College theatre teacher and director Jarah Botello instructs her drama class

Behind the Curtain – Interview with Jarah Botello (part 1)

Theatre Avenue interview with Jarah Botello, college drama teacher and director

What a treat talking to Jarah about all things theatre! Here we go, with the first question and answer in the series…

Up to this date, what is your favorite show? A show that you’ve seen or a show that you’ve done?

A favorite one that I’ve done with the kids is ‘High School Musical Jr.’ We had auditions for ‘High School Musical‘ and we had so many people audition that we had to split the cast into an older cast and a younger cast. So we had about 60 little kids in ‘High School Musical Jr.’ and it was so sweet. I think working with the younger age group is really fulfilling for me. There’s so much energy that kids have…and joy. They got to do the whole show on their own. All those kids are junior and seniors in high school now, which is kind of amazing. But they played all the roles, all the lead parts, and got to learn all the dances. And we didn’t really know how it was all going to come together. But they did great!

And another one of my favorites was when I worked with the kids in writing their own show. It was called ‘A Very, Very Extraordinary Christmas.’ That whole process was really beautiful, the process of writing the show and putting it together. Because we divided up the kids into groups and every couple days we got together they developed their character names, a group name, how the storyline worked. So it was really working with the kids from start to finish, developing a show that was really cute and touching. It was very cool.

Question 2 Coming Soon!

Jarah is a director with a community theatre program in rural Alabama, helping children and teens in an impoverished area gain opportunities through local theatre.