Retired Santa Barbara Teacher Unveils Comedy Musical ‘TEACHER’ Amid Heated Labor Negotiations 

Amid heated contract negotiations between the Santa Barbara Unified School District and the Santa Barbara Teachers Association (SBTA), with a potential strike looming on the horizon, one veteran teacher just wants to make his former colleagues laugh. 

What better way to do that than to make fun of the job that causes them so much grief? Write a script and a few silly songs, and voila, you have a musical. 

TEACHER, written by Paul Forster, a retired Santa Barbara High School English teacher, is a show that pokes fun at all the most stressful aspects of being a teacher — from the growing reliance on tech, to overcrowded classrooms, to the bureaucracy breathing down their necks.  

The show, directed by Glenn Landon, will run from June 6 until June 9 at Center Stage Theater. Other than a $5 ticketing fee, admission is free for teachers. 

“If I don’t write a musical for them,” Forster said, “who will?”

Hollywood, Forster explained, does a crappy job of portraying the true teacher experience. Teachers are depicted as either superheroes or jackoffs, and all the job’s daily emotions and tribulations — beyond, perhaps, having to grade too many tests or flippantly deal with one “mean kid” — are skimmed over like a rock across a lake. 

In reality, being a teacher is a rollercoaster of “love and rage,” in Forster’s words. 

Forster broke into tears while speaking about the kids he watched blossom in his classroom. He put immense effort into creating a safe space where kids could be themselves, and sobbed while describing the impact it had on those kids’ daily lives. In many ways, good teachers nurture and uplift their students, which Forster described as a “miracle.” 

On the other hand, “Teachers get the shit beat out of them,” he said. After long days at school that drove him crazy, Forster would go home and write a song to vent all that frustration. 

“The only way I could process the shit I went through was through art,” he explained. 

With a background in writing musicals and screenplays, Forster was inspired to funnel all that rage and love into a musical comedy. Of course, after retiring in 2022, he had more than 30 years of teaching experience to draw on. 

“Woke up this morning, the alarm was the shriek of doom,” a teacher-character’s verse goes, “another day / 38 kids in a room.” 

Many of the topics touched on in the show are included in Forster’s 2023 opinion piece for the Independent, writing about the perfect storm of factors that contributed to 22 teachers and staff leaving his school in 2022 and 17 more leaving in 2023.

The show is a satirical portrayal of this “perfect storm,” where good teachers get broken down, and robot educators — or “iBots” — who “teach to the test” and “never need a raise” are favored by administrative “Educrats.”  Also making an appearance are drug dogs, overbearing parents, and the absurd amount of acronyms now used in education, which had to be included in a “teacher’s term sheet” for the show’s actors. 

Amateur actors were recruited from around town — at places like the farmer’s market, Yoga Soup, and Wyldeworks — such as Awe Experiencer (yes, that is his legal name) who plays the role of the “groovy young teacher.” Experiencer, with his long hair, beard, and yogi-esque appearance, was recruited on two separate occasions by different people to play the role.

Forster has funded the entire show out of his own pocket, joking that he is now “40k in debt.” But, through the casual, fun production, he hopes to do some good.

“It took me two years to get the first week in June I wanted at Center Stage,” before teachers leave for summer, he explained, “when they are ready to come and laugh and unwind.” 

Now is the perfect time. Forster, a former union rep, noted that this year has been “really tough for teachers — as the signs all over Santa Barbara attest,” referring to the “We Stand With Santa Barbara Teachers” signs in shop windows and front lawns around the city.  

“They so deserve a fun night,” he said. 

The show is meant to “mention hard truths” while making teachers feel seen and appreciated. He shared that, in an ideal scenario, it could even inspire the bridging of the gap between top administrators and the classroom. 

“All these people who decide what we do have these nice offices that are quiet,” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ You’re sitting down here in this completely different atmosphere, deciding the right stuff for a bunch of us in hot, overcrowded classrooms. Obviously, their intentions are good — they are not evil people — they want teachers and students to be happy, but, I mean, look around, it’s not working.”

He continued, “So, why don’t we lead the way? And, so what, it started with a comedy musical? So what? There’s the power of art.”

See TEACHER at Center Stage Theatre from June 6-9. centerstagetheater.org/show-details/teacher