she said.

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“They — I’m sure, sitting in the audience — have visualized and fantasized: ‘What if I was up there? How would I do this scene?’ So they might take an improv class,” explained John McEwen, executive director of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance. “Or, ‘How would I choreograph that fight scene?’ So they might take a stage combat.”
 
The festival’s free and discounted pricing provides increased access to theater across the state throughout the month of March. Over its 16-year existence, the festival has grown from a week-long, family-oriented event, to a full month of workshops, performances and programs for adults and kids alike.
 
“We use the Stages Festival as an opportunity to break down all barriers — economic, geographic — and welcome everybody,” said McEwen.
 
Actors Shakespeare Company, a Stages Festival participant for the last several years, sees their stage combat workshop as one of those barrier breakers.
 
Colin Ryan, artistic director and interim education director at Actors Shakespeare Company, taught the stage combat workshop, including hand-to-hand and sword fighting. “It’s a great hook. Everybody loves it, everyone is interested in it, it’s physical, it involves everyone. Believe it or not, people are more scared of blank verse than of three feet of steel,” he said. “That sword is right there. That is happening right in front of me. It’s a connection that you can’t replicate with anything else and nothing else is quite like it.”
 
Steve Fredericks, founder and executive director of The Growing Stage, a theater company that focuses on young audiences, agrees. “To be able to tell kids: ‘Listen, you’re not only going to be able to do puppetry, but we’re going to turn the lights off and it’s going to be a whole new world where you can use your imagination.’ It’s really cool and it’s really fun,” he said. “They’ll know that the theater is a home for their interests, for their curiosity, that they can create and they can all share in that together and build and create something new.”
 
Ryan sees that impact to be a lasting one. “It’s a craft that involves a lot of listening, a lot of sharing, a lot of teamwork and even if people here don’t go on to pursue it as a career… I think the virtues of the process of theater are virtues that you can apply everywhere else.”
 
For those who do want to pursue theater, like Jacob Gonmiah of Newark, taking a workshop at the festival offers a great opportunity. “It adds to my toolbox — stuff that I can do. It’s great to know more than just acting.”
 
And in New Jersey, there are plenty of opportunities.
 
“Our theaters range from, in geographic reach, Cape May all the way up to Sussex. We’re in 15 of the state’s 21 counties, there’s a professional theater,” said McEwen. “We all have such wonderful stories and theater brings those stories to life in a way that no other art form can do.”
 
The Stages Festival continues through the month of March.

Major funding for NJ Arts is provided by The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the F.M. Kirby Foundation./em>