A one-man performance will narrate a teacher’s first year at a school, the issues he faced and the connection he made with the students he taught.

Jack Freiberger, an actor turned teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District, will be performing a one-man show about how he combined his love of teaching and acting to inspire his students.

The performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Black Box Theatre of the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

Dan Crews, the director of patron services at Doudna, said they wanted to bring Freiberger’s show to campus because it would introduce students to his experiences.

“He was a young, eager person who wanted to get a job and was looking for a new place to apply his education,” Crews said.

Freiberger originally moved from Indianapolis to Los Angeles to become an actor before starting as a substitute teacher.

Freiberger said he loved being a substitute so he got his credentials and started full time, but he still acts from time to time.

“I don’t know how you can be a teacher without being an actor; you need to have that skill,” Freiberger said. “You don’t necessarily have to be a teacher to be an actor or an actor to be a teacher, but it certainly helps in the classroom, that’s for sure.

Crews said Freiberger was thrown into a new situation where he had to make connections with children who have grown up in a dangerous area and with different backgrounds than him.

“He was able to make a connection, change people’s lives because of his way of teaching,” Crews said.

“This just chronicles his teaching experience and what he was able to do there,” he said.

Freiberger said he teaches fifth grade, and his show is based off of his career.

“My first year was very inspirational,” Freiberger said.

“There is so much drama that goes on behind the classroom door—it’s a natural arena for drama to occur—and these kids, students and teachers have amazing stories, some very positive and some very negative or both,” he said.

Freiberger said he was going to originally call the show “Behind the Classroom Door” because it shares these stories.

“It explains really getting out there and entering yourself into the teacher milieu and trying to make a difference and seeing how challenging it can sometimes be,” Freiberger said.

Freiberger will also be giving two workshops during his visit.

“We have a lot of students who want to become teachers, that this will make a connection with them,” Crews said.

Freiberger will be giving a workshop on performing a solo performance.

“It will focus on autobiographical solo performance, creating art out of the fabric of our lives,” Freiberger said.

He said this class will help anyone with their storytelling and writing.

“The object is to show them, not tell them,” Freiberger said.

He will also give a workshop about teaching.

“It’ll be a combination of classroom stories, pragmatic and a practical presentation, and it will deal with some of my teaching philosophies and explore some of those stories and what I’ve learned through the years,” Freiberger said.

He said he wants to get a conversation started about the different areas within teaching.

“I’m not there to tell anyone to do anything; I just want them to get ideas that I have, present to them, and learn from my experience and interpret it into their own way of seeing things,” Freiberger said.

Tickets are $7 for students, $12 for Eastern employees and those 62 or older and $15 for the general public.

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.