Her childhood was spent in New York City. However, Robin Pease experienced her most memorable weekends at her grandparent’s home on Long Island, surrounded by a family that loved playing music, singing, dancing and telling stories.
“I always loved stories,” she says. “When I learned to read and write, I realized I could make up my own stories, so I started writing plays, and would force my friends to be the actors.
She immersed herself in the stories that unfolded in films like West Side Story at Radio City Music Hall and in the colorful Broadway musicals that she went to see. It was exciting when her father took her backstage after the shows to meet the actors. There was something entrancing about the stories in the plays, the life of the actors and the energy in those dressing rooms that stayed with her.
The idea that she could be an actor entered her head. Her parents supported her when she enrolled at Boston Conservatory at Berklee to earn a BFA. After graduation and performing in summer stock, Robin joined a theatre company in Idaho as an actor. She was also the company member who, using creative dramatics, prepped students about the shows they were about to see. This was followed by Robin touring as an actor, in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, Ohio, Maine, Illinois and more.
“When working for the New Jersey Council on the Arts, I created this whole program to integrate theatrical arts into the academic core curriculum. Little did I know that was the direction I would eventually go.”
After obtaining her MFA in acting at Case Western Reserve University in 1986, she worked as a visiting professor at Hiram College and then as Director of Theatre and Dance at Hawken School.
Married now, she and her family of four moved to Philadelphia for several years, and when they returned, teaching jobs were scarce. It was a Native American neighbor, in her beloved Cleveland Heights, who suggested that they start a nonprofit business to go into schools and teach cultural programs to enhance diversity. So in 1998, the two started the arts educational organization that was to become Kulture Kids, and Robin has served as Founding Artistic Director ever since.
As Kulture Kids’ reputation with educators, librarians, communities and artists grew, Robin’s work with students continued to flourish. On the roster of teaching artists for The Center for Arts Inspired Learning and Playhouse Square, Robin has taken her arts integration programs into many organizations, including the Rock Hall, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Severance Hall.
In her work for Kulture Kids, Robin consults and writes for MetroHealth Hospital’s Center for Arts in Health SAFE program, a stress and anxiety reduction program for students. She has been an artist-in-residence at many Cleveland Metropolitan and other Ohio Schools, toured nationally for Young Audiences, presented at the Kennedy Center and served on the Education Team for Contemporary Youth Orchestra.
“Robin’s ability to engage communities and foster understanding through universal truths makes her a vital force in the arts,” says Kristan Rothman, associate director, strategic giving at CWRU. “Whether she’s speaking to a room full of children or a theater of adults, Robin’s words resonate in ways that linger long after the final line has been delivered. Audiences leave her performances not only entertained, but wiser, uplifted, and profoundly changed.”
This fall, Robin is completing the final of a four-book series about the building blocks of playwriting – setting, character, conflict and plot for PNC and Playhouse Square’s Grow Up Great preschool program. Kulture Kids’ teaching artists read the book to the students and work with them to create original stories to perform. Everyone involved gets a free copy of the book!
“I am so honored to be a recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize,” declares Robin, whose career as an actor evolved into also being a writer, director, choreographer and educator. “It’s so wonderful to be recognized, but I need to share this award with the artists that I’ve worked with, the administrators and funders who made it happen, and the more than 200,000 students.”