Alysa Glenn’s final project a celebration of healing

Laureen F. Guenther
Games Coordinator

 

Alysa Glenn, who played Helen Keller’s mother in Rosebud Theatre’s Miracle Worker, performs her Final Project, June 26-29, culminating four years at Rosebud School of the Arts (RSA).
This show celebrates a personal victory.
“I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life,” Glenn said. “There were years where I believed that I would never ever, ever be able to live a regular life.”
The arts were her escape.
“Playing trumpet, and then trying a community theatre and being in performances,” she said, “really started to bring me back to life in a different way. It started to heal my heart.”
She enrolled in RSA, planning to stay a year – but wanted to quit after her first week. After the first semester, she drove home for Christmas, and “I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror of my car and my eyes were all puffy and I was gaunt and I was just so tired, but there was this sparkle in my eyes.” She told herself, “You did it! You did it!”
With new purpose, she finished the year and began to consider the future, where she’d live and what she’d do.
“Those are things that I never allowed myself to think ahead to before,” she said.
Four years later, she’s still there, and will soon graduate as a Fellow of Rosebud School of the Arts.
“I’ve accomplished things I never thought I could do,” she said. “My whole time here I’ve struggled really, really significantly with depression and anxiety – but I’ve been able to continue through it, whereas before, it would take me out at the knees. I needed to share something about mental illness.” For her Final Project, she couldn’t find the right script – so she had to write it.
“Deciding to do this project with my own story was a huge awareness and a start to acceptance,” she said. It was also scary. She tried to quit, but director Deanne Bertsch and co-creator Conrad Belau wouldn’t let her go.
“They were too invested in me and I love them for that, ” she said.
If I was a Fairy Tale Princess, I Think I’d Be Sleeping Beauty is about Poppy, who “represents my heart and my imagination and my inner child, who’s full of life, full of light,” Glenn said. A shadow character named Doubt “covers the smile on (Poppy’s) heart.”
Poppy is “entertaining and funny without trying,” Glenn said. “It’s like getting a glimpse into watching a child play with her imagination in her room by herself.”
As she rehearses, Glenn celebrates ongoing healing.
“The more that I start to name these things and the more that I accept them into my life … the more compassion I have for myself,” she said. “We’ve all had demons in the dark.”
She hopes we’ll see ourselves in Poppy’s story, and that it moves us toward acceptance of mental health issues.
“If I can touch one person and have them say, ‘Oh, if she can talk about it, I can too,’ then it will be worth it,” she said.
She performs If I were a Fairy Tale Princess, I Think I’d be Sleeping Beauty in Rosebud’s Community Hall, June 26 at 7 p.m., June 28 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. and June 29 at 7 p.m.
E-mail goldenhourtickets@gmail.com for tickets. Tickets are $10.