When I was a minister at a church three years ago, I made the decision to direct a One-Act Play with pre-teens as the performers. I invited any kid who wanted to participate to come try out for the play. Twenty pre-teens signed up. I added more parts to the play so that there were twenty roles, desiring to leave no one out. I did not care if the student had acting experience or had any natural talent. My goal was full participation for any and all interested.

For the first meeting, I stood in front of the group, looking at the young, inexperienced, nervous faces, and thought to myself, "What now?" I chose one student and asked her to come up in front of the group.

"Act like a dog," I instructed. She looked at me like I had gone insane and shook her head. I asked her why she didn't want to do it, and she glanced at the other students. "Scared of what they might think of you?" I asked her. She looked down. I began barking loudly and with great exaggeration, falling to the floor, wagging my bottom, shaking my head, making growling noises, and pretending to lunge at the students. Their reactions were a mixture of laughter and looks of embarrassment for me.

I stood up. "There is a problem that most kids your age have. You are very worried about what other people think of you. You are very worried about cool. Today, we are going to work on getting you over this worry. In order to be able to act in this play, you can't be worried about that. You have to be willing to make a fool of yourself. You have to want people to notice you and look at you and watch you even in your strangest behavior. Right now, we are going to have a contest. Everyone will come out here at the same time and act like a dog. The person who makes the biggest fool out of him or herself will win."

Because it was a contest and because they were all doing it, every student came out onto the floor and began barking. Of course, some of the students lagged behind a little, making sure the others would do it before they did but, within seconds, they were all participating. Soon, they were competing for loudness and silliness, and we all ended the contest in laughter and fun.

For the next several meetings, we worked only on opening ourselves up. We did not go through lines or even look at the script. We worked on getting bolder and bolder, able to speak loud and become new characters.

I did not realize that something even better was happening. By allowing

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