Tails from the Trails

If you've been through downtown Niwot that last two Sunday afternoons, you aren't imagining things if you've spotted a lion, a tin man, or perhaps even a wicked witch in the vicinity. Turns out we're not in Kansas anymore.

The Spark, a multigenerational performing art community based in Boulder, has been bringing the classic tale of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Niwot. In this socially distanced, interactive Tales on the Trails performance, the audience gets to lace up their shoes, fire up their imagination, and follow The Spark's cast members along the yellow brick road through downtown Niwot.

Program director Mary Beth Ward said that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a natural program choice for several reasons. "A lot of classic tales are journey stories," Ward said. "Journey from a literal perspective of we can walk it and you can walk in the shoes of the character. But also it takes you on a very clear journey of self-discovery."

The program itself involves about 20 minutes of walk time and along the way, the audience is treated to about seven or eight scenes and picks up cast members as they go. These adventure groups leave every 15 minutes for their journey through Oz.

Ward said that the program has been specifically geared toward children aged two to six. For their first show, they saw a great turnout with young children in every group along with adults who also enjoyed the performance.

"Having fun with the experience makes such a difference in the way that not only our performers interact but also in the way the adults with the group interact. There's something about the excitement and joy that a child brings that changes the whole dynamic," she said.

And while the overall moral of the story may go over heads of a majority of two to six year olds, Ward said it still plants an idea. "That's one of the things about classic stories that makes them so dear to our hearts and why we continue to go back to them. There's something that you remember and that little moment that stays with you and plants a seed that grows into a larger idea as you get older."

Ward, who has over 20 years of experience in theatre and program development in arts education and has lived in the Boulder area since 2012, started as program director for The Spark in November 2019 and has helped the community navigate some of the challenges of shifting programming as a result of COVID-19.

The Spark, as a performing arts community, has both a multigenerational theatre company with a mentorship training model and a venue space in Boulder that it rents for artists, community groups, educational pods, and private events.

"We're a newer program so it's exciting for us to continue to share who we are and what we do," Ward said. "Come see something we've done and talk to us while you're there. That's the best way to connect and find out who we are as a community.

"Our goal, in the long run, is to have a touring program of youth performing for youth. In general we're a multi-generational theatre which means we have performers as young as they'll come. And then we have professional performers or community performers that are adult ages that perform in the cast with them."

And while this concept of multigenerational theatre is not new, Ward said that the way The Spark handles it is very different. "We try to respect where students are. If they are completely able to hold an adult role, we have no trouble casting them in that role. So it's a little bit of a different structure than most theatre companies are using right now."

"One of the things that we really wanted to do is have a program where we could do outreach and meet students where they are. It's really amazing as a student to see another student doing something that looks like a professional experience. It helps you understand that you don't have limits, and when you see somebody like you doing something, it tells you that you can get up and do something," said Ward.

The Tales on the Trails series was spawned as a reaction to not being able to go to schools or do the type of touring experience that The Spark was originally planning for 2020. With COVID-19, the company was unsure if they would be able to do any indoor shows at all. And so they had to get creative.

"Our immediate response to COVID was to put programming online, and we made a really quick and smooth transition, but what we found was that students really need a little more direct interaction. At that point, we'd all been in our houses for several months, and people were really missing some form of safe human connection," Ward said.

The Spark hosted their first Tales on the Trails collaboration at the beginning of the summer with Alice in Wonderland which they put on at Chautauqua.

"We just got really great feedback. It was fun to see really, really young audience members-two to six years old being the target audience-being out there playing and feeling like they could engage with our student performers," said Ward

Fresh off the success of Alice in Wonderland, The Spark began looking for locations for a second program.

"When we wanted to continue the series, we reached out to Niwot. This is the perfect little area for something that involves walking around, and the town already does family-based activities which really tied into what we were already doing," said Ward.

Though they did explore other locations for the performance, in the end, they settled on downtown Niwot, working with the Niwot Business Association to figure out the logistics of the performance. Ward said they also felt very supported by the community in terms of having space to figure out what the performance might grow into as well as in helping The Spark spread the word about the Tales on the Trails.

"Niwot was really excited about having us there and that was really important to us," she said. "We're taking students on a journey where they find something about themselves for themselves. For the Wizard of Oz, it's a story about finding your own spark. And that's really what our entire mission is about," Ward said.

The Spark has a final afternoon of performances scheduled for Friday, October 16 from 5-7 p.m. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit http://www.thesparkcreates.org/upcoming-events