ARIEL Theatrical teaches practical skills for young people, both on and off the stage.

It’s 4pm in sunny downtown Salinas and 12-year-old Stella Del Real is walking down Main Street, escorted by her mother, Jamie. She just finished school for the day, but is ready for two hours of rehearsals, a few times each week, at ARIEL Theatrical, where for the last 25 years, local children have been acting in shows for others their age, and where Stella has been thriving for the last three years.

“This is where my friends are,” she says. “I enjoy singing and having fun with all the nice people there.”

She adds that when she started, she didn’t know about the “message”—the fact that ARIEL is not just about acting, but about developing various qualities of character. This is what hooked her, from her first show, The Chronicles of Narnia, when she was 9, through Frozen Jr., where she played young Elsa, Pinocchio (she had the main role at age 10), and now The Emperor’s New Clothes, where she will play one of the spies. 

This year marks a quarter of a decade since ARIEL has been operating in the Karen Wilson Children’s Theatre on Main Street in Oldtown Salinas. But this story goes much further in time.

It all started at Gail Higginbotham’s kitchen table. In the early ’80s, this mother of five children discovered that if she wanted her kids to see a children’s show, she had to go to San Jose or San Francisco. Then she was asked by her church to put on a production of Peter Pan; soon the show was picked up by the Alisal Union School District and migrated to Sherwood Hall. This is how ARIEL Theatrical was born.

“We were just moms, trying to do something for their kids,” Higginbotham says. “But there was just a huge interest, a hunger for that kind of thing. Local schools wanted children to be able to see other children performing.”

In the early days, ARIEL utilized driveways, garages, barns, homes, churches, schools and warehouses as rehearsal spaces. Performances were scattered around Salinas in a variety of venues, attended by tens of thousands of school children. These days, approximately 500 kids perform at ARIEL, and roughly 10,000 audience members attend shows. When registration for programs opens, some of them are filled within four minutes.

There are no auditions; one registers for a program and the roles get distributed. That’s because “every child is valuable,” Higginbotham says. “That it’s not talent that makes you valuable, it’s you yourself, intrinsically, as a human being that is being valuable.”

ARIEL stands for accountability, respect, integrity, excellence and leadership.

“ARIEL’s program is really good at building kids up,” says Sarah Gaudoin, who had experience with the nonprofit both as a child and an adult, and is currently, along with her husband Justin Gaudoin, running Paper Wing Theatre in Monterey. “The philosophy of ARIEL is not just get on stage and perform for everybody to look at you. The leadership there is very passionate about teaching life skills through theater.”

Gaudoin grew up in Salinas and did two shows with ARIEL when she was 13 and 14. More recently, she has filmed a couple of the nonprofit’s productions and had plenty of chances to see ARIEL’s children in action.

“It’s funny that the two theaters [ARIEL and Paper Wing] are different in a lot of ways, but the core is actually kind of similar no matter what age you’re working with,” she says. “Having a really supportive structure and high expectations is really important, and from experiencing children’s theater and now working at a community theater that has very professional standards.”

Most of the children that take part in the program will not choose professional theater careers, Higginbotham explains.

“But they all are going to have to be able to speak in public,” she says. “Ask questions in school, do job interviews, conduct business across the counter with a clerk, and be able to handle the unexpected, because there’s all unexpected things that happen on stage. These are all very practical life skills.”

Stella Del Real is a perfect example of the growth through theater experience.

“I’ve seen her become a better actor,” her mother, Jamie, says. “But I can also see her growth in confidence, the way she carries herself and interacts with adults. I’m amazed how she balances her school with the program. She still has straight As.”

With each play, at first everything feels like too much, Stella shares. “But at the end, it seems easy,” she says, demonstrating how she learned a step-by-step, one-thing-at-a-time lesson in life.

What about stage fright?

“I always get a little nervous,” the young actress admits. “Everytime it’s a different experience and you never know how the audience will react.”

Still, a little stage fright doesn’t stop her from seeking more exposure—she played in PacRep’s Annie in 2025 and was part of Beetlejuice Jr. in April.

“When she is not in a production,” her mother comments, “she’s bored.”