At Advice To The Players, we like to say that education is the water we swim in. We were founded as a company that brought students and professional actors together to make art, tell stories, and learn from each other, and that mission continues to inform everything we do. That’s what made the company such a natural fit for me. 

When I’m not running a company and producing plays, I work as the school librarian at Newfound Regional High School. In both jobs, my goals are the same: to help the people around me — students, artists, or audience members — discover new passions, develop new skills, and open their minds to new ideas. Like Mary Ward, I’ve faced challenges. Though I’ve never been locked in a convent for heresy, I have dealt with strict laws about what I can or cannot teach, and I have seen students struggle with the uncertainty of not knowing whether their beloved theater programs will still exist in a year. Across the world, teachers and students are dealing with even stricter laws and more instability, and many are still fighting to ensure girls have the same access to education as boys, more than 400 years after Mary Ward founded her Institute.

If the challenges are familiar, the solutions are also familiar. I’ve seen firsthand, over and over — even in this very production! — how empowering it is for a young person to stand onstage, all eyes on them, and use their voice boldly. Arts education is powerful: it gives people the confidence, the courage, and the compassion that they need to go out and change the world. I hope that, just as Anna’s story inspires Mary Ward to keep fighting, our story inspires you to do the same. Once more into the breach!

-Lucy Randall-Tapply