Ruth Henry was never a big fan of the subject of history. But when she decided to home school her three girls in 2003, she knew avoiding it just wasn’t an option.
“You pick up the textbook, it weighs 40 pounds, you blow off the dust, you open to page 2,423 and by the time you get to the third paragraph everybody starts drooling and their eyes are rolling back in their heads,” Henry, of Loudonville, said. “I just thought, ‘Gee, there’s gotta be a better way to teach this.’”
She didn’t know it at the time, but Henry was about to introduce a new way of learning to dozens of homeschooled kids.
While looking for a more creative way to teach the course, she found a script online for a musical on the westward expansion. The witty storyline and engaging historic characters represented in a funny way — like portraying John Hancock as a graffiti artist – began to illuminate the dull history lesson. Henry was hooked. She bought several scripts from the company Bad Wolf Press, and was more excited than ever to show it to her students.
Henry collaborated with several other homeschooled families to create the first educational drama, “The Incredible Westward Movement.” About 25 students worked on the musical and eventually performed it at the New York State Museum.
Though Henry didn’t keep on homeschooling her own children, the history musicals inspired her to create DRAMAcademics, an educational youth theater, to work with other homeschooled students.
After only a few productions, Henry began writing her own scripts. In 2007, while traveling back and forth on the Thruway to visit her husband’s business in Rochester, Henry said she felt very inspired while continuously passing the Erie Canal. On the drive she would create scenes and characters and record melodies on her cellphone, eventually writing “The Amazing Erie Canal.”
“Once I started going with it, it was not a difficult process. It just required time and focus,” Henry said. “Once I established basically the outline of what were the important facts of the Erie Canal … (I had to) try to figure out how to present them in a memorable way and in a way that children can relate to.”
As part of the course, Henry has her students research their character in the play or a fact from the script and present it to the class. She also tries to localize the plays as much as possible in order to represent the history right around the area, including a script about Thomas Edison that was performed at the Schenectady Museum in 2006.
Now, Henry directs two musicals a year.
“It’s very rewarding to me. There’s something amazing and affirming about seeing what you have in your mind actually manifest onstage. It’s remarkable to see it coming to life,” Henry said.
Henry recently took 10 of her students to Syracuse to perform scenes from “The Amazing Erie Canal” for the BOCES Arts in Education Showcase. After performing, the students and their families toured The Erie Canal Museum.
“I didn’t really care about history. It didn’t grab me. Now I can hardly pass one of those markers on the highway without wanting to stop and read it,” Henry said.
The students of DRAMAcademics will be performing “Ellis Island … The American Dream” by Cheryl Kemeny on Thursday, Nov. 15, at St. Basil’s Russian Orthodox Community Center in Watervliet. For more information on performances or the program, visit www.dramacademics.org.