The traveling troupe
At Simmons Middle School, theatre is one of the most popular extracurriculars. Theatre teacher Delle Kincaid said 200 students tried out for last year’s school musical, representing a cross-section of the student body.
Kincaid said Simmons’ Troupe in a Trunk is partly to thank for the wide-ranging interest from kids to perform in the spotlight.
“There’s not a lot of kids not in theatre at this point,” Kincaid said.
Troupe in a Trunk is a group of about 20 middle schoolers who give traveling performances at Hoover’s elementary schools each year. Kincaid has been teaching for 19 years and she moved from Simmons’ sixth-grade science and language arts classrooms to the theater about seven years ago. When she did, she brought along the idea of a traveling performance group from her own childhood.
“I grew up as a kid doing this and remember how impactful for me it was,” she said.
The name comes from the four trunks that the troupe uses to carry their props and create a set at each school. Unlike a traditional stage, the Troupe in a Trunk marks out their stage on the floor and performs with their audience on every side, which Kincaid said challenges the young actors to think about the best way to perform for everyone around them.
“The idea is that we have to keep it simple because we’re traveling, and so we have these four big trunks that we made,” Kincaid said. “It is all audience participation, it is theater in the round. So that is an extremely different process.”
Fairy tales and fables are a frequent choice for the troupe to perform, since they fit with the elementary curriculum and work well in the theater in the round. This year, Kincaid said Troupe in a Trunk will be returning to an original piece she wrote for the very first year’s performance. Her favorite part is watching Simmons students interact with the younger children during audience participation, as they have to improvise while staying in character.
“It’s a really powerful thing, as a kid, to be out there giving back to kids younger than you at the school you came from,” she said.
The troupe started seven years ago with shows just for Gwin Elementary and Green Valley Elementary Kindergarten through second graders. They have now expanded to perform for K-5 classes at Bluff Park, South Shades Crest and Trace Crossings elementary schools, and Kincaid hopes to add Rocky Ridge Elementary this year. Upper elementary students also travel to Simmons to see the spring musical each year.
The kids in the troupe are not only the actors; they also set up the stage, welcome and seat their audience and run the sound for the show.
“It’s their show. They come in and they set it up and they do everything, and I stand and talk with parents,” Kincaid said. “That, every year, will never cease to make me happy.”
For the roughly 20 kids who participate, Kincaid said it takes flexibility from their teachers to make Troupe in a Trunk happen. The students have to keep assignment logs when they’re performing, and they must maintain their grades to stay in the troupe.
“They miss a good chunk of a week of school, and I have to give props to my faculty and my administration because it takes some cooperation from everyone concerned,”Kincaid said. “They see the importance of it, too.”
The result, especially now that the troupe is a few years old, is that students arrive at Simmons in sixth grade having seen “good quality theater since they were in kindergarten.”
It’s part of the reason Berry Middle just started a similar performing group of its own, as well as why spots on the school musical’s cast each year are in such high demand.
“It gets them excited about something they maybe would have never seen before or tried before,” Kincaid said. “By the time they get here, they’re not scared to just do it.”