Photo credit: Cilento Photography
Erika Navin, Sunset Playhouse's education director
With degrees in theater and psychology, Illinois native Erika Navin moved to Milwaukee for a job in community development. Missing theater, she responded to an audition notice in the Shepherd Express for The Nerd at Wauwatosa Players and was cast. A fellow actor recommended Sunset Playhouse, and in 1999, she started volunteering there as actor and crew member. By 2002 she was on the board. She’d just had her first child when Sunset’s modest School for the Arts lost its education director. With children’s theater freshly on her mind, Navin applied for the position and was hired in 2006. She’s greatly expanded the curriculum and created a professional touring company, bug in a rug, for which she writes and directs.
Theater classes for 2-year-olds?
It’s my favorite thing to do. We have a group of 2- and 3-year-olds, and a group of kids ages 3 to 5. We do storytelling, imagination and drama. I use children’s literature as a catalyst. We do basic warm-ups. We talk about the actor’s tools: their voice, body and imagination. We become the characters. We act out the story. We offer classes all the way through high school.
How did bug in a rug start?
It started with my daughter. I wanted to bring her to the theatre, but you had to tell children to be quiet and sit still. I thought, she’s never going to love theatre if I make her do that! I was reading a book with her one night called Love, Ruby Valentine. We’d read together and act things out, and I thought this would make an adorable play. So, I brought the idea to Sunset’s artistic director and he trusted me. I asked permission from the publisher to write the book into a play, and we opened in January 2009. It was our first bug in a rug production.
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Why that name?
We wanted it to be very casual. Kids come in their pajamas, sit on blankets on the floor. If a 2-year-old wants to run around during the play, that’s fine. We recommend the performances for ages 3 to 8, but we have strollers in the back. Older children come, too.
Who performs?
Sunset hires three professional actors for each show, and Jason Powell composes all our music, at least three original songs for every production.
How many have you written?
Now that we’ve grown, we do three shows each season. One is generally based on a children’s book that we get rights to adapt. One is an original adaptation of a fairy tale or fable, something kids know the characters of. And one is something random that pops into my head.
And the tours?
The show is generally available for two or three months. We do one weekend of public performances at Sunset and around 25 tour performances, mostly at schools and libraries, but also daycare centers and pre-schools. One way we’ve been able to offer it to more MPS students is through grant funding that provides free or reduced cost performances. The Women’s Club of Wisconsin has been our largest supporter. Because of them, we’ve been able to expand our curriculum. We call it bug in a rug jr. One of our instructors goes to a school that’s been chosen for a free performance and teaches a six-week course where the students will perform a tiny version of a similar story. We also have individual supporters.
Super is your show right now. What is it about?
It’s an original story. We did it seven years ago. It came from me having kids in elementary school and dealing with bullying. I worked with the guidance counsellor at my kids’ school to find out what tactics they were trying to give the students. I used the great resources she gave me, like the three steps to deal with a bully, and I came up with three female superheroes.
There’s the one being bullied; her superpower is invisibility because I wanted her to overcome the bully without using her superpower. There’s her arch-nemesis whose superpower is strength. And then, the super-mom; her superpower is speed. Every bug in a rug show has at least three audience participation parts where children volunteer to come onstage. Here, they travel with mom in a boat, on a plane, on skis, super-fast and then super-slow, back and forth. Our next show, Rock ‘n Roll Mole, begins touring in January.
Public performances of Super are Nov. 13-16 at Sunset Playhouse, 700 Wall St., Elm Grove. Call 262-782-443 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com for tickets or tour information.
