How I met my mummy

I rarely see my own plays. This year, I expect to get around 200 productions, but I'll only see two or three of them. So when it does happen, it's special.

This week, my wife and I are visiting our daughter Ashley, who lives in Tucson, so I took a side trip to see a production of How I Met Your Mummy at the American Leadership Academy, a charter school in Queen Creek, a suburb of Phoenix. As Executive Director Bill Guttery told me, it's a hugely successful school, having expanded from just one campus and a hundred-some students in 2009 to eight campuses and thousands of students today.

The drama program is no afterthought here. The auditorium is state-of-the-art and theatre director Leslie Infalt is highly experienced, knowledgeable and fully committed to her students.

This was the first time I had seen this particular play, and after the show, one of the actors asked me if they had lived up to my expectations. I told her the truth. They had surpassed them.

The play has one of my simplest sets, but the stage crew, led by construction teacher Bill Pollard, made the most of it, employing a few elegantly designed pieces to capture the creepy atmosphere of an after-hours museum.

The cast was just as fantastic. The audience was small (the school's football team was playing that night), but the actors really put their hearts into their performances--and got a lot of well-deserved laughs along the way.

After the show, I spent some time signing autographs and talking to the students. Bill also showed me how he built the sarcophagus and the oversized lock used to fasten the sarcophagus (I wish I'd seen it before I'd written the production notes for the script!).

Visits like this always remind me what theatre is about. Sure, it's partly about the art. And it's partly about the entertainment. And it's partly about the skills that are learned as a result.

But more than anything else, theatre is about people. It's about learning to work with a team of like-minded artists to create something new--and discovering something about ourselves in the process.

I'd like to give a great big thanks to everyone at ALA. You really made me feel welcome.

And a special thanks to Assistant Director of Academics Raleigh Jones, who sent me the photos shown here plus a whole lot more. Believe me when I say I'll always treasure them.