From small beginnings, the annual Oak Heights operetta has grown into a school tradition and a huge production, involving all of the school’s fifth and sixth graders along with many parents and other volunteers.
Sixth-grade teacher Kathy Ives started the tradition 22 years ago after working a year at Oak Heights. She has spent all of that time in the same room with the same grade and still loves it.
In last week’s operetta, “Alice in Wonderland,” Ives had four children whose parents were in her earliest operettas. She calls them her “grand students.”
Organizing the grade school students begins in December with auditions, then the students try out their lines for the first time. Work begins in earnest in January after Christmas break, and volunteers, primarily parents, kick into action making costumes and working on the sets.
An artist in residence, this year Jean Bonifas, works with the students in January, returning later on for a second session with the students and the operetta.
As far as whom to thank, “the kids wanted to know who to thank,” Ives said. They put together a long list of names at the back of her classroom. “It’s a mile long. They’ve been really great about showing their gratitude.”
Among them are Ives’ husband, Chris.
“He holds me together,” she said, and her colleague Jim Hawkins, “he’s just incredibly Makeup takes eight volunteers an hour to prepare for the operetta.
In preparing the operetta, “it helps having taught the same grade for so many years,” Ives said. She knows the curriculum well enough, she can teach it and still focus on the operetta.
“We started out small,” Ives said. “We started out with a 15 minute play.”
The only accompaniment on that operetta was a piano.
“Every year, we just added and added and added until we got carried away,” Ives said.
After 22 years, Ives has costumes for everything from merry men to birds, and those serve as the basis for costuming each operetta each year. Parents will use those costumes and make more, which are added to the collection.
Taking sixth-graders and creating a quality operetta “starts the first day of school,” Ives said. “You just establish a rapport right away. They’re not going to work for you if there’s not the rapport.”
Ives holds high expectations of her students, both academically and behaviorally, she siad. “They have to understand we’re a family in here, so when we put this operetta on, they’re a team.”
During rehearsals, Ives is involved in every detail of the operetta.
“I’ll get up there and go through every person’s lines,” she said. “Or I’ll give it to them and say, ‘This needs to be bigger,’ and tell them to go figure it out.”
After all the work preparing for the operetta is the reward.
“Now is the fun part,” Ives said. “About mid-January, I’m going, ‘Tell me why we do this again.'”
Then the operetta starts coming together, and it starts to get fun.
Ives has done a number of different stories over the years, tweaking, writing and rewriting scripts including Robin Hood, Bambi, Tom Sawyer, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Above the door to her classroom are certificates for each operetta she has completed.
The reason, she said as she gestured around her classroom at her cast is “because of this, these kids. You always get a few that find their niche.”
Some of the students may never find a place in academics or sports but they find it in drama, she said. The operetta gives them the chance to find that out and shine.
As she looked over the cast for the upcoming high school play, Ives proudly pointed out that half that cast came from Oak Heights.
“They find a piece of themselves that they might never find,” Ives said. With so much time into the operetta and teaching, “I love it. I’ve never wanted to go back. I love my age. I’ve always looked at where I am.”
With “grand students” in her class, she loves doing parent-teacher conferences.
“It’s a fun job,” Ives said. “But it’s not a job you do if you don’t love it. I just love everybody joining in and being a part f this.”
The operetta includes all sixth graders who want to participate. All of the fifth graders are used in a choir for the play.
Lighting for the operetta is provided by Majestic Theater. Ken Collins runs the sound. Fourth- and fifth-grade teachers put the sets together.