GETTING INTO THE ACT

Jo Ann Ruess had just decided to add theater classes to the curriculum at her Academy of DanceArts. Jennifer Birk, back in Southeast Missouri after three years of performing in the MUNY's 1st Stage children's theater in St. Louis, phoned looking for work.

"It was meant to be," Birk and Ruess said in unison.

Birk taught about 40 students in acting classes in the fall. Five spring semester classes are being offered for 3-year-olds through teen-agers, most of them after school.

Ruess has leased the next door Quonset hut previously occupied by an auto repair shop with the aim of offering theater classes there once renovations are complete.

Acting classes aren't just for children who want to be the next Macaulay Culkin, the teachers say. The assurance the children gain "will help them no matter what their career turns out to be," Birk says.

Acting classes can be particularly helpful for children who are shy, she says. "We start doing charades and thing where they don't have to talk." Nourished with generous amounts of applause, shy children "gradually start talking," she says.

Getting boys to sign up for acting classes hasn't been difficult.

"They don't mind being with girls as long as there are other boys," Ruess says.

"Guys always can get parts," Birk added. "You always need princes."

Getting parts wasn't easy for Birk when she began her acting career. She attended Kelly High School in Benton, a school that dropped drama the year after she graduated in 1986.

Though her acting experience was limited, she moved to Columbia to study theater at Stephens College, home of one of the country's finest theater programs.

"My parents thought I was insane," she says.

Stephens was very competitive. "It took awhile to get parts. Afterward, that helped me be strong (later) when rejections came along," she said.

Birk was the only student in the Stephens program who concentrated on children's theater.

"I preferred it," she says of children's theater. "I love kids. I was the oddball."

Besides teaching theater, she also is a storyteller who entertains for children's parties.

"I like to make children laugh," she says.

While in St. Louis, Birk appeared as Harriet in "Harriet & the Tortoise & Hare" for Muny 1st Stage, and also had roles in the troupe's productions of "The Velveteen Rabbit," "In Her Own Right," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "Meet Willie" and "Step on a Crack."

She also did some stage managing for the MUNY and appeared in a number of commercials and industrial films. She lists piano, saxophone, jazz and tap dance and "animal sounds" among her skills.

Birk's long-term goal was always to come back to Southeast Missouri and do children's theater. The return occurred sooner than expected when her husband, Stan Cook, took a job teaching television and video at the Perryville Area Career and Technology Center.

Now she's teaching local kids the basics of acting and even how to act for the camera. Birk hopes to add a musical theater class and a stage makeup class eventually.

Noting the university's interest in building a performing arts center, Ruess says acting classes for children can help foster an atmosphere in which the arts can thrive.

"They'll support it when they get older," she said.