Barbara Amberg watches as her students rehearse their play. One girl blows her lines and quickly utters, “Sorry. Sorry.”
Amberg shoots back she may have forgotten a line, but the audience won’t necessarily know it, unless she tells them by apologizing.
“You have to maintain that you’re in that world,” Amberg told the girl, motioning to the stage. “Don’t come out here.”
A 1987 graduate from the school, Amberg is the drama teacher at Green Mountain High, where she and her students are preparing for “The Man Who Came To Dinner.”
Although Amberg was long acknowledged as a special teacher during her six years at Green Mountain, her status was validated Sept. 16 when she received senior high school educator of the year from the Alliance of Colorado Theater.
Amberg generally puts on two shows throughout the year: a fall play and a spring musical.
“People tend to underestimate high school theater,” she said. “I try to make every show as professional as I can with what budget I have, which is no budget.”
Amberg receives no funding from the school, the school district or the state. She finances her productions mostly through ticket sales. She also treats the students to meals of lasagna and tacos during night rehearsals.
“I don’t complain about that,” she said of not being subsidized. “There’s no money in the schools anyway. So there’s other things I would rather have the money go to. We don’t have enough desks.”
As with most impassioned educators, Amberg said the motivation she feels for her work emanates from the kids.
“The kids are the best thing about doing this,” she said. “Over the course of eight weeks, I get to know 27 kids. I get to know them in a way their teachers don’t. I hear their problems, their celebrations, their sad times.”
Shaundra Taylor, an English teacher and Amberg’s assistant in the production, said she admires the work Amberg does.
“What amazes me is that she has a way of making every student feel like they’re the most important person there,” she said. “She can assign the most tedious task and make it feel like a privilege.”
Taylor and others also touted the importance of the drama productions in the lives of the students.
“The theater attracts a pretty diverse group of students,” she said. “You get upperclassmen hanging out with lowerclassmen, outgoing kids hanging out with shy kids, so it breaks down some of the cliques you see in the hallway.”
One example is Jacob Dorn, who has done multiple productions with Amberg. She said when Dorn came to her as a freshman he was too terrified to speak in front of an audience. Now a junior, Dorn plays the animated lead in the play.
“It makes it seem like I have a social life, so that I don’t spend all my time in the basement reading comic books,” Dorn said of the theater. “There’s a real sense of fellowship about it, where everyone’s there for each other.”