Within a few days after third grader Martin Richards from Boston was killed in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, a photo which showed the boy holding a sign he created that read ‘No more hurting people. Peace’ went viral. He made the sign a year before, when an activist who was protesting the handling of Trayvon Martin’s murder spoke to Martin’s class. Inspired in part by the photo that circulated after the boy’s death, some seventh grade students in a Boston school asked their teacher about changing the topic of their current events research assignment to the Boston Marathon bombing. In a blog, the teacher wrote that she was unsure about how to respond and had mixed emotions about allowing the students to focus on the recent tragedy. Many teachers had similarly mixed emotions about how to respond when schools abruptly shuttered their doors for the long COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.
When Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin, singer, actor and playwright, was an elementary school student, she still remembers that January 1986 morning when the class watched the launch of the Challenger space shuttle on live broadcast. As soon as the students had seen the space shuttle explode, the teacher asked one of the boys in the classroom to turn off the television. “Not knowing what to do and trying to take care of the class, she told us to get back to work on English and we never talked about nor did she ever approach the subject,” she recalled in an interview with The Utah Review.
While teachers and counselors rightly focus on helping and motivating students to strengthen their literacy in school subjects, the importance of nurturing emotional literacy is sometimes lost. As much as we like to believe that children are resilient and can bounce back from events that stir their emotions, many young people struggle to find the time, space and words to process, express and comprehend feelings that are complicated, intense and difficult. Likewise, teachers, who already have plenty of responsibilities on their plate, sometimes see students behaving in ways that are breaking the rules or classroom decorum without realizing that the child may be dealing with a tangle of grief, loss, fear and anger. And, returning to school after a protracted pandemic-related shutdown has not made the task of nurturing a genuinely empathetic environment in the classroom any easier.
For five years, Darby-Duffin taught third grade students. She explained in a Plan-B Theatre blog post, as a “Black teacher with a minority-majority classroom in a very, very white state, I did not take that lightly.” There were students who came to school hungry so she kept food on hand to make sure they ate. She noticed some who were dealing with intense emotional events in their lives but often were at a loss for words to express what they were feeling. She became the go-to teacher for children with ‘behavior issues.’ “I didn’t have any more classroom management training than my colleagues, but what I did that was different was offer a safe space,” Darby-Duffin explained in her blog. “I gave these students language so they could decipher what they were feeling. I allowed them to express those feelings without judgment or punishment. I became their ally.”
It was Darby-Duffin’s experiences of teaching as well as those of her own childhood days that inspired her to write EllaMental, which is Plan-B Theatre’s 12th Free Elementary School Tour (FEST) production. Between now and May 2025, tens of thousands of Utah students in grade 4-6 will see the play, There also will be two free, public performances: Day-Riverside Branch, Salt Lake City Public Library (Sept. 25, 4 p.m.) and the Kearns Branch, Salt Lake County Library (Sept. 27, 2:30 p.m.).
Conceived as an ode to the young people Darby-Duffin encountered during her time as a teacher, the play revolves around Ella (her formal first name being Ellament), 12, a smart, sassy sixth grader who enjoys young adult novels, playing games on her Nintendo Switch, and making videos of TikTok dance crazes. Ella struggles to come to terms in grieving over her grandmother’s passing. She does not want to burden her parents: her father is a chef who finally is back to working full-time after the long pandemic shutdown and her mother has spent a good amount of time across the country to settle the grandmother’s estate. Ella also contends with teasing from her schoolmates, who call her ‘Ellamental’ without realizing why she seems so sad an withdrawn. She believes she might be weird, which is actually her word for the anxiety she is suffering.
Meanwhile, Ella’s teacher, Mrs. Shepard, runs her classroom with no-nonsense strictness. When Ella fails to complete a math assignment that others in the class have done, her teacher refuses to hear any excuses or accept Ella’s offer to finish the assignment as homework and orders her to go to the principal’s office. However, as the principal is busy, Ella meets up with Ms. Aliyah, the after-school program coordinator who is known to be tough but fair. At first, Ella does not want to let her guard down fearing that Ms. Aliyah might not understand why she is feeling so many complicated emotions, But, once Ella realizes that Ms. Aliyah is sincere and listens closely to everything she is saying, Ella opens up about her feelings, finally finding a way to express them and learn from them.
When asked about the inspirations for the characters in the play, Darby-Duffin said that “all three — the kid and the teachers — are me.” She remembers her days as students when a fourth-grade teacher introduced her to prose and poetry competitions and drove her during the summer to the events. Her seventh grade teacher introduced her to Shakespeare and her senior high teacher taught her how to stand for herself. Darby-Duffin set the play so that students can find themselves and relate their experiences to those of Ella as well as those teachers whom they can trust as mentors and allies.
As in every annual FEST production, Plan-B has prepared a study guide for teachers, as a supplement to the performance. The guide news toward state core standards in English language arts, health education, theatre arts and visual arts, along with social emotional learning outcomes for students, including learning to manage emotions, establish and maintain positive relationships and how to advocate for one’s self. The study guide objectives amplify the themes associated with the play, so the students will “understand and empathize with peers who are coping with stress and change; discuss and reflect upon current events and their impact on individual lives; gain awareness of mental health and related stigma; develop skills for coping with difficult emotions; understand dramatic texts, including character development and plot.
Each Utah school, which participates in bringing FEST performances to students, will receive a copy of When the World Turned Upside Down by K. Ibura, a book set as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. As described by the author, the story is about “four friends [who] navigate issues of safety and social justice—and discover the power and comfort that friendship, generosity, and togetherness can bring.”
Directed by Jerry Rapier and designed by Arika Schockmel, the production features two casts in rotation: Noelani Brown and Talia Heiss as Ellament and Mak Milord and Taylor Wallace (as Ms. Aliyah, school kid and Mrs. Shephard). Kallie Filanda is your manager, while Sharah Meservy and Penelope Caywood are education coordinator and education liaison, respectively.
Schools looking to schedule performances will find contact and essential information at Plan-B’s education page. A digital playbill for Ellamental also is available.
REVIEW
In the second week of the tour, many students at Salt Lake City’s Liberty Elementary School — one with a population similar to the classrooms where Darby-Duffin taught third graders for five years — were enthusiastic about participating in the talkback following the performance. Actors Noelani Brown as Ellament and Mak Milord as the two teachers and the cameo when a kid taunts the main character with ‘Ellamental’ captivated the attention of the scores of students from the school’s fourth through sixth grade classes. In particular, Brown offered a very convincing portrayal of a 12-year-old student. Likewise, Milord switched handily from the comparably brief presence of the all-business homeroom teacher to the tough but more openly empathetic role of Ms. Aliyah.
Darby-Duffin’s script moves quickly enough through the classroom encounter that causes problems for Ella. The teacher is convinced that Ella was sleeping at her desk, after discovering that she did not complete the math assignment. Ella is usually a good student and she is disappointed that the teacher will not allow her to stay and watch a film on a nature subject which she already had proudly researched. Brown effectively captures the initial apprehension Ella has when she is in Ms. Aliyah’s office, wondering how much she should share about her current emotions.
Meanwhile, Milord astutely demonstrates how Ms. Aliyah supports her fellow teacher but also is earnest in getting to the roots of Ella’s feelings — not only about the grief of her grandmother’s death but also the teasing by other students. Darby-Duffin’s script also handles the questions about the parents with equally sincere comprehension, as Ms. Aliyah suggests ways to Ella to share her feelings with her parents. In Ms. Aliyah’s classroom, Ella naturally opened up, when the two played card games or when Ella was welcomed to the teacher’s “Den of Zen.”
The play is as instructive for teachers as it is for students, positioned sensitively in a balance that neither puts the student nor the teacher on defense. Young audience members have good instincts and they evidently appreciated the thoughtful balance in the dialogue and the portrayals which accompanied them, along with the opportunity for some audience interaction.