Today we’d like to introduce you to Doug Valentine, Karen Rose, and Ashley Bouras.
Doug, Karen and Ashley, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Karen: My entire life I have known I was going to be an elementary school teacher. While earning my BSE at the University of Oklahoma, I was hired to teach music and dance at summer camp and spent two years volunteering to direct musicals as part of an outreach program through my service fraternity for kids living in a domestic violence shelter. After I moved to Texas, Doug and I married and found ourselves using our theatrical skills to create tons of educational videos to help our kids at school and online through Teachertube and Schooltube. Many of the videos were musical parodies. What started as the two of us writing and creating videos soon turned into working with students on digital storytelling. By 2008, we were both working at McKillop Elementary in Melissa. Somehow despite the fact that I was the least tech-savvy person known to man, I became extremely passionate about using educational technology. Short films and videos created with our students were shown in numerous film festivals around the US including winning an Honorable Mention at The White House Film Festival. My most successful short film, Hope for Technology won the Shortie Awards in Washington D.C. and then was one of ten short films written by kids selected for the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival- which at the time was the only Oscar Qualifying children’s film festival in the world. One music video we created won a thirty-thousand-dollar technology makeover for our school and a short film created for another contest won another ten thousand dollars worth of equipment. I won many state-level awards for my teaching including Humanities Texas Outstanding Teacher, Association of Texas Professional Educators Elementary Teacher of the Year, and the Texas Computer Educators Association Classroom Teacher of the Year. As the TCEA teacher of the year, I represented Texas in the International Society for Technology Education Educator of the Year contest and was the first Texas educator to win this top teaching award. I served a year on the Texas Education Commissioner’s Teacher Advisory Council and presented at numerous conferences trying to be a voice for public school students and teachers. Unfortunately, I was spending many days away from my classroom, and I quickly discovered my strengths lie in working with students, not in presenting to lawmakers.
Around this same time in 2009, we started our first acting group at McKillop using funds from one of the awards we won. It was the first musical for most of the students and several kids discovered it was their “thing.” It reminded us just how much we loved putting together shows and working with students on a production. At the end of the 2011 school year, we were leaving the Melissa School District, but we didn’t want our newfound theatre kids to lose their “thing.” At the time the only arts program in the Melissa schools other than our elementary musicals was band, and the only nearby youth theatre charged hundreds of dollars in tuition for a show which was unaffordable for many of our kids. We took money Doug won by being one of ten nationally recognized librarians after winning the “I Love My Librarian” Award, formed a non-profit theatre group, and decided to see where it took us.
Doug: Karen covered a lot of our history in her comments, but I actually began directing in 1986 when I took over a recreational theatre program in Oklahoma. I spent 16 years directing shows, building sets, painting, collecting props and costumes, and expanding the program to cover elementary through high school ages, kids. To date, I have 32 years of directing and producing experience. To accomplish what needed to be done, 60-75 hour work weeks were not uncommon. Basically, I grew up with a lot of the kids in the group and learned a lot that served me well over the years. In my time on Oklahoma, I directed over 130 plays and musicals, toured more places than I can recall, and ran five sessions of summer camp every year. Hundreds of kids came through the program and I’m proud to say that many of those kids are now successful adults, not only in the performing arts but in a number of professional careers. Among our alumni is a Broadway producer, a Broadway conductor, a Broadway stage manager, a Broadway set designer, numerous college professors, and several high-level professional actors and performers. They still talk about their high school days of being together as a performing group. 20+ years later, they are still friends, keep up with each other, and keep up with our current kids. They send money for our fundraisers and sometimes send special messages of good luck to our casts.
My educational background consists of a BSE from the University of Tulsa and a MLS from the University of Oklahoma. I have also been honored to receive a number of State and National awards including Texas Librarian of the Year, TXLA Librarian of the Year, TCEA Special Areas Educator of the Year in Texas, ATPE Special Services Educator of the Year, one of the national American Library Association “I Love My Librarian” winners, Wal-Mart area teacher of the year, and the first librarian to be a STAR teacher in Richardson ISD. I have also won over 20 national awards for educational and industrial videos.
To pick up where Karen left off, we started a 501c3 program with the help of some knowledgeable parents and formed “Melissa Youth OnSTAGE.” Our original group had 20 kids, all from Melissa and we performed on the stage in the youth building of Melissa First Baptist church. We were not sure what the demand for the program would be. It was hard work. It was really a second full-time job. Karen and I worked voluntarily to get it going and spent a lot of our own salaries in the first few years. We are still all volunteer today so the money we have can go directly towards first-class productions for the kids. We performed several seasons on the tiny youth stage. Over time we added kids from McKinney and Anna and became known simply as “MYO.” Eventually, we outgrew the space in Melissa and thanks to some help and connections, we were able to move operations to McKinney when it became obvious that was where the main interest in performing was. This last year we have changed our name to McKinney Youth onstage. The STAGE stands for Students Theatre Arts Group Experience, and we have over 100 kids that are fairly active participants in the program. We now draw from McKinney, Frisco, Melissa, Anna, Prosper, Princeton, Richardson, and as far away as Ft. Worth and Forney. This mix of kids has been what has made us strong. Our season now consists of seven shows. We produce not only musicals but straight plays, variety shows, tours, and camps. We will have over 40 mainstage shows to our credit by the end of this season. We have done all this without having a physical “home.” We hold most of our rehearsals at the McKinney Performing Arts Center and Church Street Auditorium and do our shows at the Church Street Auditorium and the Cox Playhouse in Plano. We have been the recipient of a grant from the McKinney Arts Commission that has been invaluable to our growth. A couple of years ago we talked Ashley Bouras into joining us as our music director. We are constantly tweaking the way we do things to try and give everyone a fair chance to grow and improve. We aim to provide a safe and professional atmosphere for students to grow together as performers, but more importantly, as people. Working together to do a fantastic show is our reward. Seeing kids grow and learn life skills together as a group is our goal. Our staff has well over 60 years of experience and this group is built on the shoulders of other groups I have personally directed. The long-range success of our students is what we are after and although it’s so hard to see sometimes at the moment, we know it to be true. We continuously work to be a catalyst for growth. We are always looking for those interested in joining us and becoming a part of something bigger than themselves.
Ashley: After graduating from University of North Texas with a degree in Music Education and earning my Music K-12 certification, I started teaching general music at Jess Harben Elementary in 2013. It was there that I met Doug and Karen, two members of the staff that I bonded with quickly. About three years later, Doug started inviting me to see their shows and check out rehearsals, and I kept saying I was too busy. (I was!) When I finally got out to see a show (CATS), I went up to them both after the show and said “I’m in. What’s next?” I started with them in 2017 with Beauty and the Beast and have music directed 14 shows since then.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Karen: There have been so many challenges and obstacles to overcome. Every show is full of stories, but I will try to focus on the big picture. The biggest obstacle has been not having our own dedicated space. In the early days in Melissa, when we were performing at the Church, we would drive up from Plano in a rented Home Depot truck to Melissa and unload everything into the very undersized downstairs storage area. Then drive back to Plano to return the truck (hopefully within the 90 minutes) and drive back up to Melissa (hopefully arriving about the time they finished services) and move everything upstairs and start assembling the set. We would hold dress rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday night, then pack up all the costumes and props and take the entire set down after rehearsal Tuesday Night and move it back downstairs, then we would drive up at ten o’clock on Wednesday night after church services and start putting the whole set back up for the Thursday night dress and weekend of shows at about eleven pm. We would get home well after midnight and head to school the next day and rehearsal that next night. It was beyond exhausting and I have no idea how did it so many times. Things are still extremely challenging at times, but when I am loading up and carrying hundreds of pounds of platforms and scaffolding into the U-Haul every four to six weeks, I try to remind myself that now we get to move in during daylight hours and usually have help from a great group of parents. We have ironed out so many of our earlier problems.
Doug: It would be nice just to be able to direct a show and all that goes with that, but we are faced with daily challenges most people don’t see. I now have to schedule 2-3 rehearsal spaces at a time for multiple shows and rehearsals. I have to schedule performances a year in advance. There is a ton of work that goes on behind the scenes on the administrative side. Normally our shows rehearse three times a week and it can be very challenging to find the space for the right time period. We deal with teens and younger which has its own unique set of challenges. The majority of our kids are excellent students as well which means they have testing, homework, etc…and I try to be mindful of that as I schedule. It’s a real challenge to try and schedule around so many schools, grades, and activities.
Not having a permanent space always means that we have a car full of equipment as we go from place to place. We also have to collect costumes and props, build our sets at home in pieces, and then transport them to the theatre during dress rehearsal where everything is organized and assembled. However, through good planning and a lot of help, we manage to pull it all together each and every time for our shows and for our kids.
Ashley: Less than a year into my time with MYO, I learned that my husband and I were expecting our first baby. Doug and Karen were one of the first people I told because I wanted to be sure we had a plan in place to make sure the season went on as planned with little interruption, and to make it clear that I was not going anywhere. We closed Chorus Line HS on March 31st and I gave birth to Evelyn on April 17th. By mid-May, I was teaching music for our final show, Runaways, and then conducted our first live band at the beginning of June. It was hard, but I had the support I needed in Doug, Karen, and my husband, Basil.
McKinney Youth onSTAGE or MYO – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
What do we do:
Karen: We provide students who want to perform with a safe, affordable, educational, and fun atmosphere where they can grow not only as performers but as people. We create a place where students can meet others with the same passions from other grade levels, schools, and backgrounds. A place that operates as a cohesive group, not a “show to show” organization, and a place that is for both those that want to perform as a career and those that just love doing it as an activity. We also provide a place that sets high expectations for all students.
Doug: Our mission is to “provide low cost, high quality performing opportunities for students in North Collin County,” but it hardly describes what we do. A lot of kids today need a place where they can experience both success and failure in an understanding and supportive atmosphere. MYO doesn’t tell kids how good they are, we let them discover it for themselves. We believe there is a place for everyone and there is always an opportunity for growth if you are willing to work and stick with it. Not everyone will be a star and we try to develop students that can be happy for the success of others in the group as well as being proud of their own successes.
On the practical side what we do is offer students grades 2-12 a season of seven challenging and diverse shows plus other performing opportunities. We are really looking forward to our new season as we are adding additional opportunities for directing and performing on tour as well as bringing the wisdom of some of our alumni to them in workshops. We are extremely proud that we can offer all of these opportunities free of tuition, buying costumes, or selling a minimum number of tickets to be involved. We firmly believe that money should never be a reason that a student cannot be involved in performing.
Ashley: From a music perspective, I feel like our commitment to perform the music as intended sets us apart. We don’t make cuts, we rarely adjust keys, and we do our best to sing every note on the page. When we do a show, we do it as the writers intended and don’t simplify things simply because they are young. High expectations lead to great things from the kids.
What do you specialize in:
Karen: We specialize in giving students who love performing opportunities a place to share their passion with students from around the area. Our kids come from all over North Texas and our high schoolers must do a minimum of two shows a year to keep their spot in the group. (Though most of our students do several shows and projects throughout the year.) We are not necessarily focused on developing professional performers. We are focused on developing successful people. Our kids work hard and are expected to be continually growing. In the educational world, we call it a “growth mindset” or grit. All three of us have a lot of grit and determination to do our best in everything and we do, and we expect nothing less from any of our kids. We are all three very driven people and as a general rule, our kids are too.
Doug: Of course, doing the best possible shows is of prime importance. We also place a premium on life experiences and building relationships in a cohesive group. All of our volunteers are either educational professionals or have worked in the field, so we believe that we are well qualified to teach and lead students. Just as in school, it’s not always an easy job but we feel like our methods are well worth the long-range outcome. Thirty years of students with a long list of degrees from top colleges and over thirty-five Broadway credits among them have proven that. I like to think we specialize in finding students that are in need of something. Whether it’s being a part of a group, needing performing experience, or college readiness, we have the ability to help them reach their goals.
What are we known for:
Karen: We are known for having a staff comprised completely of qualified volunteers. No one at MYO receives a penny for the work they do during the season. Every dollar given to our program goes directly towards the productions. In addition to the three of us, we have a dedicated group of volunteers that help with costumes, house management, and assembling the sets. We do not, however, require anyone to volunteer. Everyone at MYO is there because they want to be. We are also known for winning eleven Dallas Broadway.com awards this year which is more than any other theatre company in the area youth or adult. Among the awards was both the Best Overall Youth Play and Best Overall Youth Musical as well as Best Direction, Best Music Direction, Best Costumes, and Best Choreography.
Doug: I think we are known for doing high-quality shows without overcharging families to participate. I think we are also known for being open to kids of all ages no matter what their ability level or challenges may be. Our kids are not all the same, we have a wide spectrum of abilities, interests, and backgrounds and I think that leads them to a greater understanding and respect for other kids they might associate with at school.
What sets us apart:
Karen: We do not follow the popular pay to play model that many youth theatres employ. We feel that adult community theatre companies don’t charge their performer’s tuition, make them sell a certain number of tickets, or require them to pay for their own costumes, so why should kids be treated any differently? The only thing our students pay is a flat $25 show fee for every production. They don’t have to sell any tickets or provide any costumes or props. Parents are not expected to volunteer. We are able to do a lot with a little. We will go to the ends of the earth to find materials that fit our budget and still look good. Our customer, Valerie Enoch, is incredibly gifted at creating amazing things on a budget and many of our costumes start out as thrift store curtains and tablecloths. The layers and layers of paint on our flats and platforms are like a memory book. We have been lucky to make connections with other theatre educators and borrow some items. We reuse as much as we can and are very creative about using unconventional items to make things.
Doug: One of the things that set us apart is that we strongly believe that being a part of a group greatly enhances the experience for our students. We encourage them to stick with us and do as many shows as possible with us during the season. This is the model used in high school and college performing groups. We encourage students to participate in school theatre as well, but we work hard to ensure we keep a core group of performers. It’s extremely rewarding to watch our kids progress and grow over the course of a season. I think that and the fact that every show for us is equal as far as being special. There are no “big shows” and “little shows,” we work just as hard for every show. We also don’t double-cast roles. We believe that double casting only brings unwanted and unfair comparisons between performers and casts and limits the amount of rehearsal time that each person can have in a role. I know many theatre groups follow the practice, but we feel like if you earn the role, you deserve the entire attention for it.
What are you most proud of:
Karen: That no matter the obstacles, we have always made it work. It has never been easy, but it has been worthwhile. The kids have always risen to every challenge, the right volunteers always showed up, and when doors closed, others opened. Earning a grant from the McKinney Arts council was a huge accomplishment. The program has grown from 20 kids on a stage in a church in Melissa to over 100 kids from all over North Texas who are passionate about performing. We have been able to stay true to our missing of providing low-cost, high-quality performance opportunities and not charge tuition and we have been able to build a successful theatre program and still be successful public school educators during the day.
Doug: I think the thing I am most proud of is seeing students go from a small role in one show to a large role in another. It’s so rewarding to see students work on their craft and grow. In this group, you’re not always going to be the lead. The talent is very competitive, and each show has different needs. I’m proud that we are able to affect change in our student’s lives and be the catalyst for them meeting new people and learning about shows and ideas they hadn’t thought about before.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Karen: There is a line written by Stephen Sondheim that is sung by the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods (a show we have done many times including this past fall) That says “Oh if life were made of moments, even now and then a bad one, but if life were made of moments, then you’d never know you had one.” I am proud of our kids. I’m proud when they succeed and proud when they fail and get back up and try again. I’m proud when they grow. It isn’t about any one individual moment for me, it is about how all those thousands of moments come together to form the journey. I am extremely proud of all of my student’s journeys and honored to play a part in their lives.
Doug: I think I have a “proudest moment” every show. I can always find something I am proud of at the end, whether it’s watching a great performance, seeing all the elements come together, or knowing we had to overcome a myriad of difficulties to bring a show to life. There is always something. I’m proud of the way our students balance their school activities, school shows, and our shows. We have some of the best kids in that regard. Not everyone can do it, and I know the ones that do are going to be successful in whatever comes their way.
Ashley: I have so many moments to be proud of, but I think the most important moment for me so far was realizing the growth of a student that started at the same time as I did with Beauty and the Beast. He played the part of Gaston and was struggling vocally. We would work on matching pitch and keeping the beat during choreography rehearsals that he was not called for. His commitment to improve was so inspiring. Two years later, he auditioned for Children of Eden and sang “Let There Be’, which is so challenging! He sang it so musically, with a great sense of time and pitch, that I wept in the back of the room.
Pricing:
- MYO does not charge tuition for any shows. There is a $25 fee to assist in productions.
- MYO charges $185 for camp sessions during the summer. These all day one week sessions include a show.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1905 Walters Drive Plano (Mail only)
306 North Church Street McKinney (performances)
111 North Tennessee McKinney (MPAC rehearsals) - Website: https://myoyouththeatre.wixsite.com/myos
- Phone: 214-422-4166
- Email: myoyouththeatre@gmail.com
- Instagram: @myo_youth_theatre
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MYOYouthTheatre/
Image Credit:
Performance Photos by Doug Valentine, Team photo by Basil Bouras
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