Practicing What They Preach

One of my children’s teachers once told me that the best advice she ever received about becoming a teacher, was that she not ask her students do to anything she herself was not doing. As a result, she teaches violin and plays in an orchestra. There is something about performance that is different than just taking lessons or teaching.

This story applies equally well to two of the teachers at the Elefante School for The Performing Arts. Both Karen Cantor and Susanna Baddiel practice what they teach.

In addition to teaching Musical Theater classes, Karen recently appeared in A Light in the Piazza at the Cranford Dramatic Club. Karen played Franca Naccarelli, a woman who does not speak English, only Italian. As the mother of the young man who falls in love, Karen portrayed a woman who loved life, her son, and who knew how to behave within the norms and constraints of an Italian family in 1953. Her accent was flawless, her musical number captivating, and her presence on stage was always felt by the audience.

This week our Shake It up with Shakespeare teacher, Susanna Baddiel, performed as Titania, Queen of the Fairies and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons in the Actors Shakespeare Company production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Jersey City. Susanna was stunning as the lovely queens, believable as the woman who captured a changeling child, and did not want to give him up, and sympathetic as the wife of a man who deceived her into believing she was in love with a donkey. It was a terrific performance!

We are lucky to have great teacher/performers teaching our children every week.

Article contributed by Paula Roper