Sneak Peek: Meet director, cast of 'Princess and the Peas' at Columbus State

They are an amazing group. They are hard working. It is a joy to be with them. They are all very congenial. They live by the four tenets of our kingdom, I feel like. The kindness is there, the sensitivity is there, the empathy is there. It's been such a blessing, oh my gosh. I think I've found such a deeper understanding of this text than I would any other script that I would have been handed because I've been able to ask like even just like silly questions about things and have the playwright answer them. It's been great. And so my job as a director is to help mine their intent into the arc of the story. Vivian has been very helpful. I came into this with no experience with any combat sword fighting, but she was able to take the time to be able to teach us the correct and right ways to go about this and be safe with it. It is about discovering the play within all of us. Each actor brings themselves to the role and so that makes their perspective on the role very unique. Theater is so important to the world. It helps us express ourselves every day. When you come into a theater space, you leave everything out the door and all of your emotions, everything that you're feeling, you put it into the work that you're doing. We get to share that with other children who may be going through things and see, hey, this is a way to express myself. I could do this one day. As a career, this is what I want to do in life. So to be able to give that like similar experience and like that same or even bigger passion in someone else, a younger person, that would be amazing to do for them what was done for me.