Case senior starts Westside children’s theater for honors project
Elementary school students deliver lines in English and Spanish
November 24, 2004 | For more information: Susan Griffith (216)-368-1004
 Margaret Wuerdeman, a Case Western Reserve University senior, is bringing theater to Buhrer Elementary School on Cleveland’s Westside. In a new children’s theater group, she is teaching 10 children from the school every aspect of the theater—from making costumes to stepping into the stage lights.
The public can witness the fruits of their labor at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, December 7, at Cleveland Public Theater, 6415 Detroit Road, when they perform “The Great Hurricane.”
Wuerdeman has taken fifth graders from the dual Spanish- and English-speaking school through an introduction to theater in which they played imagination and improvisation games, selected a play, designed and made costumes and learned the art of applying makeup. Children will show their parents, friends and the public their play twice—once at the school on December 6 followed by the December 7 performance.
 The Buhrer children have also begun to imagine what it’s like to be a playwright—or a drama critic. Wuerdeman said she chose “The Great Hurricane”—a Barbara Winther play about jungle animals dealing with a bully—because it was one of the best children’s works she found. But, she added, “The children have become the play’s best critics. As they read the play, they noticed what was wrong with it.”
Working with the children, Wuerdeman shortened the play, which as written tells the same story twice. She also replaced a hen (the children said hens don’t live in the jungle) with a monkey, and took out references to feathers and bird-like actions so that the lines would fit the new character.
Because the play has only five roles and Wuerdeman had 10 children who wanted to act, she assigned two children to each part, with one speaking the role in English and other echoing the same lines in Spanish.
When the lights dim at the close of “The Great Hurricane,” Wuerdeman will have completed part of her senior honors project for theater and an independent studies project for Spanish. She will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in the humanities from Case’s College of Arts and Sciences.
The experience with Buhrer’s children has also taken Wuerdeman a step closer to realizing her dream: starting a Shakespeare Children’s Theater in an urban area after she completes graduate school.
Theater as career
Wuerdeman, a dual theater and Spanish major at Case, has gone through a metamorphosis over the past four years—from her early pre-med studies in the sciences to the theater and language programs.
After a summer in the research lab between her first and second years, Wuerdeman came to realize that practical science was not for her. “After staying on campus that summer, I realized that I love science in the classroom but not the lab. I’m glad I went through the experience and learned that I didn’t want to go into the sciences,” she said.
Her realization freed her to concentrate on her growing interest in the theater. “It appeared that everyone else knew that theater was what I wanted to do, but I had to come to terms with where I was going,” said Wuerdeman. Even while a pre-med major, she landed a role in Eldred Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen from Verona.”
Spanish influence
Because Wuerdeman spent most of her youth in Latin America, her other major, Spanish, came naturally to her. When she was 10, her father, an engineer with Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, was transferred to Mexico City for two years and then on to Caracas, Venezuela.
“I remember getting to Mexico City and not speaking Spanish, and then three months later waking up and I was fluent,” said Wuerdeman.
While English was spoken in her schools, “the language on the playground and school bus was Spanish.”
Attending an international school in Venezuela gave Wuerdeman an introduction to the theater. “We had a 600-seat theater with a huge stage, a costume shop and all the stuff. Basically, theater was what I did at the school,” she explained.
She came to Case on a theater and merit scholarship.
Lessons learned
While pre-med and acting were her areas of concentration, her life took another turn during her junior year abroad at the British American Drama Academy (BADA) in London. A planned semester away from Case turned into a year during which she had the opportunity to work alongside the Russian director Irina Brown in BADA’s staging of “The Winter’s Tale.”
She received that honor after she had asked to watch the director work. Wuerdeman wanted to learn how to direct in preparation for a summer internship with the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival last summer, where she prepared elementary- and middle school-aged children at Camp Shakespeare for a production.
During that experience with inner-city children, she learned “every day had a new obstacle.” Children came through the program and left for various reasons, resulting in a continual rebuilding of team spirit for the cast. A parting lesson she learned was to be flexible and “take nothing for granted.”
She has taken that lesson with her to Buhrer and plans to take it to graduate school, where she hopes to get a master’s degree in educational theater.
The Buhrer theater group is one of several projects that Case’s department of modern languages and literatures has undertaken at the school. Case’s Spanish students have worked for a number of years helping Buhrer children write oral histories through a class offered by Jacqueline Nanfito, associate professor of Spanish. Wuerdeman became acquainted with the school while working on a project for Nanfito’s class.
If you are interested in seeing “The Great Hurricane” at Cleveland Public Theater, call 216-754-1916 or email margaret.wuerdeman@case.edu to make a reservation. Seating is limited.
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