Bruce Connelly Enters His 13th Year as Writer and Director

By Anne Frieze

On March 27, the Botelle School’s fourth, fifth and sixth graders put on two performances of their annual drama production, “The Wind in the Willows.” Each year the New York-based actor and director Bruce Connelly writes an original script based on a well-known children’s book for the students. In the weeks before the performance, Connelly comes to Norfolk to help the students make minimal props, costumes and scenery, learn their lines and stage the action.

Now in its 13th year, the program is cosponsored by the Norfolk After School Program and the Battell Arts Foundation.

Connelly brings his experience, warmth and love for theater to his work with the students. Kids who have performed with him often continue to work in theater after leaving Botelle, and his backstage managers and crew are all previous students who, in high school and beyond, return year after year to volunteer for the annual play.

Thalyia Byrne, this year’s backstage manager, first performed with Connelly as a fourth grader in “The Hobbit” and has taken part in the production every year since. Now a high school graduate, she’s helping to paint and construct props and scenery for this year’s play. “I love the kids. . . . I love how Bruce does what he does and I know how I can implement what he conceives for set design.”

With its 56-page script, “Wind in the Willows” is quite a challenge for 9-to-12-year-olds. Some of the actors have to enact a piece of scenery and then transform into a character within seconds. As Liz Allyn, coordinator of the production and a music teacher at Botelle, affirms, “The kids’ imagination is what forms the story.”

At this sophisticated level, the students must concentrate and be self-motivating, attentive and able to work as a team. As Cody Millard, a sixth grader who plays Rat, commented, “It’s pretty exciting to be a main part, but it also means you have to sacrifice a lot of time like learning your lines and making sure you can be good at playing your character. . . . I really want to do my best and make this really successful, so it’s a lot of hard work.” Lydia Beers, a fifth grader, says, “You get to do all these cool new things like hand-to-hand combat in one scene . . . or I have to pretend I’m a tree and then change quickly into a weasel.”

While Connelly pushes the students to do their best, he also ensures that there is plenty of fun and laughter. The perfect balance for successful children’s theater.

Photos by Bruce Frisch.