The Ages project will involve over 100 Santa Barbara area students from fourth grade through high school who will interview some of our community’s valued senior citizens about their life stories.

Under the guidance of Boxtales Theatre Company, the students will use these elders’ life stories as the basis for creating original theater sketches to be performed in school assemblies and in a special performance at the Lobero Theatre on December 13, 2008.

This program is funded by in part by the Santa Barbara Foundation, Karuna Foundation, Weingart Foundation, Venoco Foundation, High Tide Foundation, Bower Foundation.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Ages

Hello and welcome to the BOXTALES "The Ages" blog. As you may have read above we are in the first phase of our process "the interviews". To the left is a picture of Bill Niven our first interviewee. He is 90 years old and lives here in Santa Barbara. A WWII veteran and a who went from Private 1st Class to a Captain in a quite a remarkable story. Perhaps that will be one of the stories we use to build our theatre piece who knows. So far it has been a very touching and enriching journey through the lives of these elders. I am so fortunate to hear the stories of these members of our community and have already learned much from the stories they have shared. But enough about what I have learned. Let's hear from the students who have been expertly conducting the interviews for the last 4 weeks. Here is some of the things that they written about the elders and the interview process.













I've learned that old people, like Evelyn, can have a sense of humor and that every person has a story. Bill told us a great story when he was a private in the army. He raised his hand when somebody asked him if anybody knew how to do office work and because of that he got a great job in the war and later went on to be a Captain.

Kyla Zavala



The Ages program has inspired me to not lay around and let other people answer or ask questions. So now I am always speaking up and talking because its fun to interview people and learn about their lives

Jackson Eddy

Angie said you should eat real healthy because some people are getting diabetic. Bill said he was on the ground shooting airplanes. It was awesome because I have never seen that before. I never heard someone talk about it.

Miranda Gonzalez

After hearing Angie Hyde speak to us and said how she felt about eating right I learned that I should and I will try to eat more real food. I also need to eat healthier food and how growing gardens saves food. Raising your hand can help impact on you because it gets you into many things your good at and that gets you even better at something else and you can be head or leader of what you are doing. Also, don't join the war because the war is bad to even start.

Shelby Smith



I learned that raising your hand when someone asks if you can do something, raise your hand. In Bill's story, when he joined the army and started out as a private Bill raised his hand when the officer asked if anyone could do office work and he could so he raised his hand and didn't have to fight anymore. Bill later became a Captain.

Lindsey Depledge