We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Karen Rolston. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Karen below.

Karen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

Are you happier as a creative? That would be a definite YES…..I cannot imagine having any other kind of a job.

Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? No, I really don’t. I was raised in a creative environment, so it was just naturally a part of my life.

Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions? I will say, when I retired from the theatre almost a year ago now, I knew I had to do something to keep my creative juices flowing, that is when I knew that revisiting my music on a personal level and deciding that I wanted to learn to draw had to happen. It was a great choice as it has been so rewarding for me and it has kept me from feeling like I lost something. I now know that it doesn’t matter what kind of art I do, I just need to make sure it is always a part of my life.

FOR YOU, WHAT’S THE MOST REWARDING ASPECT OF BEING AN ARTIST OR CREATIVE?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is watching kids grow and mature. Seeing shy kids become leaders, kids that feel they are different or don’t fit finding many life-long friends. Working with young people all my life, whether teaching music or theatre or just life lessons has always made me smile, made me feel like I can make a difference in their lives, if only in a small way.

I’ve had kids call me, text me and email me to thank me for the lessons they learned while working with me. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, scientists – no matter what path they chose to pursue in their lives, they remembered: Listen to each other. They remembered: You are not the only person in the room. They remembered: Cooperation and working as a team will get you a better result. They remembered: How art makes a person feel good and fulfilled. They remembered: You can do anything you put your mind to. They remembered: I will always strive to be the best that I can be.

I got an email one day from a young woman who had been in several shows when she was in junior high school. She said she was sitting in a café in New York City having a coffee as she waited for it to be time for her to go to her first rehearsal for a Broadway play. She thanked me for the experience she got at the theatre, saying: “You gave us the tools to be whatever we wanted to be. You expected that we would give our best and you never took anything less. I just wanted to thank you for that.” I smiled, I cried, and I was grateful that she had reached out to me. Every day of my life working with kids has been a joy. And I smile, when the light bulb comes on bright in a child’s mind, and they say, “Oh, I get it!” and I know that they have accomplished something, and they realized it was their hard work that made the light bulb shine.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Karen Rolston, who is she? I grew up surrounded by music as my father was a university music professor and band director. He started a music camp at the International Peace Gardens and that is where I grew up every summer, playing my flute, singing in the choir, acting in musical theatre plays and being amazed by the young artists of every kind that came to camp and the terrific instructors who spent their summer teaching kids to love the arts. I went to school for two years on a music scholarship but was a foreign language major. My studies were abruptly interrupted by marriage and kids. When I returned to school, I knew that I would have to change my major, so I studied music and theatre. It was one of the best choices I made in my life. I became a music & theatre teacher in elementary and junior high schools, I taught music at Arizona State University and theatre at Chandler Gilbert Community College. I realized that I loved teaching and especially loved working with young people, they were always my inspiration for all the things I accomplished.

In 1997 my life was forever changed when I met a group of civic-minded people who wanted to start a theatre for kids but had no experience in theatre or any contacts in the theatre world in our community. I worked with them on their first production, directing the show. It was quite successful, and they asked me to teach an acting workshop. I was asked to come on the board to help them locate other artists in the area to work with the theatre, which I did. After two years, with two shows and four workshops the second year, I was asked if I would be the artistic director. Not exactly sure what that entailed, I said “Sure”, and I never looked back. We were all volunteers, but it soon became apparent that growing the theatre was something I really wanted to do. I saw a real need in the community for a good children’s theatre. I wrote grants for funding and began to make plans for what the theatre should look like. We needed a place to rehearse, hold workshops and other activities. One of the board members owned a preschool, so on Saturdays and in the evenings, we were able to use that facility free of charge. We needed a place to perform, and since I had worked in the Mesa Public Schools and knew many people there, we contracted with them to hold production at one of the junior high schools.

The theatre really took off, but now we needed a real location. A board member, who was a real estate agent, stepped up to see about getting us a location. She found one and brokered a great deal that got us a space of our own. In 2005, the state-of-the-art Mesa Arts Center was completed, and we became the resident children’s theatre at the venue. This was huge for us as an organization as we were now able to use the venue’s marketing, and we grew some more, adding outreach programs, classes, and camps to our offerings and in 2010 were able to find a bigger location for our theatre programs. The theatre grew and grew, survived, and even prospered during COVID and is just finishing up its 26th season of operation. It currently has: weekly classes; 4 performance troupes; fall, winter, and spring break camps; 4 summer camps; playwriting contest; student play writing festival; annual cabaret; East Valley Kids Got Talent show; Literature Alive literacy program; junior main stage production; and 4 main stage shows at the Mesa Arts Center as a founding resident company. EVCT, as we all call it, is a staple in the east valley of the metropolitan Phoenix area. I retired this past season. I am now pursuing other ways to keep the arts alive and growing in my community.

What sets me apart from others in my field, I believe is that I truly have a love for helping kids find joy in the arts, and making sure the goals I set at the theatre and those I set for myself always include thinking about how these things will help kids in their daily lives, in school, in their future as parents and in the workplace. As the artistic director at EVCT, I always felt it was my job to instill in everyone involved in the organization the joy of the arts and how making it a part of their lives will allow them to always find joy and purpose in what they do. I always felt proud when kids returned years later to me to tell me they are a success in life today because at the theatre they learned how to meet a deadline; set a goal and keep working at it until you finish it; how to work together with all kinds of people; realizing that life is not a solo act but a partnership with many people along the way; and that when you do something to the best of your ability you will always be proud of your accomplishments. I am most proud of seeing kids who are shy or have no self-assurance blossom into self-directed, confident, creative, kind and giving individuals. Theatre does that for kids if you give them the tools to work with.

The most successful tool was to find as many different opportunities and experiences as possible in theatre for kids to be involved with, and that is what I did. We collaborated with Broadway Palms Dinner Theater on Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Having kids from age 8 to 12 years old work with professional actors and directors on a project was amazing to watch. We had prepared them ahead of time and expected their best at all they did at EVCT, so it turned out to be an amazing project. Working with a professional theatre company was an experience none of them will ever forget. Reaching out in our community was also very important to me. One of the most memorable memories was the Veteran’s Parade, with all the kids dressed in costumes of their favorite play or character and banners thanking our Vets. Not only did it raise awareness about the theatre in our community, but the kids learned about sacrifice and service from this experience. I was approached by a playwright/director from New York about having some kids record songs for a musical he was trying to get to Broadway called, The Dead End Kids and needed a demo of the songs. I thought what an amazing opportunity. Not only did the kids get to work with the director, but they recorded six of the songs in a state-of-the-art recording studio, something none of the kids had ever done. During COVID, the kids got to do a read through of the script with actors from New York, then finally a year ago, they became part of an audio recording of the musical. Our next hope is to all be sitting in the front row when it runs on Broadway. Performing Peter and the Wolf with the Mesa Symphony Orchestra was yet another unique experience. Collaborations were many throughout my years at EVCT, including working with the Pima and Yavapai Indian communities and the Arizona Historical Society to create and perform The Desert Smells Like Rain, an original play about the Arizona Indian populations in the 1800-1900’s as a part of the Arizona Centennial Project. The show was performed for junior high students for a week and brought kids into the Mesa Arts Center from all over the metropolitan Phoenix area. In 2005, I was looking for shows to perform as a part of our upcoming season of shows. I was having trouble finding things to do as there were not a lot of good shows for kids to be performed by kids that had large casts. But how was I going to get playwrights to write for kids and plays with large casts. I decided then and there that the Theatre needed to have a playwriting contest and we would give a cash prize for the winning play and more importantly have it performed as a part of our upcoming season. I never imagined it would be so successful. We consistently receive 35-60 plays and musicals each year from all over the world. We would also give the playwrights a small travel stipend so they could come and see their work as a fully staged production. Laura Winters, playwright of Space Mission 5379: Saving Rachel, Nevada had entered our contest in 2019. I liked her play but found it needed some changes to make it a successful production. I sent her a note with some suggestions, and she resubmitted it the next year and was the winning play produced in March of 2020. What a success it has been for the theatre and playwrights. Nine of the original shows we produced over the years have been published. One is being looked at as a book and another as a film.

I believe one of the reasons the work I did was successful is that I diligently looked to find projects and programs that would benefit kids, but also benefit others involved. I felt it was important to make sure the teachers, directors, designers, playwrights, collaborators, and anyone who worked on a project felt proud about their work and knew that they were an important part of it, and that they along with the kids and audiences got something worthwhile from the experience.
I am continuing to work in the community with arts. I am taking the year to renew my personal art, taking some charcoal drawing classes, flute lessons and playing in three flute ensembles, as well as doing some theatre myself. I have been asked to join some arts organizations as a board member in the fall and hope to be able to make a difference in these organizations and my community.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Maybe people are tired of hearing about March 2020, but that had to be the time when I knew if we didn’t do something and do it fast, we would not exist as a theatre the coming year. It certainly shows my resilience and determination to succeed. It was Sunday, and we had just finished up spring break camp at the theatre. I was watching the news and they were talking about all of the school closures due to the pandemic, and we were scheduled to begin our spring classes and resume our junior main stage rehearsals the next day. I thought, maybe we should postpone our classes, so I called a couple of the instructors for input and they thought we should probably do that. We sent emails, texts and made calls telling people we were going to postpone our programs for a week. But the next day after speaking with school personnel, I knew we were in for a couple of months of no theatre. I decided to get a few of our instructors together on Zoom, something new for me, and talk about options. After our meeting it was decided to move all of our classes to online. Two of the instructors were going to handle all of the classes and immediately set out to work on how to present theatre via zoom. Our office manager’s job was to contact all of the parents and see if they would be open to attending the online classes. 80% of them did just that, the others for the most part were willing to take class credit good for summer programs or fall classes, and few of course wanted a refund which we gladly gave. We had a fundraising gala planned for April. We quickly turned it into an online auction, and to our surprise it we extremely successful. I got busy writing grants that suddenly became available, and even got a couple of PPP loans. But as April turned into May and we realized that we had to do something a bit more permanent. Two of our teachers and I worked on creating classes and workshops that worked well on Zoom. We did a couple of radio plays and focused on those kinds of classes that really worked online.
We decided to have a summer camp. Yes, we did. It had a limit of 18 kids. We taped out the room in six foot squared and each square contained a box, Kleenex, trash bag, bottle of water, hand sanitizer and any supplies needed for the camp. When the kids arrived, their temperature was taken, and we gave them a mask to wear for the day. The only other thing they were allowed to bring to camp was a sack lunch in a paper bag. We would provide all the drinks. The kids and instructor had the best time ever.

We even did a zoom performance at the end of the camp with kids wearing clear masks and streamed it live to the parents and friends.
EVCT is a resident company at the Mesa Arts Center and it being a city owned property was very restrictive about what could happen there. Well, nothing did until the fall of 2021. We had the classes and workshops going strong, but kids wanted to perform. So, in the fall of 2020, we started our Zoom productions, we had a parent who worked at a marketing company, and he strung our zoom scene together into a movie. Our office manager was very creative, and she put together all the artwork for the show. I added music and sound effects, and we were off on a new adventure. We sold tickets and streamed the show two or three times. We did six of these during the season. The kids, however, missed the in-person part of theatre. Our next project was to live stream a play made up entirely of monologues. The kids were required to social-distance and wear masks when not on stage. We did a couple of performances, making enough money to pay for the cost of the show. By March of 2021, we held our first hybrid performance, live streaming two original shows written for us with no more than 3 people on stage at a time (our stage was very small), and we have 20 people in person come to the show each evening. That was followed in June by our annual Cabaret, held in person with clear masks and an audience of 45 people socially distant people. Of course, we also steamed it.
The summer of 2021 we felt like we were back to normal as we held our annual summer camp. Yes, we still required clear masks, but I felt we kept the theatre alive and thriving. And in the fall, the arts center opened, and we could once again have performances on the Mesa Arts Center stage. I lead the resilience and the staff and instructors followed. We were not going to give up on providing theatre for kids, not even with a world-wide pandemic. We received numerous grants and contributions during the COVID years, enough funding, that despite our low earned income, we were solvent and still an artistic force in the community.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I believe that would be: if you are going to do something, give it 100% or give it up. Making a difference and creating something worthwhile is hard work. It is never easy. It is time-consuming, and it is sometimes all encompassing, but if you keep at it and give it everything you’ve got, the results will never disappoint you. That has always been my philosophy about life, and that is what has driven my creative journey as well. I knew as a young person that I was excellent at some things and not so good at others. I was always told by my parents, “Do your best”. That is what I try to impart to others, especially young people, and it is the driving force behind all that I do. If you work hard, and give it your all, you will never be a failure. You may not be the best, but you will have done your best; and that is always something to be proud of.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: karolston
• Facebook: Karen Rolston
• Youtube: @karenrolston9491

Image Credits
Jacqueline Phillips – Photo of Karen Rolston