April Crowley: From Harwich To Wonderland

April Crowley has come a long way from her hometown of Harwich. Once might even say she has made it to Wonderland.

In her position as artistic and equity coordinator for the Tony Award-winning Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) in Minneapolis, Minn., the nation’s largest and most acclaimed theater for young people and multigenerational audiences, Crowley organizes sensory-friendly performances and researches and performs outreach activities. She also works in collaboration with her colleagues to coordinate JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) training and education opportunities for staff and to partner with local affinity groups around specific programming.

Crowley explained that sensory-friendly shows try to respond to the needs of CTC’s audience members who are on the autism spectrum.

“We bring down the volume of the soundscape, leave the lights up in the house to a certain degree — dark can be disconcerting to some audience members — and we make an announcement with content warnings and a land acknowledgment,” Crowley said. “Our partner organization called Fraser works with kids on the spectrum by providing ear protection and adaptive devices. We also provide a quiet space where someone can take a break if they need to during a stimulating scene or moment.”

Crowley, 28, grew up in Harwich and was a member of the last graduating class of Harwich High School before the building was razed to make way for the new Monomoy Regional High School. Crowley was active in the Harwich High School drama program, which at the time was integrated with students from Chatham High School.

“I did theater and I was a singer,” Crowley said. “I sang in various choral groups in school, and singing became an important part of my identity. I love music, specifically vocal music. At that age it was the thing I was most passionate about in the world.”

Crowey credits her “practical streak” for the decision to take her passion into a direction other than performance. At first she thought she might go into a career as a musical therapist.

“I was interested in expressive therapies, especially recent studies showing memories of music from one’s youth are the last thing to go in cases of memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. So it’s very therapeutic to be exposed to music from one’s youth.”

Ultimately, however, Crowley chose not to go into a clinical setting, instead studying ethnomusicology, which she described as a cross between music and anthropology outside of the Western canon.

“I studied Irish traditional song,” Crowley said. “I went to Cork County in Ireland for study abroad, studied Irish traditional song there, and wrote my thesis on depictions of women in Irish traditional song.”

Crowley said that although she enjoyed her studies, she is by nature very extroverted and social, and found her study of ethnographic research isolating. Eventually she decided she was not interested in making that a long term career either, but she didn't want to give up her connection to the arts.

“So I pivoted into arts administration,” Crowley said. “I love it.”

She joined the staff at the Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) in Minneapolis in October 2023, making the move from New England to Minnesota. Crowley and her spouse, Rory, now share their home with a Pomeranian-papillon mix called Hazel.

In addition to her facilitation of sensory-friendly performances, Crowley’s work for the CTC includes community engagement. She reaches out to advocacy organizations to form affiliations with groups of marginalized people, offering opportunities to engage and connect.

“For example, a show we happen to be doing is called ‘Drawing Lessons.’ It’s about a Korean-American immigrant family and a young girl struggling with social anxiety and selective mutism,” Crowley said. “Through the lens of immigrant experience, we are reaching out to the Korean community with this story of the empowerment of a young girl finding her voice. The crux of the story is visual art, specifically comics. Through exploring this intersectionality, I get to reach out to communities, engage with them, and invite them to experience this opportunity to connect among people like them and not like them.”

Recalling her early years on the Cape brings up memories of time spent outdoors swimming and enjoying the natural beauty of her hometown.

“It was lovely to grow up so close to the beach,” Crowley said. “My dad is a conservationist and enjoys being in nature. He spent a lot of time with us on the beach and at Nickerson State Park, clamming, swimming, doing all kinds of coastal activities. I learned to swim from Catherine Clark Kroeger, a fascinating person who gave me private adaptive swimming lessons in a pool.”

Crowley’s adaptive swimming lessons helped to address the challenges of cerebral palsy, which she described as a congenital condition which affects mostly the lower limbs.

“People born with it have a very wide range of effects on the body,” Crowley said. “I am an ambulatory wheelchair user, meaning I use the wheelchair for distances. I use crutches when I’m not using the wheelchair.”

What does the future hold for Crowley? She is currently training in the skill of holding workshops to deliver the CTC’s allyship training model.

“We’ve developed the model to create group norms of how to treat each other during rehearsal,” Crowley explained. “We hold a workshop with casts to talk about allyship, intent vs. impact, and what it means to identify with gender and racial markers. We ask, how do you identify and why? Why do I identify with womanhood, race, ethnicity, gender, pronouns? We have really good conversations in allyship training. Our goal is to create a compassionate environment where people — often young people — feel safe to express themselves artistically. It is a value of the theater to not talk down to youth. They have the capacity to say something beautiful, and we as adults have to not undervalue that.”

For more information about the Children’s Theatre Company, visit childrenstheatre.org.