The show will go on this school year with the Sedona-Oak Creek School District’s hiring of Cae Collmar to lead a revamped theater program.

The recently relaunched Sedona-Oak Creek USD Educational Foundation is helping fund Collmar’s base salary of $60,582.

“I believe that this can be a real cornerstone piece, not only for [SOCSD] but also for our community,” Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ph.D. said. ”I’m hopeful that one day when you’re walking in Uptown … that you run into people and with excitement in their voice, in their eyes, they ask, ‘what is the next performance?’ I think that we can bring that type of energy. That’s one of the things that theater can do. I know it’s a big vision, but we can never dream too big.”

“Theater has something to teach everybody no matter what your goals and desires are once you leave high school,” Collmar said. “Everybody has been affected in some way by the performing arts. The experience that [these] students are going to have with the theater program is something they’ll never forget if they’re in one of the productions. It is a life-changing experience that teaches you so much — about life, about commitment, about artistry, about teamwork. It’s incredible. It will change everybody’s life who is involved.”

Collmar was born and raised in Arizona and earned her master’s in educational administration at Grand Canyon University in May 2023. She doesn’t have plans currently to pursue an administrative job “because I love being in the classroom,” she said.

She earned a bachelors of fine arts from the University of Arizona in 1996 and later a master’s from University of California, Irvine in 1998. Collmar arrives at SOCSD from teaching at Sunrise Middle School in the Paradise Valley Unified School District since 2017.

“What really did it for me with [Collmar] in the hiring process is not only her knowledge of the craft, but her ability to connect with people at a very human level,” Swaninger said. “I see her being able to do that with students of all ages and with our parents. … But even beyond that, I see her finding success with connecting with our community at large.”

The new program will have two performing groups broken up into middle and high school students, an intro level performance elective course for both middle and high school students, a stage craft class that covers lighting and set design and technical aspects of theater.

Swaninger added that auditions were held this spring for the performance troupe and expressed his enthusiasm for the early turnout.

“The idea is to offer both kind of entry-level theater positions as well as classes that are a bit more advanced for students that are either very experienced as thespians or [have] a serious interest in pursuing the performing arts moving forward. Some of our productions right out of the gate will likely be a bit smaller,” Swaninger said.

The fall production is “A Dickens’ Christmas Carol” written by playwright Gary Peterson.

“I don’t know if you would classify [“A Dickens’ Christmas Carol”] as a musical but there is singing in,” Collmar said. “I ended up going with because it was pretty traditional and it doesn’t have huge musical numbers, because I’m not really sure who my singers are. I wanted a classic Christmas story to introduce myself to the community and also let the students get to know me. So I’m not putting too much pressure on a big singing and dancing number, even though that is the goal eventually.”

In the spring, Collmar confirmed that the students will perform “Poe’s Midnight Dreary,” by playwright Richard McElvain. The play is a series of vignettes taken from the life of 19th century Baltimore author Edgar Allen Poe.

Collmar said “Peter Pan” and Poe’s stories are among her favorite works.

“I love Peter Pan [and] the notion of … just living in your imagination forever,” Collmar said. “A lot of people who know me would be surprised that I would choose Poe as my favorite author because it can be macabre. But there’s something very beautiful about his writing. The juxtaposition of things that can seem dark.”

There’s this idea within Poe’s work that “to see how beautiful things are, you have to see the dark things in life,” Collmar said.

Collmar added that while it’s not yet finalized SOCSD wants to offer the new theater programming at West Sedona School. She has plans to offer a week-long after-school workshop for fourth- and fifth-graders once each semester. The intensive would take place around the same time as the main production and culminate in a short performance, to introduce the younger students to the new program.

“I believe that [Collmar] is someone that will really connect very well with our students, our parents, and also the community,” Swaninger said. “In Sedona, we have numerous professional — professional professionals — who have vast experience with theater and the performing arts. So I’m hoping that we can build something very collaborative with our community. And I think that the more collaborative that we’re able to be, the better experience we’ll be able to provide for our students, as well as likely, a stronger performance.”

Collmar said she imagines that the program will need community assistance are costume alterations or loaning furniture for the stage such as a four-post bed for Ebenezer Scrooge’s bedroom.

“We will definitely be calling out to the community for support — and even if it’s something small, it will be very helpful to us because we want everyone to be involved,” Collmar said. “We’ll definitely be calling out to the community for volunteers to help in many different areas of the production.”

Collmar can be contacted at collmar@sedonak12.org

In addition to Collmar, Swaninger said the Sedona-Oak Creek USD Educational Foundation’s financial support was being instrumental in hiring Chelle Kemper, Ph.D., as the new director of curriculum and instruction following the retirement of long-serving SOCSD employee Karyl Goldsmith.

“With Goldsmith’s retirement as the director of instruction and learning, we conservatively budgeted for next year and didn’t believe it was possible to offer that position for next year,” Swaninger said. “Without the foundation, we would not be able to offer that position. We are very excited about that.”

For more information about the Sedona Educational Foundation visit socusdfoundation.org.