Melnik led students through Hurricane Katrina re-enactments during Webster’s summer Human Rights Institute.

In a sense, Melnik is the sort of Renaissance woman many Webster students aspire to be: After graduating from Webster with a B.A. in English (Drama emphasis) in 2005, she soon earned her MFA in Theatre with an emphasis in Theatre for Young Audiences, then returned to St. Louis to play several roles that use theatre to effect social change, to reach students and the underserved, and to motivate young people to do the same.

In a word, she says her focus is “integrating theatre and arts across the curriculum,” because the arts are a powerful way to help students use different modes of learning and multiple intelligences.

But a broader goal in Melnik’s work is revealed with her description of the Arts in Social Reform course she recently taught at Webster: “We look at how the arts inspire community,” she says. “How they bring communities together. How they create new communities. How they open new dialog in terms of conflict resolution.”

Through her work with STAGES St. Louis and as a teaching artist at Metro Theater St. Louis, Melnik has seen the arts help homeless youth open up. She’s seen the arts help formerly incarcerated women reconnect with society. And she’s seen the arts help K-12 teachers reach children in ways traditional curriculum cannot. All of these experiences inform how she handles her new position as theatre instructor at Grain Valley High School near Kansas City, Mo.

‘Suddenly, when the students step into that role, they get a new perspective.’

The best way to understand what Melnik does with students is a phrase she uses often: “Step into role.”

So it is with fourth-graders that when she had them “step into role” as artist, instructing them to draw their own image of a stage, Melnik and the cooperating teacher discovered a struggling ESL (English as a Second Language) student’s talent for drawing: “The other kids drew the kind of drawings you’d expect, but this one drew this perfect, beautiful stage,” Melnik says. “Finding that connection with her, that outlet, opened up a new way for the teacher to engage a student who had otherwise been hard to reach.”

So it is with her Arts in Social Reform class, which attracted Webster students who wanted to make a difference with the underprivileged but aren’t sure how.

“They want to help, but we have them step into role as homeless youth first,” Melnik explains. “Each student takes a turn in the role of ‘teacher,’ addressing the rest of our class in the role of the youths. Suddenly, when the student is in that teacher role, and they’re truly imagining the class as a group of homeless youths, they get a new perspective. Because if you just jump in front of a group like that, you can sound condescending, like you’re talking down to them. But when they step into role first, the light bulbs start turning on in their heads. They realize how they need to approach it.”

For Webster’s summer Human Rights Institute, Melnik had students step into role as victims of Hurricane Katrina by acting out survivor scenes in the University quad. “We did image theater first, where you recreate images of scenes and settings first, then add dialog later,” Melnik says. “As they recreate the scene and act it out, they attach emotions and feelings to it. It does more than just thinking about the issue while sitting at a desk.”

Process Over Production: A Breakthrough at Webster’s Thailand Campus

An important way theatre builds community is through the basic process of putting it together. While Webster’s acclaimed Conservatory naturally has the end production in mind, Melnik admits she is more interested in the process of theatre than the production itself.

“In theatre, you need everybody to create things, from set to script, so the process itself brings people together,” she says.

Melnik first got a hint of this while putting together productions as an English undergraduate studying abroad at Webster’s Thailand campus. “I knew I wanted to do theatre, but I didn’t want to do production,” she recalls. “I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to describe exactly what it was I wanted. But putting together student performances at Webster’s Thailand campus, with all the different cultural backgrounds of those students, that really showed me how powerful this artistic process was in bringing diverse people together. The more people you have, the more ideas you have, the better.”

That Thailand experience informed her postgraduate direction, which led her to the University of Central Florida MFA program.

“I knew I wanted to work with youth. I knew I wanted to do theatre for social change,” she said. “I just had no idea at the time that theatre was done in those ways: Working with terminally ill kids, working with the poor. Through working with them and bringing out their expression, you eliminate misconceptions about these communities.”

To demonstrate this effect to her Webster students, Melnik took them to a production by Let’s Start, a St. Louis non-profit that helps incarcerated women transition from prison life to society. The women perform the production, Stories of Hope,” for schools and social agencies to convey their own expressions and aid their reconnection to society.

One of Melnik’s Webster students, a biology major, was moved to create his own sculpture inspired by the women’s experiences.

“He just told me one day: ‘I created a sculpture. Do you want to see it?’” Melnik recalls. “I mean, of course I do! And it was wonderful, full of depth: A black box wrapped in Saran wrap, and inside the box was trash, a potted plant and a mirror – a mirror to the soul. All to represent these women picking up the pieces and reconnecting.”

The sculpture, left in the classroom, drew compliments and inquiries from other Webster professors and students. There it is again: Using the arts to build community, create dialog.

Melnik’s biology major ultimately presented the sculpture at a Let’s Start fundraiser, to touching reviews.

“It was really special for him to have the experience of affecting a community he doesn’t normally interact with,” Melnik said. “He was pre-med, planning on medical school. But now he knows, no matter what, he wants to continue working with communities in this way.”