“It Tends to Start With an Idea”: The Process Behind Mr. Yusah’s Theater Productions

It’s that time of year, everyone: time for the annual Upper Grades theater production. This year’s play, The Laramie Project, and the last six plays at NEST+m have all been fueled by the brains of one man, Mr. William Yusah. But how does he choose the play each year? While students put in tons of effort and commitment as the play is being rehearsed from January to March, the months before the final show, Mr. Yusah is doing all of the leg work. Being a part of the production allows you to see how the actors work to get their roles across, how the tech crew build sets and props out of nothing, and how the adults behind productions teach music or help with acting choices. However, outside of the hardworking three-month period, the gears of Yusah’s mind are a mystery, still shifting and working to decide on the themes and messages of each play. 

It tends to start with an idea. Ideas range from Yusah’s own opinions on shows, to suggestions from his theater friends, and to tips from licensing companies. The final decision is based around the cast Yusah is working with, licensing availability, and simply how many risks he wants to take in a given year. Licensing for any show has to be purchased months before the actual casting can be done; in fact, even during current productions, Yusah will be thinking about next year’s play. Although he hasn’t watched every single play one of NEST+m’s plays as a professional production, he says, “Sometimes it's nice to not have seen someone else produce it because then every idea comes directly from you, the text, and the collaborative process.” Watching a show on a professional stage can sustain initial inspiration, but can also limit production due to the desire to make everything coincide with the original production. Once Yusah thinks he’s found the right play with all the advice he’s gathered, he’ll make his way over to The Drama Book Shop, Inc. In the shop, he can read over the scripts of the final contenders to confirm whether or not a specific play can be put on stage at NEST+m.

The consistent trend shown through all of Yusah’s plays is that they aren’t the average high school plays. You’ll never see a production of Annie or Bye Bye Birdie performed in front of  a NEST+m audience. Though some credit for the unique choices can go to the advice of Yusah’s actor friends, some of it can go to pure chance. The decision to put on Peter and the Starcatcher (which Yusah has called his “favorite Broadway show”), was because of a combination of factors: the licensing was released in 2017, Yusah loved the play, and Yusah's childhood friend was the lead conductor on the original production. It seemed like a perfect match. After Peter’s success, it was obvious to Yusah that it wouldn’t be fair to try to recreate it. He took a risk with Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, which he had also seen performed professionally, also he was initially weirded out by it. The play didn’t hold the cliche Broadway formula of the typical upbeat songs, quirky bad guys, and love stories, and had so much subtle human emotion within the text. After talking it over with his friends, Yusah realized a maturity and cleverness to the play that he hadn’t seen when he first watched it, and he knew that was his next NEST+m play. He found the risks he took to be very rewarding overall, saying “It's mature and challenging. And it's so strange. I love[d] it. I love[d] our cast. I love[d] love[d] loved [last] year.” 

The side of the play that students never see relies on people only Yusah knows: the theater and actor friends that help come up with suggestions and try to help their friend put on high school productions that deviate from cliches, the licensing agents that do their best to try to get the plays they work for to be licensed, and the fact that Yusah takes time off all through the year to work on the current play and decide upon an upcoming ones. Yusah enjoys improv shows and theater productions all in his own time, both of which make him think of NEST+m when it’s time to bring the new things he’s learned to his students. He thinks of going to theater productions as a “special experience, and an exercise of empathy on its own.” He knows that there’s more to theater than catchy songs and cheesy dance lines, seeing as theater can bring a sense of connection to the audience by allowing them to be able to see something that can take them out of their everyday lives and put them into another person’s shoes. He remarks that if he could bring his theater students to a production every week, they could easily learn the empathy and the power of theater themselves. The feeling of togetherness can be achieved through theater and is the reason Yusah is able to spend so much of his own time behind theater, and is how he is able to come up with such astounding play productions every year.