Special Delivery from Center for the Performing Arts Helps Families Connect with Creativity at Home

During a time when live performances are more or less out of the question for many families, the Center for the Performing Arts Penn State is changing the way it connects families with the arts. One way the center is doing that is by taking the fun and education of the theater directly into families’ homes with its new program, Special Delivery. 

Available for purchase now, with deliveries starting March 15 and running through April 23, the Special Delivery program features six weeks of mailed kits for $64 per household, with one kit sent per week and each addressed directly to the child recipient. Each kit revolves around an artistic project, with instructions and ideas to help children lead their families through an arts-based activity, from role-playing to photography to creative writing.

“The Special Delivery project is offline, designed to occur at home and requires role playing,” explains Medora Ebersole, education and community programs manager at the Center for the Performing Arts. 

Ebersole’s role typically consists of bringing families and individuals together around the center’s performances, encouraging them to engage, but over the last year, her role has evolved into something more. 

“We’re not presenting on the stage right now, so what I do is becoming a little bit more focused and important,” she says. “It’s incredible to come together and sit in the theater and experience something on the stage, but what I’m encouraging is [for families] to take those ideas, that enthusiasm and that transformation that can happen when you experience the theater, and embody it. Bring it into your life in different ways. I’m creating experiences for people to learn, explore and celebrate theater performance.”

The Special Delivery project is a perfect example of these experiences, especially when it comes to the activities and kits that require a child to role play. 

“In role playing, you have to consider something outside your experiences and step into it and try it on,” Ebersole says. “These activities require you to do that, but in that process, you have to draw on the knowledge you already have. They take ordinary objects in your home that you know, and you have to draw on the knowledge you have and use your empathy and relationship to that object or person, and then you explore using your mind, your emotions, your voice and your body. Your whole self is given up to this idea of a different way of seeing these objects and a different voice. 

“Performing is so important in child development. It’s a way of engaging higher-level thinking and can be used to explore almost anything.”

In 2020, the Center for Performing Arts facilitated a program that inserted performing arts self-care kits into school lunches, but, Ebersole notes, the Special Delivery project allows families to access the arts beyond the school setting. 

“Families are together more and there’s more [family] time because you’re not commuting or going to outside activities, so I do think there’s new exploring going on, but I think people are intimidated by art,” she says. “They’re watching amazing performances and there are more interesting things available, but you’re always just watching or consuming it. 

“I think that the time is right for this. The teachers do their best, but we know that there’s little time in the school day for the arts, and yet … to include art is so important.” 

Special Delivery is recommended for children ages 8 to 12 and deliveries are mailed March 15 and 22, and April 5, 12, 19 and 26. However, Special Delivery is available for purchase through April 23. For those purchasing after the first scheduled delivery is mailed, past deliveries are grouped together in a family’s first delivery. 

While Ebersole says the excitement of receiving their own weekly mailed activities is part of the fun for child participants, parents can adapt the program to better fit their needs, whether that means adapting the program for multiple children in the family or saving the kits for later use. 

“It doesn’t have to happen exactly this way,” she says. “People are enjoying the increased family time, but on the other hand, there’s a lot of it. If I were a parent, I might squirrel this away and pull it out for a rainy day. It’s a great resource.”

While the Center for the Performing Arts’ family performances often drew crowds of 400 to 500 attendees, Ebersole says she and her team have set what they feel is a “realistic” goal of involving at least 100 families in the Special Delivery project. For those with questions, she encourages families to reach out to the center. 

“If there are any questions, email or phone us and we’ll figure out how to make it work for the family,” she says. “We see this as something we can hope to continue. We did it a little last year with our performing arts self-care kits distributed through school lunches. We just really want to play up the idea that learning happens everywhere — in the family and the community, as well as in the school.” 

During and after the program, she encourages families to submit their resulting art work for exhibition on the Center for Performing Arts website. 

“We really want to share that with our entire community — the art that gets created.”

For ordering information and details about each week’s kit visit https://cpa.psu.edu/specialdelivery.