We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kyrsten Cavazos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kyrsten, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?
Sooner, definitely! While I can’t argue that the timing of starting the Mackinac Island Community Children’s Theatre has felt exactly right, I do wish this idea would have sparked a little sooner and been able to grow and provide more of the opportunities it has so far to more of the youth that have grown up in our community. Seeing the joy and excitement in the children I have worked with so far certainly has sparked my own creativity, and I would have loved to share that with more of our community’s members in my years here. We are so lucky to have the participation that we do at this starting point though, and I am so thrilled to grow the program from here.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Growing up, I had been involved with school and community theatre at The Croswell Opera House, Michigan’s Oldest Theater, since I was 8 years old through my high school years. Into college and my adult years, my opportunities to participate in community theatre became more limited, and it fell off my radar as a hobby until the Mackinac Island Community Theatre program was resurrected by a small group of Mackinac Island residents in 2017. While I didn’t take the opportunity to participate in that first show, when I attended as an audience member my love for performing arts and technical theatre was reignited and I dove head first into the program later that year with a small dual role in our holiday season production – my very first time performing on stage. From that point, I was 100% back in the theatre groove and I knew it was going to be MY THING. I had a principal role in our first spring musical, Bye, Bye Birdie, and had a wonderful experience. While I enjoyed performing, a very big part of me really missed the creative elements I had cut my teeth on on the production and technical side of theatre, so I returned the next year to direct The Music Man. I worked with an incredible all-ages company developing that production. While it was ultimately closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, my love for the theatre only grew stronger and we revived that show when we safely could in 2022 and brought in-person theatre back to the year-round Mackinac Island community once again with a stellar performance. My experience working with the brilliant children who were a part of our cast in that production inspired me to find a way to feature them more and more at the forefront of the stage, rather than as extra players merely filling in the gaps onstage, as children’s roles so often are in community theatre productions. While I continued to direct the next holiday production, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with another all-ages cast, I worked with our community theatre committee to develop Mackinac Island Community Children’s Theatre and produce an all-youth production that would feature and highlight the amazing talents of our community’s children, all on their own. In the late-winter of 2022, I directed 8 remarkably talented children, ranging from ages four to 13, in a scaled-down production of Disney’s Mary Poppins Jr. Directing this small group of stars and watching them thrive in the performing arts was an experience that shaped me so much as a director, and each rehearsal I was astonished at the dedication and attention these young ones were giving to the production. I could see them appreciate being given an opportunity to step forward and steal the show rather than fade into the background, and each and every one of them developed more confidence, refined their reading and memorization comprehension, and boosted creativity in storytelling and teamwork. I left every rehearsal and performance beaming with pride at the incredible growth these children showed, and thrilled to see them falling in love with theatre, a love I was so happy to share with them.
My mission with Mackinac Island Community Children’s Theatre is to continue to inspire young folks on Mackinac Island to discover and appreciate theatre and the technical & performing arts, and foster their creativity in sharing stories with their community. Giving the gift of a performance to one another is, in my opinion, one of the greatest things we can do as humans, and I am overjoyed to have the opportunity to help the children in my community find their voice in that regard and give that gift to their friends, family, and loved ones throughout the Mackinac Island community.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
With Mackinac Island Community Children’s Theatre, I have learned to play more, and take things less seriously. A natural personality trait of mine since childhood has been striving to achieve perfection and not make any mistakes; one must always follow the rules and do everything ‘by the book.’ Anyone who has spent time with children in a structured setting can tell you this mindset does not translate well to the learning and creativity process with little ones. In my years working with the youth involved in Mackinac Island Community Theatre, I have learned to let loose a little more and not be afraid to feel or look silly, or make a mistake; it could lead to a brilliant character breakthrough or unlock a new talent a performer didn’t know they wanted to share! Not being afraid to make mistakes has helped our company of young performers get more comfortable sharing with one another, teaching one another, and inspiring one another in ways I never would have been able to see from them if I had stuck with that former way of thinking that everything must always work ONE certain way with no room for error or experimentation. Some of the most fun and creative elements of our productions have come from sessions of brainstorming where there are NO bad ideas, and everyone in the company from onstage to technical to production has an equal voice!
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of working with Mackinac Island Community Children’s Theatre for me is getting to experience the young folks in our community shine in their own right, on their own terms. The children who join our program have chosen to be there, and they’re there all on their own to tell these stories and deliver these performances. The roles they have are theirs to learn and develop on their own, and to see them embrace that as their own individual person is so astounding to me. These children have great support systems around them, helping them thrive in the productions – running lines with them, helping make costumes, practicing choreography at home, listening to soundtracks ad nauseum to learn lyrics, running to and from rehearsals multiple times a week – but at the end of the day, in those rehearsals and performances, it’s just the kids up there. I see the shock and pride in their faces when they finally nail their lines “off-book,” or master their choreography, and that seeing that boost of confidence and self-assuredness in real time is an experience unlike any other. By the end of a production’s run, after our performances, one of my absolute favorite things to hear from the several audience members who will approach me is “I had no idea so-and-so had that in them, they’re always so shy!” or “They look so happy and natural up there; they were born for the stage!” Seeing a child find that confidence inside of themselves and be comfortable sharing it with their community is one of the greatest pleasures I have found as a director.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mackinacartscouncil.org
- Instagram: @kyrstenbeersten
Image Credits
Photo Credit: Alexis Rankin Photography