KEVIN ABOUREZK / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:00 pm
The stoic brave sitting silently in his tipi — legs crossed, outstretched arms folded in iconic fashion — is dead.
Think instead of an 18-year-old girl spinning, snapping her fingers, kicking her legs out and shouting.
An energetic, giggly senior from the Omaha Nation in northeastern Nebraska.
Her name is Kathleen Webster, and she came here to dance.
Here she is in a crowd of high schoolers.
She’s the one who, while the others stand still waiting for more instructions, walks right through the crowd, hips swinging widely back and forth. The only one still stuck on the previous lesson of how to walk Elvis-style.
Her pumpkin orange shirt reads: “You gotta follow that dream wherever that dream may lead.”
And that’s really what motivated Kathleen to step onto a charter bus Thursday morning for a long, sleepy drive to Lincoln, where a daylong series of events exposed her to the performing arts.
The “All Shook Up” Immersion Project brought 106 students from Lincoln, Crete and Macy to the Lied Center Thursday to meet and learn from professional artists and see a live Broadway performance.
Time Warner Cable and the Lied Center hosted the event, which included workshops on dancing, singing and dramatic presentation.
Ann Shrewsbury, public affairs director for Time Warner, said the project brings Broadway to Nebraska students.
“It makes a dream like that reachable in their eyes,” she said.
Kathleen has always wanted to be an actress. Her friends have known that since she was a child and would trick them into believing she was crying or mad at them when she really wasn’t.
“I’m real good at it because people believe me,” she said.
But it hasn’t been easy for her to find outlets for her desire to perform. Omaha Nation Public School in Macy doesn’t have performing arts classes. The school doesn’t put on plays.
And the school’s student body isn’t exactly clamoring for additional performing arts curriculum.
Just ask John Mangan, instrumental music teacher in Macy and amateur actor.
“Theater for our kids is very hard,” he said, smoking a cigarette outside the Lied Center Thursday. “They’re very self-conscious, unless they’re sitting around a big drum, unless they’re in their regalia.
“Then they get down.”
Don’t call it a stereotype proven true. Native teenagers living on the Omaha Indian Reservation simply tend to be more introverted than other students, he said.
Of course, all that insight crashes to the floor like an actor tripping over the light cables when it comes to one Omaha Nation teen.
She’s the one teachers at Omaha Nation call on when they need help getting students motivated, said Libby Webster, Kathleen’s aunt.
“Her enthusiasm, we use that a lot,” she said. “She’s really active, and she has a passion for something. That’s good to see.”
Here she is again, giving a girl standing beside her double high-fives after a particular grueling dance routine Thursday inside an auditorium in the Lied Center.
The students are trying to follow Alicia Albright, one of the actors participating in Thursday’s events. She tells the students to clasp their hands, kick, kick, step, look, look.
“Work that out!” she shouts as she demonstrates the routine.
Kathleen keeps up and even asks Albright for clarification on a particular maneuver.
“The other thing to remember: It’s not rocket science,” Albright tells the students. “It doesn’t matter if you mess it up.”
Later, their choreography lesson finished, the students wipe the sweat from their brows and head to the main Lied Center stage for a backstage tour before the big show.
Kathleen stands in a group of her friends as a tour guide walks them onto the stage.
Suddenly, as the wide expanse of the theater comes into full view for her, Kathleen begins waving to an imaginary audience.
“I’m here everybody.”
Reach Kevin Abourezk at 473-7225 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.