by Abby Condon & Emily Camargo, UT Alumni and current UT Advisors
This year, the UT Staff realized something very exciting - we had two new advisors who are also Unified Theater Alumni! Both attended Conard High School and are back in West Hartford teaching middle school and continuing the UT tradition for a new generation! We asked Abby and Emily to reflect on their UT experience and why they wanted to become advisors!
by Abby Condon, Advisor at King Philip Middle School
I joined Unified Theater during my freshman year at Conard High School after participating in Unified Sports throughout middle school. I knew I had found a group I wanted to be a part of when the focus was on encouraging everyone’s ability to shine, opposed to competing against each other by focusing on our differences. According to the Mean Girls’ categorization, our group included the band geeks, the varsity jocks, the math nerds, and the freshmen. However, at Unified Theater, those labels do not matter. We all collaborated, cooperated, and contributed towards our final production. We danced, we sang (in Sign Language, too!), and we acted. I was continuously reminded that imperfections should be embraced. I was shown that there are multiple ways to communicate, whether it be facial, via an iPad, or through movement. I learned how to lead a large group of people toward a common goal. It was in those moments that I decided to become a special education teacher. I wanted to help people realize their true potential while defying the limits of their labels. Now, I am beginning my first year as a Unified Theater advisor and I could not be more excited. It’s like they say, everything happens for a reason.
by Emily Camargo, Advisor at Bristow Middle School
My name is Emily Camargo and I am now an alumni and soon to be a teacher advisor at the wonderful Bristow Middle School in West Hartford. I participated in the very first middle school UT performance. From that point on, I was hooked. At the age of about 12 years old, I loved the feeling that I had as I was able to work with people of all different kinds of abilities. UT helped me see that those with disabilities are more alike then people may think. After two years of UT at middle school, I moved along to take part in the UT program at my high school where I was really able to engross myself in the program. During UT in high school, I loved it so much that I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. FAST FORWARD. I am back from a short college break and am going to be introducing and leading many wonderful children into the new UT program at Brisow Middle School. I look back and think how grateful I am to have had UT to guide me into my passion of working with those with amazing abilities. I can't wait to pass that passion onto my students.
Originally, I was a person who was more of an introvert and really didn’t have many friends. I was one of the few kids in my school who was in a wheelchair.
Although I was in the mainstream classes I think sometimes the other kids in school didn’t know how to relate to me because I was different from them. After school one day, while in my freshman year of high school, I was approached by a teacher who told me about an opportunity called Unified Theater. It sounded interesting to me. So I went that day and I actually had a very good time.
At UT I met a lot of new people who became fast friends. It really did change my life by allowing me to discover that other people in the same age range as me have some of the same interests as I do. I think the other kids also learned that I was really just another one of them.
Unified Theater has now been a part of my life for the past six years and it has continued to help me make new friends even after high school. In UT, the differences disappear.
