For the last eight years, from her direction of fully staged productions to her work as a teacher, Mary Leigh Filippone has introduced thousands of Appoquinimink High School students to the magic of live theatre. This past January, she paused from a rehearsal of the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown! at the school’s nearly 1,000-seat auditorium to speak with Middletown Life about her life in the theatre, her work at the high school and one glorious dinner party she would love to host.

With every theatre person there is a moment when he or she first becomes bitten by the proverbial bug, and it is almost always accompanied by a great story. What is your “introduction to theatre” story?

When I was growing up in Springfield, Pa., the first real exposure to theatre for me was when I was six years old, when my grandmother gave me a VHS tape of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin. I wore that tape out and watched it over and over, and it was the first time that I saw a full-blown musical. I grew up very close to Upper Darby Summer Stage, which is where I attended several children’s musicals, but this was something different. Soon, The Sound of Music became a part of my personality, and during the summer after fourth grade, my mother signed me up for a week-long summer theatre camp. I had been a competitive swimmer and when that first acting class was about to start, I was asked to make a decision, so I stopped swimming.

Talk about some of your early-stage performances and their influence on your development and appreciation for the stage. It’s not just about hopping on a stage and singing, dancing and acting. It’s also about learning the building blocks of an entire production, yes?

As I became more and more involved in theatre, I began to learn about all of the things that make a show happen in pieces. I started at that camp singing a scene from The Music Man and then one scene from The Sound of Music. I was picking and sorting through musicals and becoming aware of the musical theatre canon, but when I was in the sixth grade I joined my first full production of Bye Bye, Birdie at the Young People’s Theatre Workshop at The Players Club of Swarthmore.

Even though I was only in the sixth grade, I was cast in the adult chorus and I had four children who were all older than me, but that’s when I learned how a complete production is created in a real theatre with a backstage and a scene shop. I remained a part of that group through high school, and then I taught there at summer camps when I was in college. I stayed involved and after I graduated college, I joined the board of governors and then served two years as president of the community theatre.

Who were your early mentors and how did they serve as an influence?

I had – and have had – several influences, but among them, Rob Henry was my high school theatre teacher at Springfield High School and Claudia Carlsson, who ran the Young Peoples Theatre Workshop at the Players Club of Swarthmore. Through them, I learned a lot about what it means to be a theatre teacher and a theatre director. To be an educator now and look back and know that I was fortunate to have had several mentors in my life who mentored me and took care of me and helped my love of theatre grow, I feel very lucky to have had them in my life. I am still in contact with all of them to this day. When I began at Appoquinimink eight years ago, I went back to my high school theatre teacher and I asked him for advice on teaching stagecraft.

The truth is that while not every student you have taught and directed has – or will – go on to further study of theatre, his or her involvement in the stage arts often helps to shape the course of their educational and personal journeys. In what ways do you see theatre have an impact on a young person’s development?

There are so many tangible and intangible benefits of being involved in theatre arts in elementary, middle and high school, but the two that stand out to me the most are empathy and self-confidence. One of my favorite quotes is from the playwright Oscar Wilde, who said, “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

Whether they are actors taking on roles that they can or cannot relate to or audience members watching stories about people who are like them or dissimilar to who they are and their experiences, they are learning to be open to the feelings, the experiences and the lives of other people. Theatre gives our students a space where they can hold each other up, and it allows them to take that shared feeling out into the world with them. Whether they are going on to study engineering in college or heading to Juilliard, an empathetic individual is an excellent citizen, and learning empathy is an immeasurable part of who they will become.

Talk about the moments when you first see the makings of a young person who possesses not just talent as an actor, but all of the intangibles needed to pursue a career in the theatre. What is that moment like for you, and what role do you take in his or her development in theatre?

I see a lot of students who possess the skills and desire to continue their life in the theatre, and it’s interesting to see where and what they want to be. I try not to talk in class about ‘When you become a theatre major…’ or ‘When you become and actor…’ because our classes and productions are a mixed bag of varying skills and pursuits. Rather, I approach our process as if everyone needs to understand what it is like to work on a professional level, because it makes them approach this work with a sense of professionalism. They take it seriously and they develop an ownership to it.

What I do try to encourage is that if they love it and are passionate about it – whether they choose to pursue a life in the theatre arts or not -- I encourage them to create a space in their life for theatre and to keep it there. I have a student who graduated two years ago who is now at Juilliard, and I have six students who graduated last year who are now actively involved in theatre at the University of Delaware – as freshmen. I am hearing about all of the ways they are immersing themselves in theatre, even as engineering and psychology and criminal justice majors. That means that something they felt and experienced here at Appoquinimink High School has stuck with them, and they realize that no matter what path they take, that theatre will remain a part of their core self.

What have been among your most treasured moments in theatre, whether as a performer, director, teacher or audience member?

I am often deeply moved during our students’ work during the rehearsal process. In last week’s musical theatre class, an 11th grader sang a solo piece that I had selected for her, and she just came prepared and confident. We stopped when it was over, and I asked, ‘Who is this 11th grade version of yourself who is standing before us, and who was that 9th grader I gave a solo to two years ago?’ As a 9th grader, she was so overwhelmed she could hardly breathe. Those kinds of moments knock me over.

You’ve just been given the gift of having coffee or adult beverages with one person in theatre history. Who would it be and why? What would you ask him or her?

I would love to sit down with the theatre director Bartlett Sher, a resident director at Lincoln Center. He directs opera but he has also become well known for directing revivals of classic theatre from Lerner and Lowe and Rodger and Hammerstein. He has a brilliant way of making what is often a decades-old show feel fresh and relevant and important, down to the set design and the aesthetics of the production. I constantly am looking to direct classic pieces of theatre, but I don’t want them to feel stale and I want to bring in audiences with the hope that they realize the importance of these shows.

We did The Sound of Music here in 2018 and while it is a family-friendly musical, it is set on the landscape of World War II, and a family escaping from persecution. We did lean in beyond the fluff to address these issues, but it’s a conversation I would like to have with Bartlett because he is also unpacking these shows in the same way.

What is your favorite spot in Middletown?

It’s Sweet Melissa’s. It is fun to be running errands and be able to stop by and grab some muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast. My husband and I picked up our wedding cake there. It gives off such a hometown feel.

You throw a dinner party and can invite anyone – famous or not, living or not. Who would you want to see around that table?

I have both a heartwarming dinner party and a fun dinner party. I would invite my father to the heartwarming dinner party. He died when I was 30 years old, and he became sick when I was 22 and I would love to tell him about all of this great stuff that has been happening in my life.

For the fun dinner party, I would like to invite Brene Brown, Cicely Tyson, Rita Moreno, Kate Winslet, Viola Davis, Eva Peron and Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre practitioner, drama theorist and political activist.

What item can always be found in your refrigerator?

“Half and half can always be found, because my husband and I have a daily ritual to sit together with our puppy and a cup of coffee each morning before work.” Pickles are also always found in our refrigerator, but they are always Claussen and no other brand.

To learn more about the theatre arts at Appoquinimink High School, visit www.appohigh.org or visit it on Instagram at @appohigh_theatre.

~Richard L. Gaw