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As you drive down Union Street, passing between the historic sites and bustling restaurants of downtown New Bedford and the picturesque suburban landscape of Buttonwood Park, you may miss the innocuous one-story building that houses Stage Artistry Studios, a performing arts center run and founded by Mary Elizabeth Rich.
Adorned with signage imploring passersby to “Sing! Dance! Act!” and posters advertising past and upcoming shows, the studio at 471 Union St. provides a place for young actors of all ages to hone their skills in a safe and welcoming environment.
After a 25-year career as a performing artist that took her from Broadway to national and European tours, Rich founded Stage Artistry Studios to serve as an outlet for musical theater education for New Bedford’s youth, run by trained professionals. Almost six years after establishing the studio, Rich received national recognition for her teaching earlier this year in the form of a Tony nomination for the Excellence in Theatre Education Award.
To be considered for the award, a teacher must have a nomination submitted on their behalf by students who believe their instructor has had a significant impact on them. Sophie DeOliveira, a former student of Rich’s, said upon hearing of her nomination, “I was very happy, but also I wasn’t shocked. Because she’s amazing and she really deserves that recognition. I mean, she’s worked so hard for it.”
DeOliveira says her time working with Rich helped her gain confidence. “It really just helped me be myself, and in high school, I found a group of friends who accept and support me,” she said. “Miss Mary provides a safe and empowering setting, so I feel like anyone who struggles with that can go there and feel supported. She really brings out this performer side of you, and you can use that in your everyday life.”
DeOliveira’s mother, Rita DeOliveira, says Rich’s genuine care for her students set her apart from other instructors. “She doesn’t just teach, she invests in her students and in the community, and it shows,” Rita DeOliveira said.
In addition to classes, Rich also runs a nonprofit arm of Stage Artistry Studios called Share The Art, which provides scholarships for families in need who want to get involved in performing arts. “She is a very selfless person,” Rita DeOliveira said. “If someone can’t afford to do something, she’s like ‘Oh, you’re here, just take this class,’ and she won’t charge any extra for it. That’s how important this is to her.”
In an interview with The Light, Rich discussed her recent Tony nomination, the importance of theater education in building confidence and community, the transition from working as a professional actor and performer to an instructor, and the future of Stage Artistry Studios moving into the fall and beyond.
New Bedford Light: You’ve been at Stage Artistry Studios for five years now, correct?
Mary Elizabeth Rich: We’re going on six coming up in the fall. We opened up right before the pandemic, and we stayed open. That was phenomenal that we were able to do that. My husband runs the tech program, and he kind of set everything up online. I had taught online prior. I had several students who were on national tours that I would work with online, so I kind of knew how to do it, luckily. So it wasn’t like a huge adjustment for us. It was more of an adjustment for the students.
And some of those kids are still with us because they were younger at that point. So we just continued and we did everything with our mask regulations and six feet apart and “so many people in the class” and all that. We did that for a long time. Our first show back, we did “Newsies” and we thought we might have to do it in masks. And then they lifted those restrictions, and we did that successfully. You had to get creative, and you had to just kind of figure things out on the fly.
NBL: Were you aware that your students had nominated you for the Excellence in Theatre Education Award? Did you have any idea the Tony nomination was coming?
MER: No. I received an email from the Tony people and Carnegie Mellon, who sponsor the Excellence in Theatre Education Award. And I was like, what? What is this? It had said [that it was] based upon the submission from students, and it was kind of surreal. I was like, what? What? This is crazy. I mean, I know they love me, but like, they love me that much?
I just have a very special bond with these kids. This place is not just theater. It’s not just learning that skill set. It’s learning a lot about adversity, how to overcome it, and how to build confidence. I always tell them, especially at these teen and tween years, all of a sudden their confidence starts to kind of dive along with their hormones, and everything that’s happening in their lives and the world gets a little harder.
It’s about having outside influence, someone who’s not a parent, because they don’t trust their parents. Their parents are like, “you’re the best,” and they’re like, “yeah, whatever.” But when that confidence is fostered here, incredible things happen. And you know we have such a bond here, and not only just with me, but also with each other. The kids have that.
A lot of them say it’s their safe space, the place they can be most themselves. A lot of these kids are bullied in regular high school, right? Or they’re made fun of. It’s not always revered like in our theater world. So here they can be themselves. Here, they can be all the crazy, kooky things that they want to be. And it’s not just accepted, but it’s applauded. So I think that’s really special.
So yeah, it was incredible. It was incredible that they would do this. It’s incredible that it was recognized by the organization. And I think knowing that the kids and the families that come here feel that it’s such a special place as well is all the reward. It’s an incredible nomination and I feel like I didn’t need to win that to at all feel the love and the appreciation from the families and from the organization. That they recognize that something special is going on here, I think, is really cool.
NBL: It feels like a lot of kids today have a fear of expressing themselves or being earnest because it’s an opportunity to be made fun of or labeled “cringe.” Do you encounter that resistance at all among new students?
MER: We have the rare occasion that a kid comes in and right away, you know, if they’ve come up through the program, they understand the safety net that’s here. But I think there’s a huge resistance with kids nowadays, and I don’t know whether it’s because everything is so impersonal. Everybody’s on their phone, they could be sitting right next to each other and they’re texting instead of talking. In here, there are no phones. And in class, it’s about connecting, and there’s a vulnerability to that. That muscle gets used. And so it becomes more accepted and easier to connect, because there’s no other way to connect. And that’s sort of the nature of acting and theater, that genuine connection between two people. And it’s absolutely not the norm for them.
In those moments of that true connection, you become alive. And then you want to feel it again, and you want to feel it again. And in those moments, you learn how to express yourself in a way that is so true and so valued, not just to the person they’re connecting with, but to themselves, because there’s nothing like it. And I feel like the world now is so disconnected. I guess part of it’s social media, and part of it, too, I think, is the remnants of the pandemic, where we all separated.
It’s a shame, because the art form is based upon that connection. And I think the people who come to see theater, I think they come, because they want to feel something, because everything is so designed to not feel things now, not to feel that vulnerability or that very true feeling, that connection that you feel when you look into the eyes of another person.
We avoid that a lot. I always tell the kids that acting is about empathy, and it’s about putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes and using something you know to express. So, you know, lots of times if they’re having an issue with getting to the crux of the character, I say, “you know, you don’t have to experience what the character experienced, you just have to know what loss is, or you just have to know what extreme joy is”, and we talk about what those things are for them. You don’t have to have the circumstances of the character, you just have to understand what that means and the different levels of … you know, there’s happy, there’s elated, there’s joy, there’s euphoria. There are all these different degrees.
And we explore those things with them. Do you remember a time that you were, you know, joyful? What was that? What did that feel like? What happened in your body when that happened? And when the physicality starts to match up here, the intellect, then they can express something more fully. And then before they know it, it’s them and it’s not the character. And then they leave, and they’re like, “Wow, I just feel fantastic.” It’s teaching people how to express because I feel like the world now doesn’t really. There’s not a lot of room for that.
And there’s so much judgment, and there’s so much shaming, and yet these kids are so extremely accepting of everyone. They’re worried about the world around them. And I say to them, “You guys are the future, you guys are the ones who are gonna decide what this world is. You’re gonna make it the way you want to make it.” I feel like our contribution here is sort of to guide them, right? And to make, maybe, the world I would like to see too. It’s our way to shape it through them. I always say it’s like it’s the younger generation now. “You guys are our hope. You’re gonna make this world a better place.” And I feel like giving them the tools of acceptance and of expression is the way it’s going to happen. They are the future, and they just need to be armed with the right skills.
NBL: It seems a little bit silly to ask you what makes you proud about your job after that answer. Still, I’m curious what parts of teaching you find fulfilling that maybe you didn’t know about when beginning the transition from stage performer to teaching theater.
MER: That is a great question, and that’s a great point to bring up, because when I started, I had taught for a while while I was still working professionally, and I loved it. You know, that was great, and I loved performing, but what I didn’t know was how gratifying it would be to do what I’m doing. I worked for other people, and I didn’t like the way things were run. They were negative, they were shaming kids, they were yelling. It was very, very negative and not a lot of positive reinforcement or respect. I respect these kids. I call them my young actors. I don’t call them kids, and they earn that, they really do. It was probably about a year later, maybe even a year and a half into it. I said to my husband, who’s also my partner here, “I loved performing, but this? This is what I was meant to do.” And it’s so weird, ’cause when it fits, you just know it. Performing was great. I had an awesome career, I got to see the world, I worked with incredible people, but none of that, none of that compares to this.
This feeling here, when you even see that you’re changing kids’ lives, like in profound ways, where they feel accepted, where they feel like they leave here, and they feel like they can do anything. It’s … just fantastic. There’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like it.
That’s why we do it, and we feel like it’s our contribution to the world. Like, how do we deal with what’s going on in the world? We have to give back, right? Otherwise, what’s the whole point? Why are we even here? If we’re not giving back, then why do we even exist? It’s been an incredible year, and an incredible end to the year, where we really take stock, the kids and I, with each other. We talk about their growth, we talk about where they were, where they’ve come, what’s ahead. Man, it’s just like, I’m so filled with gratitude for this place, the way it all happened. One door closes and another one opens because you’re kind of forced into a path, and you’re like, this is something that’s really working.
And we’re not huge. We don’t have hundreds of students. I wish we did. Nobody knows about us. I feel like when people find us, they’re like, “Oh my God, how am I not knowing about you?” You know, it’s great. I love it.
NBL: Have you found that in recent months, with the Tony nomination and surrounding publicity, that’s generated a few more opportunities, or perhaps you are a little bit more known within the community now?
MER: I don’t know, that’s a really good question. I don’t feel like our phones are ringing off the hook by any means. I wish they were. We sold out all of our performances of “Les Mis,” which was cool. Maybe in the fall we’ll see a big difference. I think a lot of people don’t understand what we do. I think they go, “Oh, that’s a dancing school.” And then there’s just like, you throw a stone and you hit five, you know what I mean? Like they’re everywhere. This is so different.
Even though we do teach dance, we have voice lessons obviously, and you know, acting classes and everything theater, basically. The whole tech side, too. And I don’t think people know what to make of that.
I think it’s like until they come here and they take a tour and they go, “Oh, this is different.” We’ve actually rented this space out a couple of times to Festival Theatre for MasterClass series and things like that. And their people have come in, like some of their directors from other places come in, they’re like, “I feel like I’m in New York.” That’s kind of how I wanted to design it. I didn’t want pink princesses all over. I wanted it to be like a theater and make kids feel like they’re really in it. So we try to give them a really professional experience, but in an educational setting. You know, we bring in an equity stage manager for our shows, and we run it just like you would run a real show. I mean, they’re all real, but even like a professional show, obviously knowing that it’s kids and knowing that they’re not professionals. We even had our tech kids literally run the show. They ran the soundboard, they ran the lighting board, they were on the spots. It was very cool for them.
And they even get hired out to other places now to go do gigs, which is really fun for them. My husband runs that program, and he wanted them to feel like they’re armed with skills that they can go out and actually run a show somewhere. And their shows are a little less technical than ours, but that’s OK. They’re getting extensive experience, they’re getting paid …
But that’s how we wanted to run that program, and it’s wonderful, I just wish more people knew about it. So many kids want to be involved in theater, but they don’t want to perform. It’s a great way to actually learn the craft. And a lot of kids don’t know there are even jobs outside of performing. There’s a whole slew of jobs that you can do that have nothing to do with performing, but all the fun stuff backstage and all, and being part of the community and being part of the team and creating something is really good for kids.
NBL: Now that the Tony nomination is behind you, what is next for Stage Artist Studios heading into the fall and beyond?
MER: Well, we have a summer program. That program [started] July 8 with our kids’ programs.
We’ve got three different age groups. We have one for younger kids, which is like a Disney on Broadway type thing where they’ll learn some numbers from some of the Disney shows and then add the dancing and the singing and the intention behind it. Then our 7 to 10-year-old group is a “Wicked” class, so it’s all like “Wicked” stuff from the “Wicked” musical, which is ridiculously popular. And then our tweens are doing like a Six/Hamilton mix-up, so the kids are very excited about that. Our teens do an intensive, and that’s every Wednesday for those six weeks. … So a four-hour block, where it’s a theater boot camp kind of a thing.
I bring in some performers who are still working on Broadway, who come and talk to them and do some MasterClass stuff with them or work with them on song interpretation. We usually learn some type of medley that we then will do for the parents at the end. It’s very intensive, they do a lot of acting stuff and a lot of movement, a lot of physicality. It’s a bit of audition technique as well. A lot of these kids want to audition for colleges, and so we do that as well with them.
Or if they want to do theater in high school and then they want to audition better, you know, that’s part of that whole intensive.
NBL: Why should parents and kids consider the performing arts? Why should they choose Stage Artistry Studios?
MER: Training in the performing arts, whether you want to pursue it professionally or not, informs every part of your life. It informs the way you walk into a room, the way you speak in public, and the way you are perceived by the confidence that you carry. It helps your communication skills. It helps your team-building skills. Somebody once said, if I had the choice, I would always hire someone who did theater as a kid, because you just know how to work better. You know how to kind of get along better. You know how to accept things and take things as they come. You don’t fall apart when something changes because that’s theater, right? So I think they’re armed with skills that will help them infinitely throughout their life.
I think they should come here because it matters where you train. I’ve seen a lot of damage done to kids who were not seen. And I think it’s really important that you see every child. You have to see them and see the potential in them so that they can see it themselves. If you don’t see it, they’re not gonna see it. And I’ve seen so many kids overlooked or kind of pushed aside. Favoritism, things like that. And I think it’s a really safe space here. There’s no bullying, we don’t tolerate it, not even just amongst the kids together. I don’t bully the kids; the parents don’t bully me. I won’t allow it. It’s a very respectful environment, and they’re learning from real professionals. The business itself is not mean. When you’re a professional in the business, it’s a joyful experience to create a show, and I’ve never been treated with disrespect as a professional performer. And I don’t think that should happen in an educational setting, especially. If kids are learning, they won’t know everything right away. That’s the point. And our staff is, you know, everyone has either been conservatory trained or has professional experience, and I think that matters. We’re fun, and we do fantastic work, and I couldn’t be prouder of these kids.
Brendan Rego is a freelance writer and correspondent for The New Bedford Light.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
