Bobcat Stories

There is no better term than “spotlight” to showcase the Bosque School Performing Arts Department, which is unique in that its members are all professionals in their fields and nearly all continue to perform professionally outside of school. They are among the busiest and most intricately scheduled people you will ever meet.

In a discussion of their own arts education, professional history, and the factors that most influence their teaching, everyone in the department identified a passion for their specialty at a fairly young age and expressed gratitude for remarkable mentors and sometimes unexpected career opportunities. When reflecting on their teaching life at Bosque School and the value of the arts to our students, they agree that the magic of the performing arts lies in being part of something larger than oneself, creating something beautiful that cannot be done alone.

Department Leader and Band Director, Aaron Morales, has been at Bosque School since 2019.  Since high school, percussion has been his passion. As a college student teaching in a high school band program, he had the opportunity to take a percussion ensemble to a prestigious music festival in Indianapolis. That event inspired his ambition to become a high school band director of the highest caliber and to incorporate percussion into the band experience in a significant way. He is proud of how each member of his department functions independently to create a strong program. They share a truly progressive philosophy, focusing on growth and improvement, with the end result being great performances. He stays musically active by auditioning and performing with local groups and by recording his own music. One day, he would like to release his music through a streaming platform like YouTube. He acknowledged, as did every department member, that sustaining a performing career alongside teaching isn’t easy. A previous job directing an intense marching band left him no time for professional play. He is grateful to his colleague, Nicolle Maniaci, for encouraging him to find time to work on his own music.

Director of String Ensemble, Nicolle Maniaci, might be the epitome of the dual roles of teacher/performer. She has been a professional violinist since her teens, when she began teaching violin at the Albuquerque Symphony Program, where she had studied since age 11. Ms. Maniaci had numerous influential mentors, including James Bonnell and Dale Kempter. Kathleen Hill, her orchestra teacher at Cibola High School, was also a big inspiration. Passionate about student-led education, Ms. Hill inspired Ms. Maniaci to teach others to love both music and the process of learning music in an ensemble. 

At age 19, Ms. Maniaci joined the Santa Fe Symphony, with whom she still plays, and she is a member of the New Mexico Philharmonic and Opera Southwest, where she also has personnel management roles. She spent 10 years teaching in various Albuquerque public schools. She joined Bosque School in 2003, where she essentially created the string ensemble program, adding a new class every year. She fell in love with the autonomy in her classroom, which gave her freedom and time to focus on detailed instruction and to develop close relationships with her students. Making music, especially in ensembles, was transformative for her, and she’s especially pleased when former students contact her to share how important their Bosque School music experience was to them.  

Upper School Choral Director Joanna Hart, who has been at Bosque School since 2005, has also been performing her whole life, starting with piano and singing lessons from her mom. Ms. Hart has had several opportunities that have led her to where she is today, including singing in a highly selective college choir and touring nationally and internationally. One highlight for her was singing the lead role in an opera in Rome, Italy, just a few blocks from the Colosseum. At intermission, the entire orchestra went down the street for an espresso. The performance ended around midnight, and the audience stayed until the very end.  Since then, she has performed with students at the Vatican, Carnegie Hall, and major cathedrals in Italy and Ireland, all magical settings in which to sing. It’s exciting to watch her students have these dramatic performance experiences, but equally satisfying to Ms. Hart are the daily affirmations from her students when they love a particular piece of music or feel a rehearsal went well.

Daily accomplishments are also important for Julia Manganaro, Middle School Choral Teacher, and Musical Director for the middle school musical. She has been a singer since she was a child in church, harmonizing with her mother and sister. During high school in Carlsbad, NM, her voice teacher, Carol Brashear, inspired her to imagine building a life in music. Ms. Manganaro sings with a jazz group every month, writes original music, and plays in various bands. She’s also been the music director, organist, and choir director at St. Chad’s Episcopal Church for the last 10 years. After graduating from NMSU and UNM, she spent her first five years teaching at Santa Fe and Capshaw middle schools. With large classes, she had to develop strategies to build community and gain students' buy-in. She capped those years with a triumphant performance evaluation, which involved taking her 150-student choir to sing in a concert in Los Alamos. When she came to Bosque School in 2019, she was able to take those skills and use them to organize and inspire her middle school students and to be more authentically herself. She loves that the middle school musical gives younger students a chance to shine and build skills they will use in high school. She values contributing in many different ways to all the Bosque School productions, including the high school musical. A highlight last year was attending the Enchantment Awards at Popejoy Hall, where performers from “Hadestown” won several awards. She loved seeing how Bosque School students handled themselves with maturity and grace, and how their high-quality performances compared so favorably with those of the other, often much larger schools.

For Meghan Bode, middle school and upper school drama director since 2016, winning those Enchantment Awards was a powerful affirmation of her vision for the theater department — to run it as an ensemble and to mimic the structure and experience of a professional theater. As a high school theater student, she wasn’t in the spotlight, often cast in ensemble or supporting character roles. In college at UNM, however, her professors and directors recognized her talent, and she got more opportunities, including what she called a game-changer: being cast as Helena in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (which is this year’s mainstage fall production!).  She’s grateful to her UNM mentors Denise Schultz and Paul Ford for their support and faith in her.  Paul Ford cast her in her first truly ensemble-based show: “Under Milkwood,” based on the Dylan Thomas poem. After graduation, Ms. Bode went on to work in regional theater, which involved mass auditions and a life spent in three-month chunks across the country. Her first role was in Florida, at a professional theater production of “Macbeth,” where she was cast as a witch and understudy for Lady Macbeth, an equity actor who never arrived. So, Ms. Bode, just a few months out of college, ended up playing the hefty role of Lady Macbeth. It was in a park, and she had to jump into a pool—a pretty wild first professional experience that shaped her understanding of performing Shakespeare. Another formative position was in summer stock at the Seaside Repertory Theater in Santa Rosa Beach. There, a three-month contract stretched into the fall and beyond. Ms. Bode found herself doing much more than acting; the small company used her in costumes, props, stage management, and educational outreach. Those prepared her for the multifaceted job she now does at Bosque School. She continues to perform regionally, preferring roles in immersive, interactive theater. Being in a cast is a way to stay in touch with the casts she directs here at school. Her casts are inclusive – she does no cuts – and she works hard to find a role or position for everyone who wants to participate. She’s as invested in the students who are trying something for the first – and maybe only time – as she is in those who might go on to do theater professionally.  Like her colleagues, Ms. Bode believes that the value of ensemble experience can ripple through your whole life and that deep communal experiences in the arts create future patrons and supporters of the arts. All art, she believes, exists to help us make sense of being human.  

All those actors and student directors that Ms. Bode is nurturing and inspiring could not do their amazing work without Doug Lowry, the department’s technical director and technical theater teacher since 2022. He started as an actor, and like Ms. Bode, did several years of regional theater after college. One highlight was at Maine State Music Theater, on the campus of Bowdoin College, where he used both his acting and technical skills. In California, he was cast as the villain in “Great American Melodrama,” where he enjoyed being booed and hissed at. That role led to a long professional career in Los Angeles as a technical theater director. Small companies there face financial, space, and talent limitations, so he learned to manage expectations and work around those constraints to still create a great final product. Mr. Lowry’s time in Los Angeles included 13 years of teaching at the Marlborough School, where he honed his educational philosophy of developing strategies to work within the reality of constraints. He approaches his collaborative work in set design, lighting, and sound with the question, “What if?” and runs the technical program with the goal that his students leave the program ready to be hired by a professional company. His favorite part of teaching is “watching the smoke come out of their ears” when students figure it out. Whether a student solves a problem or masters a tool (occasionally amid sparks and screams), there is magic in the moment. Another favorite is the moment in the show when Mr. Lowry gives a nod to management, which is his way of releasing the show to the students; they’ve done the prep and are ready to create their own success. If something doesn’t go right, they are ready to adapt and manage it on the spot, without the audience even knowing. That’s their superpower.

The performing arts department also wants to recognize Zach Lang, drama assistant and front-of-house manager since 2018, and Michael Boring, accompanist for the performing arts program since 2018. They help make sure “the show goes on!”

Every member of the department emphasized that their relationships with the students are paramount. As teachers, they are proud of the great work their students do, both in cumulative progress and standout performances. They are equally proud of the way the students take care of each other and lift each other up. When the students show up to work on a shared goal, everything else falls away, showing that they have learned. As Ms. Bode puts it, their job is to make the people around them look as good as they possibly can. Every member of the department is grateful for the chance to teach, mentor, and inspire their students, as their own teachers did for them. It is the truest expression of love and hope.