Alanna Reeves, recip­i­ent of an ACSSS Out­stand­ing Adult Stu­dent Award

There isn’t a lot in Alanna Reeves’ back­ground to sug­gest where her pro­fes­sional goals and pas­sions come from. Col­lege after high school wasn’t a given for this Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies award win­ner. The daugh­ter of trucking-company owners—one a high school grad­u­ate, one a high-school dropout—Reeves remem­bers the deci­sion to go or not to go to col­lege as “fully [her] deci­sion.” And since she had been involved in the­ater since the fifth grade and loved per­form­ing, she moved to New York to become an actress a month after high-school graduation.

“The two things that I was most sure of at 18 years old were that I loved the per­form­ing arts, and that I wanted to make a dif­fer­ence in the world,” Reeves says. Indulging the first part was easy; Reeves was for­tu­nate enough to land fairly con­sis­tent act­ing work. It would take the Mis­soula Children’s The­atre (MCT) for Reeves to attain the second.

MCT’s mis­sion is “the devel­op­ment of life skills in chil­dren through par­tic­i­pa­tion in the per­form­ing arts,” and that’s exactly what Reeves saw. She says, “There were kids who became inter­ested in read­ing because they had to learn their scripts, kids who were quiet and unpop­u­lar who blos­somed onstage, kids reach­ing across social barriers …”

“We cast a girl as the Queen of Hearts in one of our show—she was smart and artic­u­late, but very shy. Some­thing told us, ‘she can do this.’ After the show, her mother came up to us cry­ing, say­ing that this year they, as a fam­ily, wanted to work on [the girl’s] self-esteem. She said we did more for that girl’s self-esteem in a week than they had hoped to achieve through­out the school year.”

See­ing par­tic­i­pat­ing in the­ater instill the same grat­i­fi­ca­tion and sense of con­fi­dence in those chil­dren that it had done to her, “I found that I loved teach­ing,” Reeves recalls. Real­iz­ing that she was des­tined for a career in the­ater edu­ca­tion she began look­ing for an under­grad­u­ate pro­gram, and found UW-Madison.

While an under­grad, she worked with the The­atre for Young Audi­ences (TYA) and The­atre for Cul­tural and Social Aware­ness (TCSA) pro­grams, which fur­ther cemented her belief in the­ater as a trans­for­ma­tive medium. The TCSA model uses trained actors work­ing closely with cam­pus and com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions to develop scripts around social issues in their com­mu­nity, says Reeves. “Each per­for­mance is fol­lowed by facil­i­tated ques­tions around the topic at hand and audi­ence mem­bers can express their reac­tions to, and solu­tions for, the scenes they have witnessed.”

Pair­ing the TCSA model with TYA to make the­ater for social change rel­e­vant and avail­able to chil­dren has become Reeves goal as she now pur­sues her MFA. She is already in talks with sev­eral local orga­ni­za­tions about ways her knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence can help them with their outreach.

Reeves’ belief in the­ater as a cat­a­lyst for social aware­ness and change has spilled over into her com­mu­nity and vol­un­teer work as well. She’s worked as a Teach­ing Artist with the Boys and Girls Club, Wau­na­kee Parks and Recre­ation, and Children’s The­atre of Madi­son; and is cur­rently the Resource Guide Writer for K-12 per­for­mances at the Over­ture Cen­ter. She’s par­tic­i­pated in the Big Learn on cam­pus last sum­mer, and vol­un­teered and taught TCSA at an inter­na­tional sum­mer camp in Japan.

Reeves recently received an Out­stand­ing Adult Stu­dent Award from Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies Adult Career and Spe­cial Stu­dent Ser­vices for her all work. As she enters grad­u­ate school, Reeves isn’t sure what her future holds. “I love what I do,” she says. “I might work in advo­cacy and out­reach with an exist­ing the­ater com­pany. Maybe I’ll start my own the­ater com­pany that addresses social jus­tice issues. Maybe I’ll get my PhD.”

Sounds like some­one made the right decision.