Meet Rachel Cummings, Actors PLAYground Director
As a young child, Rachel wanted to be a film actress. Specifically, she wanted to be Katharine Hepburn.
Rachel was raised on a diet of classic Hollywood—Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Ingrid Bergman and, of course, the incomparable Katharine Hepburn. But when she saw her older sister perform on stage in “Little Women,” the aspiring starlet changed her tune. The stage beckoned.
When Rachel was cast as an extra in “Annie” in the sixth grade, she abandoned her Hollywood dreams.
“My heart was given over to theater,” she recalls.
Actor Turned Director
A West Valley native, Rachel continued in theater through middle school, high school and college. In pursuit of her bachelor’s degree in theater at Grand Canyon University, she enrolled in the required directing class.
And though she wasn’t especially interested in directing at first, she came to love it. But she never thought she’d work with children until she had the opportunity to direct “James and the Giant Peach” for a local youth theater.
“It wasn’t something that I thought would become my new passion,” she says. “But I ended up doing it and falling in love with the kids—with all of it. I was hooked.” In the nearly seven years since then, she’s directed a number of youth and family shows and can’t imagine her career any other way.
Creativity, Freedom and JOY
As much as Rachel teaches the youngsters in her shows, she learns from them as well.
“The kids have brought something out of me that I didn’t expect,” she says. “They changed me for the better in every way.”
She’s become a better performer who approaches creative work with joy and abandon.
“Kids don’t have the inhibitions that we have as adults. Adult actors worry about their hair, their makeup, their costumes. Little kids don’t have any of that. If I tell a 6-year-old, ‘Oh, you got a part of a dog,’ they’ll run around and bark. They’ll try an accent, and if it sounds silly, they’ll laugh at themselves and try something else. Working with them has opened me up and freed me in a lot of ways. They really bring the joy.”
Helping Young Actors Grow
Rachel, who is a mom to two, ages 8 and 5, loves seeing the actors in her shows grow as artists—and as individuals.
“Whether it’s just one show or five shows I’ve done with them, it’s really amazing how far a kid can come,” she says. “You see them grow up so much. I’ve seen kids who come in the first day not letting go of mom, crying because they don’t want to be there—and on closing night, they’re holding onto me, crying because they don’t want to leave.”
And the changes don’t end there.
“It’s crazy to me, how much they grow in confidence. That’s the biggest thing,” she says. “That shy kid who came in, maybe with their head down, maybe with the script covering their face, their nose in a book … They go from not wanting to try new things to saying yes to trying something new. They’re less fearful.”
She hears from parents whose kids do better at school because they’ve learned how to study and memorize, who look adults in the eye when they speak to him, who show up more authentically.
“Most kids I work with don’t want to be actors when they grow up. They just have a lot of fun, and it’s benefiting them in their daily lives,” Rachel says. “It’s really incredible the things that theater can do for kids.”
Work with Rachel at Actors PLAYground
Audition for Rachel’s next Actors PLAYground show: The Christmas Bus.
