On May 15, the curtain opened in DePaul’s Merle Reskin Theatre for the last first show of a few The Theatre School seniors. “The Chronicles of the Kaleidoscope Visitors,” which ran through May 31, is classified as a kids show, teaching lessons on how to foster curiosity and practice advocacy for oneself and others.

In the show, which takes place on an isolated winter island, Sister Fibonacci (Alejandra Tamez) finds two green creatures, Gorgoo (McClairen Eisenhour) and Gagaa (Cookie Isenberg), who are very obviously out of place. 

Working on a Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) show is a little different than an adult showing, but it comes full circle for graduating seniors. Many students that worked on the show had their passion for theater start early in life, and they get to create that magic for someone else.

For DePaul senior Bruno Diaz, the play’s stage manager, closing on a TYA show was a full circle moment in another way. In his first show with The Theatre School, he worked as an assistant stage manager for a young audience play – now he finished his degree with another. He said he loves them every time and finds it rewarding.

“I do what I do now because my parents would take me to see shows at a very young age. Sharing the passion and excitement for what we do with students of that age is so joyful,” Diaz said. “When we come in for student matinees, you can feel a different kind of energy in the building.”

Senior Riley Trzeciak was the student draper for the show, working with costumes for a specific group of the cast. She felt similar to Diaz, saying she was proud of her and her collaborators’ work when the kids would show excitement.

“It was so rewarding to hear them cheering and interacting with the actors,” Trzeciak said. “I especially loved when the kids would ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at the costumes and transformations on stage.”

The TYA program at DePaul buses in hundreds of students from different parts of Chicago. This show was perfect for the program as it’s full of moving parts, costume transitions, big wigs and bright colors.

Actress Cookie Isenberg, who played Gagaa, is a graduating senior and ‘Kaleidoscope’ was her last DePaul spotlight. Painted bright green, they wore a huge flower hat and spoke in tongues unfamiliar to the audience. Learning this new language was actually one of their favorite parts of working on the show.

“We had such a blast figuring out what the accent would be, how certain sounds would come out and what a word might mean,” Isenberg said. “We truly built it from the ground up and once I began to feel comfortable in it, it felt like a whole new world had opened up.”

While the audience couldn’t quite get what Gagaa was saying, her character showed audiences what it meant to be different and shut out because of it.

Isenberg said she was much more sentimental about the process, considering it was her last DePaul show, and put everything she had into her last performance. This was also their second and last time working with director Katrina Dion, of which they loved every second.

While they can only communicate with young theater lovers through the stage, each senior has different advice for someone thinking about going into the theater world.

Diaz says that opportunities are out there, but they won’t show up on your door. 

“Go find out who is doing what you want to do and meet them,” Diaz said.

Trzeciak thinks that it’s worth it. She says every path as a costume technician will look different and that “if you know this is what you want to do, then it’s worth it to put in the work and figure it out.”

And for Isenberg, it’s all about staying true to yourself as an artist, whether that be staying true to what you want or preserving your uniqueness.

“In a field like this, it’s so easy to lose that in all the different parts you’ll play and jobs you’ll want, but if you listen to yourself and know what you want or don’t want, everything else will shake out,” Isenberg said.

Trzeciak and Isenberg plan to stay in Chicago after graduation while Diaz hopes to be living “out of a suitcase” on a tour, hopefully working with musical theater.

From learning how to collaborate and work with different people to figuring out how to stay curious and unique in such a creative field, every “Kaleidoscope” senior wrapped their last show with success. And, for Isenberg, as a different color.