MOUNT VERNON — A fifth-grade reading competition at Dan Emmett Elementary School might seem like an unlikely start for a career in theater, but for SMJ it was the foundation.
Now based in New York City, SMJ is a playwright, director and educator who works with young artists across the country.
SMJ’s latest play, “Battle of the Books,” brings a piece of that Mount Vernon childhood to the stage at the Columbus Children’s Theatre.
“Battle of the Books” is showing Sept. 25 through Oct. 18 at the Columbus Children’s Theatre.
The play follows two students, Harper and Amelia, locked in an intense rivalry over Mount Vernon Battle of the Books.
“When their reading list literally comes to life and a secret society moves to cancel the competition, the students must fight to keep their world, and their friendships, intact,” CCT’s website writes.
But for SMJ, the story began long before the play reached a Columbus stage. The foundations were built by a childhood shaped in the Mount Vernon theater scene.
Growing up on the stage
SMJ’s connection to theater began in Mount Vernon.
“My first real show was in fifth grade, the school play at Dan Emmett (Elementary),” SMJ said.
By middle school, SMJ was involved with the School for Young Mime Theatre at Kenyon College and later became worked with Mount Vernon Players.
“I grew up in poverty and it was a hard home life,” SMJ said. “A really big escape for me, when I stopped playing sports, was theater and dance.”
It was at MVP that SMJ began to help create productions for young people and found something meaningful within.
“I really enjoyed the scrappy nature of putting something together, not only with friends but with collaborators, and then delivering it to an audience,” SMJ said.
From reality to writing
The roots of “Battle of the Books” go back to SMJ’s fifth-grade classroom at Dan Emmett Elementary, while serving as captain of the Battle of the Books team.
The themes from the books on that year’s reading list still influence SMJ’s work to this day.
“These themes that still pop up in all of my work started because of that list,” SMJ said.
The story of the play focuses on the achingly familiar experience of being a young person attempting to understand and grapple with circumstance.
“(The play is) a commentary on kids fighting actively for control when they have everything going against them at every moment,” SMJ said. “And how they want one thing they can call theirs.”
Giving grief a place onstage
Grief runs through the play and acts as a thread that binds each character and their experiences to each other.
The play explores those experiences alongside friendship, family struggles and the challenges young people face as they try to make sense of the world around them.
For SMJ, writing about those subjects is also a way of processing personal experiences.
“My hope is to make work where I process some of the stuff that happened to me or the people around me and makes people feel a little less alone,” SMJ said.
That goal also presents itself in SMJ’s work as an educator.
SMJ said the job is to ensure students have someone they can look up to, who has a similar experience to their own, to see that there is a possibility and a way forward.
“(Students) want to have a moment where they can identify with something they may be going through,” SMJ said.
A Mount Vernon launchpad
Even as SMJ’s career has developed beyond Knox County, Mount Vernon remains an important part of the story.
“Mount Vernon specifically has the ability to launch so many new theater makers into this world,” SMJ said.
The opportunities and mentors SMJ found growing up helped set the foundation for a career in theater.
Two of those mentors include Joseph Bell and Marty Strauch Bell.
“I owe so much of not just my creative life, but so much of my personal life to them. They really took me in when I needed adults in my life,” SMJ said.
Today, SMJ has taken on a similar role for young artists — serving as executive director for Andy’s Summer Playhouse in Wilton, New Hampshire, while working with young theater professionals.
That work is part of the same mentorship SMJ experienced in Mount Vernon. The hope is to continue beyond the classroom.
In fact, one of SMJ’s long-term goals is to establish a scholarship fund for young people from Mount Vernon and Knox County.
“I just want every kid to know that there’s a possibility to pursue your dreams and that it’s not that crazy,” SMJ said. “It’s hard … however, it’s not crazy to pursue, you can find a way.”
A story about connection
For audiences watching “Battle of the Books,” SMJ hopes the takeaway is something much simpler.
“The thing I would love is if they hug the person that means a lot to them, whether it’s a mentor, a friend, a parent, a sibling,” SMJ said.
The play may center on a reading competition, but for SMJ, its heart is connection to books, friends, family and the people who help you find your way.
