 I'm Stan Boyle, I am a founding member of Spectrum Theatre and we welcome you back to the neurodiversity matters conference with Spectrum Theatre. Today, at this time, we are having an interview with Jesse Helfering from the Summit School in Montville, Canada. So welcome, Jesse. It's nice to have you. Well, thank you very much, Stan, thank you. Yeah, so we will have, this is being broadcast live on Facebook, so we will open this up for if anyone has any questions to post them on Facebook and we will try to get them out and ask them to Jesse. But first we'd like to have Jesse discuss what the Summit School does, what your programs are in that and then go into questions. Wonderful, yeah. So first of all, I'd like to say just a thanks, Dan to you and Clay and everybody and Anna that I've dealt with so far has been great. And what you guys, the Spectrum Theatre Ensemble we're doing here, I just think it's wonderful because it's one of the main foundations of what we're trying to do also, which is to kind of create connections across Canada, across North America, within organizations that have this sort of similar mandate, which is to use theater to kind of sort of open up the audience's minds, introduce different types of, introduce neurodiversity and all of its wonder and the struggles and everything. So this is great. I'm really, really excited and happy to be a part of it. Thank you. We appreciate that. Wonderful. And so basically at just, Summit School is a school in Montreal. It's a kind of unique school where we have over 650 students. All the students at our school have developmental disabilities. The students range in age from five to 21. The, about 50% of our student population is on the Spectrum. So, that means that 50%, there are other developmental disabilities and there's a big sort of social community of many different individuals with different types of sort of ways of expressing and ways of being. So in that way, it's quite interesting. And there's sort of a different way of structuring education for each of those groups. I started at the school about 12 years ago. My background is in theater and film and English, I have a degree in English literature. So when I came on board, they, you know, we, there was sort of a need right away. I just saw right away that there were students that had the ability to express theatrically that wanted to be on stage, but there was no real program for them. So we just started to develop that program. We had wonderful support from the community. And each year we put on a show or every year and a half and it just grew and grew. All of the shows that I do are original content. So they are created with the students in some capacity. The way that we sort of get content from the students has changed, you know, changes and evolves every time because it's sort of a learning flow. But I just wanted to give a few examples of some of the shows that we've put up. So our first sort of big show that went beyond the school community was called Rachel at Risk. And that was a show that was based on interviews over six months with over 50 different students with developmental disabilities. And I videotaped those interviews and we used that, you know, we talked to them about everything, about, you know, their viewpoint on life, what they wanted the world to know about them, what frustrated them about the world, what frustrated them about their schooling, what, you know, and what were the positives, and, you know, and all of that. And, you know, we got a sense that they really had a lot to express in terms of, you know, ideas about what they wanted to say. This was around 2012 that we did this. And so we, I kind of, I then took all of that. So I'm, you know, a writer and a theatrical person, I took that and I kind of used the transcripts of those interviews to create a play. And so that play, Rachel at Risk, was put on and, you know, it sold out. It was a huge, wonderful reaction. And it was very scary because the first time that I did a show where there was so much memorizing. So these students had a ton to do. And the thing about our school is that the students that come, they all have sort of intellectual impairment. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways of categorizing that by IQ or whatever. A lot of that's, you know, so controversial and meaningless, but the fundamental is they do really struggle with learning. And so a lot of our guys would really not be able to get a regular high school leaving diploma. Some of them never really end up learning how to read. So we have all sorts of levels of intellectual capability. And so putting on a play like that, you know, there were a fair number of people saying, you know, the students may not be able to do that. But, you know, we learned different ways of rehearsing and a different approach to how to memorize and a lot of repetition. And it was just an incredible, you know, wonderful success. And from there, again, it grew. We did another play called Outta Here a couple of years later. And that one was a musical that was about, the basic storyline was five students from our school and the school went downtown Montreal to this outing at a library, at a museum. And five of these students escaped and they kind of had their Ferris Bielder's day off kind of scenario running through the city, doing things they've always wanted to do. But it also gave an opportunity and a fun sort of musical way to look at some of the challenges that they face in regular society, the way that they're sort of misrepresented and with a way often some of their actions and behaviors are misinterpreted. And so it gave us a way to play with that. That was sort of uplifting and fun. And also at the end, very heartfelt and emotional. That play ended up going to the Centaur Theater. So we put it up and then we were asked to go to the center, which one of the biggest theaters here in Montreal. And that was an incredible experience because you've got to imagine these young people who don't get to do a lot of different things. And now they're on one of the biggest stages in Montreal with a packed house of regular theater goers and those theater goers, I know the way the mentality when they arrive is, oh, this is gonna be nice. It's a school play. It's gonna be cute. They were in tears. They were laughed. They were like, one of the said, this is like the best thing I've seen at this theater all year. So we've been able to build and work off of that. And the thing is, it's one of these things. I'm just gonna do a side comment here where I know it's annoying, right? It's annoying that when someone with a disability does something that quote unquote, neurotypical people can do, we're supposed to applaud because that's amazing. And the thing is these guys have talents and abilities that are inside them that are incredible, that have their own unique sort of flavor that we're bringing things to the stage that no one had really ever seen before. So we're not just talking about doing something that is the same as another group or equivalent. We're actually doing something that's opening up a new way and not just a new way of, not just a new way in terms of the content and who the actors are, but a new way of performing, a new way of being on stage and just the movements are different. And on all of that is interesting if it's put into the right context and surrounded by the right sort of setting and concentrated sort of thought by all of the people that are helping to put it up. So before we go to the last questions, I just wanted to say one other show that I wanted to talk about was the one we just recently finished. And it was called Letter to My Disability. And the way this show came about, I'm highlighting this to kind of show you the different ways shows are made at the school. This show, there was this teacher that for 15 years, she sort of had the higher functioning group. I, again, I hate these words and, you know, but that's the kids that were the most academically capable. When they turned around 14, 15, they would have this health class with her and she, one of the modules in the health class was disabilities. And they talked about disabilities that the students themselves had. And in some cases, this was one of the first sort of moments where these students actually began discussing their own disabilities or confronting them. And it was sort of controversial because in some cases the parents had not really talked a lot about those issues with them. Yet all of the kids kind of knew that there was something that was different about them. And so the teacher then asked them to write a letter to their disability and they were able to use whatever words that they wanted, whatever language. And she basically handed me a stack of 40 letters and I just read them and it was like these pure expressions of anger, frustration, of beautiful creative writing, of joy, of joy, of joy, of joy. Of writing, of joy, of hope. It was just in these letters to themselves almost. And I was like, oh my God. So we put up a show that surrounded that which was kind of a narrative about a teacher trying to draw this out of her students. But the letters that we used in the show were real letters written by the students. And again, that one was picked up and put on another huge stage here, the Segal Center and again sold out performances and a lot of success and a lot of desire for people to, hey, can you put this show up again and it's hard because it's to school. But so that's sort of where we're at. And now we're sort of a bit, as everybody else is in the theater community, a bit derailed here because of COVID and the future of what performance might mean over the next two years. So we haven't really started wrapping our head around that but so that's kind of where we're at. And the school, the whole time, this is done from a school that has just supported us and every step of the way they've helped us to realize these goals. And not all our goals are academic goals. And that's been the wonderful thing is that it's really seen as sort of a self-confidence building but also community building sort of, lots of different benefits to the program that might just kind of go beyond your straight up reading, writing and arithmetic. So I'm just always happy and thankful to Summit School for allowing us the program like this to exist and grow and evolve. But I think that's kind of my intro to what we do. Thank you. Let me just say personally, as a member of Spectrum Theater Ensemble, your experiences are, you know, the background of your experience is different but you have said so many of the same things we've discovered as a theater company here at Rhode Island. I mean, that's- That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the reasons I wanted, because I've also, the thing, it goes both ways a bit then because even here in Montreal, I'm looking for others who have done this, you know, and I haven't seen it. And one of the things too is that we've, throughout the evolution of these students that come through the project, then they leave. And so I'm trying to find ways to support them as they leave and go into the community and to create theater on their own and start writing their own theater. Because when I get them, they're, you know, 13, 14, 15. So not really at the stage where they're gonna, you know, get out there and be independent. So you gotta foster that. And at first these kids, when they start, some of them are, they're angry that they have sort of something that's different than the others or whatever, but a lot of them by the time they leave and they're in 18, 19, 20, they now feel like they're advocates. They feel like they've processed that experience. They've been supported during that transition within themselves of understanding who they are. We've really tried to help them reach their own, you know, absolute certainty that they have value. And in fact, their value is in some ways, I'm not gonna be comparative, but more significant because they are at the forefront of a new change and hopefully changing the way people see a whole group of people. And, you know, one of my students, Claudio Tamburri, he wrote a one-man show that last summer I directed for him. He wrote it, you know, I just directed him. He was the one-at-man performer. He went to the Montreal Thin Tringe, the Toronto Fringe, had all sorts of support. And so that's a wonderful story of like, so I guess where you guys are at and some of these companies, you're out there producing, you are really taking control of your destiny. I'm sort of at the stage where these young people are sort of developing. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm, again, I'm going to reiterate that if anyone has any questions, please post them to Facebook Live and we'll try to get those out. But I have a few questions I had come up with and honestly, you've already kind of gone into a little bit of some of them in minor detail, but I'm gonna, so I'm going to start with, obviously you mentioned how you have students of many varying levels of ability. So how do you go about engaging everyone together with so many different varying abilities? How do you, how do you get them to mold into a cohesive group? Yeah. That's a great question. I'm really glad you asked it. We, I think, and I think part of that starts before I even interact with them. It starts at the level of the school itself and what the school is. So the kids are not in classrooms based on diagnosis. They're in classrooms based on their, you kind of look at, I mean, let's say you wanted to use age, you kind of look at age in three categories. You look at their biological age. You look at their, maybe their emotional level and then you look at their sort of social levels. And so those are the things that will place them into classes. So it's not just a strict grading and in a class there might be kids of different biological ages. So that mixing is already done at the school. So they are part of a larger social environment where they, and nobody's going around as a student thinking about diagnosis. It's just human being to human being. But the one thing I wanted to mention was, and being a director of actors and I've done shows that are all quote unquote, neurotypical and there's not a huge difference. Like, I don't look at it like, okay, now I'm gonna do the play with the autistic students and I have to have a different mind. No, it's the same approach. But the big thing that's different I find is as you're saying, it's the point of engagement for theater, okay? Because a theater kid that's neurotypical, they're expressive, they're engaging, they might be performative. There's so many incredible actors on the spectrum that day to day aren't like that. They might be quiet, they might not be expressive but then you have to see them on the stage and when you put them in that environment, tons of stuff changes. I had one student, his name was Gabriel and he was like, you know, serious, relatively serious day to day. If you didn't give him the time of day and you saw him walking down the hall, he was the funniest guy you've ever, I mean, and he would improv on the stage. He would just roll with it and riff and his mom after the show because she would have everybody, the audience and stitches. His mom after the show said, I never knew Gabriel was funny. And I'm like, I never, I could never, you know, that was, and so there's where you see, we all have this other persona that comes out when we're on the stage. We all do, but I find like trying to figure out who will be good on stage, that's the thing that's a little different. That's the thing where I think communities in general and people in general have to open up their audition process and make it more respectful of differences. They have to not expect everybody to come in and blow them away and feel okay about standing in a waiting room with a hundred other people. There has to be different ways of doing that part of the process because if you don't change that, if you don't open your mind up to just that first introduction, you're not gonna find these incredible individuals, you know? So that's sort of one of the differences I would say. But yeah. So we have a question from Facebook Live. So the question goes, could you speak to the challenges, how you include non-speaking or minimally speaking students and give any strategies that might have found useful for that? Yeah. So for our school, again, our school benefits from that sort of that mix of having many different capabilities. So I've had students that are on stage, you know, really non-verbal. We often, what we try to do is pair them or create scenes where they can be with other performers that are or so that we can sort of create environments. And I guess in my mind, I'm also thinking of the students and it's not just non-verbal. So maybe that's where I'm getting a bit, but I'm also thinking of the students that are very lower intellectually. A verbal, yeah. Exactly, where they can still be on stage, but they also, they need to sort of be bonded with someone else who can. And these wonderful, you know, sort of kinships on stage develop and it's a great thing to see. And it kind of speaks to the sort of group support that's happening on the stage as well of people supporting people. So the non, you know, the other thing with non-verbal, it's, you know, because we create all our own content, we're able to create content that would work for those students. So you have to say, okay, I'm gonna put up a scene here where it's, there's not gonna be speaking, you know? There's like in the first play that I did, there was really not much dialogue. A lot of the dialogue was thought bubble dialogue that was sort of narrated by another speaking person, of the people on stage moved. So, you know, that's sort of part of the, part of it. So I guess if you can create scenes that have impact that are non-verbal, I think that's the key, right? And then so you can create wonderful moments that, that, you know, there's still a lot that can be done on the stage with just presence, with movement, with all of that. So, and that's sort of what we've found is that we'll adjust the scene so that those individuals can be on stage. And then you're seeing, you know, can they remember what to do to their movements and stuff? And that's the intellectual level. But yeah, for kids that are non-verbal, and with a higher intellect, there's a lot of opportunity as long as you, the facilitators, or whoever is creating that piece recognizes that. Right. So we have about five minutes left, a little bit less now. So I have two more questions. One that I came up with and one that I was kind of thinking of, but that had been also asked on Facebook. So we're going to kind of ask them together, what does the future hold for the Summit School and your program within it? What do you hope to be doing? And the other question being, how could people contact you and or the Summit School if they want to become involved in your program? Okay, so I was speaking with Clay earlier in terms of, you know, Summit School, we have a website, it's changing soon. It's www.Summit-School.com. So you start with that, but I'm also going to be providing to the Spectrum Theater Ensemble all of my contact information and other ways of engagement. We have some documentaries and film things that we can kind of do engagement with. So I think that's where I'll leave that. And Dan and Clay, obviously, if people reach out to you guys wanting to know more, we'll try to create that bridge of communication. So that would be the first thing. Second thing, the future, that is a, you know, that's it, my idea for the future of the program has changed. We had a show planned for next February. That might not happen now. The thing is I have also, I also produce film also. So I think that is where I'm going to kind of spend my, my next project will probably be a film project with the students, because then we can deal with social distancing. We can deal with, you know, the dissemination of that film doesn't have to be in an auditorium. It could be on people's computers at home. So- You can do something like what we're doing with Zoom. Absolutely. And I'm getting a lot of inspiration from this. You guys are like, this is the, I've done Zoom with this, your technical stuff is like the highest I've seen, man. You guys are pros. So I got to go learn all this stuff now so I can do it. So, you know, but beyond that, like forgetting about COVID and forgetting about, you know, what we're going through now, I think the key for me was just to continue to find interesting stories that will resonate with our student performers and will resonate with audiences to continue to kind of build what we're doing. We're all about original stuff. I just, I love it when people do plays that have already been written, but I just have this feeling that the voice, you know, it's so interesting when everything's operating from the students to the message to everything. It's all new. It's all coming from this sort of unique perspective. That's sort of what excites an interest us over here. So yeah, that's the future for us. Okay. Thank you very much. Wow, Dan, thank you so much. See you. Yeah, so I'd like to thank you very much. So we're definitely looking forward to collaborating with you in the future. And with the program, the summer school, we're gonna be cutting out for about five minutes while we get ready for our next panel, which again, you'll see me again. So thank you, everybody. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you, everybody. Awesome. Thank you so much, Spectrum Theater Ensemble. Thank you, Dan. And just, it was great being here.