But to address Don’s point, I don’t think it matters why kids aren’t getting immersed in theatre. The rich kids are too busy, the poor kids have few resources – the end result is the same: the exposure is fleeting at best. And the kind of specializing choices that Dennis talks about over on his blog do happen, but less and less. Being brilliant in one activity doesn’t impress on your college application these days as much as dabbling in 12 different things does. But that’s a whole secondary concern. I think if whatever those fleeting exposures are that kids get to theatre are totally outside of their realm of expectation and experience, that is the way to hook ‘em. Web 2.0, all that kind of thing are going to be crucial to retaining their interest. But getting them hooked in the first place is going to require taking those rare, brief opportunities we can get to bring theatre to them… and making them love what they’re doing so much that they’re willing to commit to it. If the kids are really committed, educators and parents and theatre professionals are going to fight harder to overcome obstacles of resources or time or whatever. Hell, kids might even be BETTER at overcoming all of those obstacles than us because maybe, just maybe, they can still remember that coloring outside the lines is an option.

Two quick thoughts:

1) If your motivation for creating something is primarily to make money (say, starting an educational theater program as a part of your company) then that’s exactly what it will be and pretty much nothing more. I agree that the focus should be immersion – get ‘em young and enthusiastic before life has told them how limited they are and how unreasonable a life in the arts will be.

2) The challenge of *most* Primary and Secondary public education systems is not too many extracurriculars (those are for the mostly white, mostly middle class schools) but a dogma that insists that the arts are a waste of time and are only there to create breaks for the teachers of *real* subjects. As much as we imagine most high schools being some sort of version of “The Breakfast Club” the truth is that most don’t resemble that at all – the buildings are crumbling, the books are decades old, there is far more money spent on metal detectors and the removal of spray painted tags than on funding programs that inspire the students to grow.