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Fact Box

Jennifer Kelly at a glance

Age: 35

Family: Married 13 years with one son and two daughters.

Occupation: Director of Lemon Bay High School Theater and executive director of Lemon Bay Performing Arts Academy, which she founded in 2001.

Civic: Florida State Thespian Board as the District Six Chair.

Hometown: Englewood

Residence: Englewood

Education: Master's degree in curriculum instruction at Colorado Christian University.

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After 10 years teaching all aspects of theater to Lemon Bay High School students, including many from Boca Grande, Director Jennifer Kelly still has big dreams of her own, including plans for staging a sprawling epic production tentatively titled "Beautiful."

But in the meantime she continues to lead her students through life lessons on the stage. Under her tutelage Lemon Bay High School Theatre was selected among the top seven in the world when invited to perform at the International Thespian Festival June 27, 2009.

This week she shares her views of what makes for a great performance, who is her favorite director and why her mother played a large role in keeping her at LBS.

Question: You've created an internationally renowned program at Lemon Bay High School and burnished the legacy started by your own mother. What are your goals now?

Answer: My biggest goal is to design an original road show. I've been brainstorming with different professionals all over the world who are friends of mine. I hope to do a big spectacle show of music and dance and flying and special effects and projections. A tour show that would go everywhere. Called "Beautiful."

Q: Why do you continue to do this work on a high school level when you clearly are capable of so much more?

A: Basically because of my kids, I think. Obviously everybody has big dreams. But it was really important for me to give them as normal a childhood as possible. Theater here is much more normal for me than it would be if I went to New York or on the road. So I found my own personal satisfaction doing things like bringing my shows to stage or Internationals. That's been personally rewarding. As much as it's been for the kids, it's been for me, too.

Q: As an artist, how does running the show suit you?

A: It's a great gig because I get to create all the time. Constantly, constantly digging. I have had free rein.

Q: What are the frustrations of the job?

A: I have to deal with a lot of frustrations and limitations because you're dealing in the constraints of a public school. We're always sharing the facility. We have no budget so we have to raise all the funds. But even so, I've learned so much.

Q: You've continued in your mother's footsteps but that wasn't how it was planned. What happened?

A: My mom actually started the program in 1980. So that's also part of the pride of it. It's a family tradition. She still helps with the box office and costumes. She left for only two years and there was an interim where it was hurting because of the change. Any time you have a new director come in, something's not going to be the same. So the pride wasn't there, the numbers weren't there.

Q: What was it like when you started at LBS?

A: I had very small numbers of students when I came in. And we had a fairly small audience, at least compared with what we have now. So we were very limited in what we could do.

Q: How did you turn it around?

A: I had this vision and I've been bringing everybody to my vision of what it could be. My vision was it could be huge. That we could do big stuff.

Q: You've done enormous productions, particularly at the prep level. What do you envision next?

A: Now I feel like I'm always treading water to keep up with it. It's great to have a vision and then get to it. Then you lose kids so much. You lose families. You have to be constantly training. People expect it to get better every time. But it does. Somehow, magically, it does, because the kids are watching each other.

Q: What are the benefits of joining your program?

A: For the counselors, the skills they are learning because they are teaching and sharing makes them 100 times better performers and technicians and they have better work ethics. I go to a lot of festivals where directors complain all their kids do is take, take, take and they don't do any work. And I'm thinking: Not my kids.

Q: You're just one person. How do you magnify your teaching capability?

A: I've always told them I'm one. This is what I think we can do. This is what I can give you. But you have to do this and this and this with me. And they do it. And they love to do it.

Q: Are you surprised at all by the program's enormous success under your leadership?

A: At first, yes. Because you think something is strong in your head. I'm very detail oriented. I literally break my shows into eight-beat counts. That's how detailed I am. My kids know how to make a strong eight-count of anything. Even in scenery they know to focus on the smallest detail. We don't just throw something on a stage. We really work at everything.

Q: One of your LBS apex achievements was being invited to the perform "The Wedding Singer" at the International Thespian Festival.

A: When the international judges called and said to us, absolutely, not only do we want you, we want you to close the entire festival, we were blown away, we were blown away because you question yourself. I always question myself personally.

Q: What director would you emulate? Who is your favorite director?

A: I love Julie Taymor, director of "The Lion King." She is one of my biggest idols. She thinks so creatively and uses movement. For me directing is almost like a kaleidoscope that you look in and every time you twist it, it changes. I'm a huge visual arts person. So when I do a show it's always about the visuals changing all the time.

Q: What do you want theatergoers to take from a production you've put together?

A: I want them to leave slightly changed and excited. I always tell my kids to affect, not impress. They're there to affect their audience. Never leave them the way they came in.

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