Hi, my name is Ashika Shah and I’m currently a Producer at SuperDville, but that isn’t how my journey here began.
Back in March of 2022, I applied to be a Production Assistant on SuperDville’s W.U.N.D.R Series and interviewed with Peggy Stern, the CEO of SuperDville, where she learned that I was also a Drama major. She wanted me to come on as a production assistant but also a drama coach to the young, non-professional actors who all had learning differences.
While I had taught acting to younger kids before it was always recreational and I hadn’t had the experience of working with learning differences before. So, as we started rehearsals, I decided to focus on what I knew how to do best – teach acting and let the rest fall into place as I learned the ropes. I was fortunate enough to be working alongside Zahra Warner, the Director of Cast Support, who had experience and insight.
The stigma around learning differences can deter you from focusing on the child itself and rather give importance to just a factor of their being. The beauty of acting is that it focuses on the whole being. My approach to learning to act starts first with an understanding and confidence in oneself. To allow that to happen we had to make the children comfortable with being in this new environment and their other cast members. Once that was accomplished, we could begin equipping them with the tools necessary to pick up their scripts and enhance their acting skills.
With this in mind, rehearsals were broken down into the following template:
1. Check-In – Hellos and acknowledge everyone and see how they are doing.
3. Warm-Up – Stretches and movement to loosen up
4. Main Focus (small groups, different each time):
• Character Work – Build your character’s body, voice, and backstory. How do they react and why?
• Text Work – What’s the dialogue really saying? Play with tone and emphasis
• Scene Work – Put it all together with scene partners. Listen and collaborate
Show & Tell – Share what you worked on with the group
5. Closing – Reflect and set goals for next time
We used this structure for cast rehearsals and, with time, could see the children building their confidence, skills, and bonding with their cast members.
The next stage in preparation for filming was one-on-one rehearsals. The purpose of this was to work directly on the child’s acting (lines, character, pronunciation, etc) and give them the time they needed to try different things and have another set of eyes and ears on their progress.
While we worked on the acting, I quickly realized that there were factors in play that didn’t really have to do with the acting itself but how the child was approaching the work and feeling about it. So, I worked towards creating a space where the kids could advocate for themselves, letting me know what they were struggling with and how I could help. Most of the time, they were dealing with stress and procrastination. They had many lines to memorize on top of the schoolwork they were doing. We would brainstorm strategies to help them with their lines and find a schedule that would ensure they were confident by the day of filming.
During our one-on-ones, we would also address any other emotions that were coming up such as fear, anxiety, frustration and use the rehearsal to make sure they felt prepared to go off on their own and practice these lines. I learned that focus was the hardest challenge, as the kids would get easily distracted or demotivated, so we would work in smaller chunks, making the work feel fun so that they didn’t find the need to take a break from it.
What you may have noticed is everything I was using to help with their approach to acting came from a foundation of Social and Emotional Skills – Confidence, Self-Advocacy, Identifying Emotions, Perseverance, Friendship Skills, Focus, and overcoming Stress and Procrastination. The very themes of the episodes they were set to film.
It’s interesting that the strategies differed from child to child and seemed to be a result of their learning style, influenced by their learning difference. Some of the cast preferred auditory learning, so they would record themselves reading the lines and then listen to the recording on repeat to memorize. Some of them would record just their lines and some would record with their parents so they could bounce off the other lines in the scene and know their cue. Other children were visual learners, meaning they would highlight the words in different colors to memorize them noting the emphasis and keywords. Some kids found that memorizing between their day-to-day tasks was easier whereas others needed to schedule in a block of time.
We came to these strategies with the kids communicating their troubles such as challenges with reading and finding the appropriate solution, for example, an auditory approach. Each child had their own way to learn their lines and this served as a huge moment of learning for me. To listen to the needs of someone and respond based on that. To not enforce but to understand. As I mentioned, prior to SuperDville I wasn’t well educated about what learning differences are and how they showed up but it’s now evident to me that every brain works differently. For me, I’ve always loved the arts and anything creative because it allowed me to operate without boundaries or restrictions. There is no one method to create a piece of art, likewise, there isn’t only one way to learn or be educated.
Creativity and freedom go hand-in-hand and are necessary for success. Which we also saw during rehearsal and filming. When we first gave the cast their scripts we asked them to highlight any language that felt inauthentic or awkward for them. We then worked on adjusting that language. And as much as we had emphasized memorizing lines, Peggy was adamant that the cast did not have to learn them word-for-word. We wanted the same message but creative freedom to make the words sound authentic to the child. After all, the show exists to be an accurate representation of kids with learning differences for kids with learning differences. During takes, if we could see the child struggling with their lines, instead of feeding them the exact line and trying to drill it into them, we would let them adlib and allow for the words to come out more naturally. This creative freedom led to results that were genuine and ultimately contributed to the success of this show.
I’m very grateful for this opportunity to work with this talented cast in support of the important mission of SuperDville. A mission that the cast can also attest to. When you work for something that matters it shows. Rehearsals would often include snippets of the cast expressing their gratitude for our SuperD community or excitement for working on episodes that they wish they had growing up or in their schools.
Recently, I’ve been producing Life Learned, a series featuring the older cast members reflecting on their SuperD experience 10 years later. It’s heartwarming to see similar sentiments to those of the more recent cast and even more so, the impact SuperDville has had for the years to come.
My time at SuperDville has not just been about doing a job, it has been an enriching learning experience, an inspiring journey of working towards a mission of importance, and ultimately about creating a community along the way.