About Fairy Tales on Stage

 Mary Aiaka Kent has always loved music and dance and entertainment. In the 3rd grade her dad took her to see Little Shop of Horrors at the Alabama Shakespeare festival. An actor and director himself instilled in her an appreciation for the theatre arts. A love for all things theatre from onstage, to backstage to everything in between. Being a military brat, she moved around the country every few years and was introduced to different people and places. Being a dancer and singer she was able to make friends in those groups quickly. In college she pursued her love of Theatre and majored in Theatre at Oklahoma State University, it was there she learned more of the technical side and all that goes into running a show and putting on a good production. In 2009, she was frustrated with the lack of theatre available to children in her local community. There wasn’t anything for her young sons to go see live unless they traveled several hours away. Theatre having been such a huge part of her identity and confidence she wanted to share that with her children and the other children in her community. So, she started the Children’s theatre program at her community theatre. This was a production of adults doing live theatre for children. This was an excellent way to introduce kids to the magic of live theatre. Short plays with lots of fun and adults being silly, with a teaching element thrown in the form of a narrator to explain to the kids what was going on and what an “intermission” is or how to behave only helped to enhance the experience. She kept the cost low and the times appropriate for children. It was a huge success and is still going on all these years later at that theatre. She went from military brat to military spouse and followed her husband all over the country as he served his time in the army. Upon his retirement, they returned to their hometown where she began directing and performing again. It was here that she realized she wanted to rent plays for adults to do for children, with live music and chase scenes and silliness with a teaching element but she wasn’t finding what she wanted exactly. Thus began her lifelong dream of becoming a playwright. She adapted the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel in 2023 and then copyrighted it and directed it at her local theatre. It was a major success! A friend at another theatre company in Washington mentioned that it was a great script and there was a need for appropriate fairy tales for kids to perform and adults to perform that were just the right length, and funny. Mary Aiaka picked up her pen and began to write. This website and these plays are the fruits of that dream! She hopes you enjoy them and that if even one child is awed and touched and inspired by the magic of live theatre through one of her shows, then she is happy. When not editing and writing plays, she can be found directing and performing in shows at her local theatre, chauffeuring her youngest daughter to dance and gymnastics, reading a good book snuggled up with her big dog Hank, hanging with her amazing husband watching documentaries and Christmas movies or visiting her now older boys in college. The arts are so important! Theatre, fine arts, music are all being eliminated in schools today when they should be encouraged and funded and supported. If you have read this far, God bless you and thank you for supporting arts education and our young people. Hope you like the plays! She would love to hear from you about anything!