Two decades of dedicated effort have allowed Mingus Union High School theatre and choir director James Ball to expand the school’s theatre program eightfold.
“I went to school in central Illinois, at Illinois Wesleyan, and I graduated in 2007,” Ball said. “I wanted to try something different than the Midwest, so I applied to colleges in Maine, Wisconsin, Colorado, Kentucky, Boston and I applied to one school in Arizona, and it was Mingus High School. I got the interview, flew out, they offered me the job on my way back to the airport. I thought, it’s really cool, I’m 22 years old, to go to a school and take over the choir and the theatre department.
“Funny enough, I majored in music education, and when I first interviewed at Mingus, I didn’t know it was for a theatre job,” Ball added. “Choir and guitar was what my primary teaching was. So I was like, ‘Cool, I get to do all of my passions in one.’ So I came out here and I’m like, I’ll start my career here — and now I’ve been here 18 years and built the program that I wanted and that’s kind of why I stayed, having the autonomy to build what’s become ATORT theatre from very little to start with.”
“The International Thespian Society started their troupe back at Mingus in 1980,” Ball said of the program’s origins. Officially, the Mingus program is ITS Troupe 3406; locally, it is known as A Troupe of Ridiculous Thespians. Ball said the ATORT name was suggested in 2001 by Josh Mullins — who later died in a mountain biking accident on Mingus Mountain — before being voted on by the troupe’s members.
“When I came there in ’07, there was one choir class of about 12 and one theatre class that had about 20 people in it,” Ball said. “The year before, they hired a teacher that was one year, and then before that was Alyssa [Majewski] and she was there since 2000, I believe, 2001, and before that Tim Machinin did audio-visual and did acting as part of that.”
“The theatre class did the plays and everything within it, they didn’t do musicals,” Ball said. “Then I came in, and, being in a music background, took it and made theatre co-curricular, so we have the theatre classes and then anybody in the school could do the shows and the plays after school. So we had more opportunities for kids that wanted to be on stage or just wanted to learn about theatre itself. I made that change when I took over in ‘07 and kind of started growing that into offering a Theatre 2 class, and then I got to offer a Theatre 3 class.”
Expanding the theatre classes, Ball said, required MUHS to expand its logistical support for the theatre program as well.
“In 2015 … I didn’t want to give up all of my weekends and spring break and fall break to build all of the sets, because part of being in the show was we used to have set hour requirements, where the kids would come in on days we didn’t rehearse and build the sets,” Ball said. He responded by setting up a stagecraft class in conjunction with the school’s expanding career and technical education curriculum. “We had three classes of kids sign up for it, so they actually had to find a stagecraft teacher to come in.”
Mingus now offers three theatre classes, with Ball expressing hope they will be able to add a fourth next year, and an additional four stagecraft classes. For 2023-24, the classes enrolled about 150 students, while another 75 not in the theatre program also took part in ATORT productions.
“We do have a lot of kids that want to come just for the ATORT program,” Ball said. “Fortunately we’ve always had a super supportive administration that has been like, ‘Hey, there’s a need for this and students are signing up and want this, so we’ll make it happen.’”
The school’s choir program, which Ball described as “100% my primary passion,” has also grown from a single choir of 11 students to two choirs with 40 and 25 members just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic response, which have now been heading to state competitions and regional choir festivals for several years.
“As we’ve built the choir program up and more kids have been getting involved with that, it’s made the musicals better, which is why we’ve been winning more of the musical awards in the past 10 years or so,” Ball said, adding that they can now sing six- and eight-part harmonies with ease.
“I think what makes Mingus so special is the competitions and reputations we’ve kind of gone through in the past 15 years or so have earned us not just community recognition but state recognition as well, and now with Mekenzie [Combs] going to the Jimmies [National High School Musical Theatre ‘Jimmy Awards’] and getting the name out into the national organizations as well,” Ball said. “It’s kind of cool to come here and be a part of the ATORT program and also know that it has a long tradition of quality and excellence.”
