If there’s one thing from our youth that we could recapture for our adult selves, it would be the absolute wonder of childhood birthday parties. Remember the excitement you felt counting down the days before your friends and family would joyfully celebrate you with gifts [...]
Paper bag puppets are a simple DIY craft project that kiddos readily make their own. All you need is a paper lunch bag and a marker to create puppet magic! Are you looking for a quick and easy way to create pretend play magic with your [...]
Let’s put on a show! Creating a theater play at home might seem like an impossible task, especially for the uninitiated stage parent. But rest assured that you absolutely can help guide your child through making their own play, regardless of your experience. Our 5-step guide [...]
Favorites
Character: Pirate
Power: Flower Power
Storybook Land: Flower Power
About Miss Ella
Ariella Cooley has been teaching and creating at The Rabbit Hole since 2017. As a lead teacher, she uses theater games, song, dance, masks, puppetry, and crafts to tell stories with the kiddos in her class. As sound designer, she pulls from her classroom experience to make the Rabbit Hole Queendom come to life aurally. Crafting whimsical underscores, creating kooky sound effects, and finding expressive character voices make her tasks endlessly enjoyable!
Miss Ella earned her B.A in Theatre Arts from UC Santa Cruz, focusing primarily on acting and directing. Her work as a vocalist and songwriter inspired her expansion to audio production and theatrical sound design. At Rabbit Hole, she is able to tap into all of these artistic loves and fold them into her work with children.
Favorites
Character: Princess Mombi
Power: To eat as much dairy as I want
Storybook Land: Labyrinth
About Miss Bee
Bee is The Rabbit Hole resident prop maker. Outside of the Rabbit Hole Queendom, she is a sculptor and an illustrator. You can sometimes find her drawing people on windows around town.
Favorites
Character: Sabirel
Power: Flying
Storybook Land: Camelot
About Miss Mary
Mary has been a teacher at The Rabbit Hole Children’s Theater for the last four years. You can find her teaching a class, creating activity books, dressing up and performing for kids or jamming at a birthday party!
A recent graduate from San Francisco State University studying Theater and Communications, Mary loves to help children unlock their imaginations and motivate them to create the wonderful ideas in their mind!
Favorites
Character: Wizard Merlin
Power: Invisibility
Storybook Land: Middle Earth
About Mr. Strider
Strider Patton is founder and director, Brooke’s husband, and partner in The Rabbit Hole. A third-generation self-taught artist, Strider grew up appreciating and making art.
He is a professional contemporary visual artist himself, specializing in sculpture, murals, and studio art. When he is not in his studio or on an installation, he is working with the Crew at The Rabbit Hole. Building sets, designing products, creative planning, and the occasional puppet show keep Strider involved with the company from many angles.
He has worked with youth and communities since he was young, valuing the role that creative expression plays in communities and individual lives.
My Favorites:
Character: Lady Amalthea the Unicorn
Power: Shapeshifting
Storybook Land: Tir na nÓg
Kelsey is passionate about imagination, creativity, and embracing your inner child. She has loved to learn new arts and crafts since childhood, and her current repertoire includes illustration, watercolor, gouache, ceramics, sculpture, and more!
Kelsey has a history in teaching children’s classes relating to art, photography, music, and coding, and loves the empowerment it brings to children. In addition, you can often find her dressed as a character for local Renaissance Faires.
Favorites
Character: Coraline
Power: Shapeshifting into mystical creatures
Storybook Land: The Island of Conclusions
About Miss Jenell
Jenell loves the arts and is skilled in performance art, puppetry, storytelling, and surrealism. She often hosts sketching workshops and creates magnificent art displays. She loves playing with Debbie the Dog, her favorite puppet. Jenell believes humor and inventiveness awaken the creative soul.
Favorites
Character: The Little Prince
Power: Communicating with animals
Storybook Land: Wonderland
About Miss Samira
With a multifaceted background in dance, musical theater, fashion design, psychology, and the healing arts, Samira is passionate about bringing together elements from her work as a performer and holistic healer to create an environment that feels playful, nurturing, and safe.
Samira brings warmth and caring energy to the classroom, striving to ensure that every child feels supported, empowered, and seen. She believes strongly in The Rabbit Hole mission and is motivated by the vision of a future generation that is deeply connected with their authentic expression and relates to themselves, each other, and the earth with compassion, acceptance, and respect.
Samira holds degrees in Fashion Design from FIDM and Social & Behavioral Sciences from Berkeley City College. She is a certified energy healing practitioner and is continuing her studies of alternative medicine, hypnotherapy, and trauma resolution.
Favorites
Character: Eeyore
Power: The power of understanding all creatures… while flying!
Storybook Land: Hundred Acre Wood
About Mr. Jake
Jake is an actor and storyteller with education and experience in theatre and cinema. He loves working with kids and helping others find their own creative spark. He has worked in several Bay Area theaters including Custom Made Theatre (San Francisco), Altarena Playhouse (Alameda) and Town Hall Theatre (Lafayette).
Favorites
Character: Totoro
Power: Breathing underwater
Storybook Land: Wonderland
About Miss Sara
Sara Moon places great value in nurturing creative thinkers and dreamers — both children and the inner child within all of us. In addition, she emphasizes recognizing vulnerability, encouraging curiosity and play, and inspiring self-compassion and self-confidence.
Sara holds a B.A. in theatre arts from UC Santa Cruz, where her primary focus was acting and dance. She has also studied physical theatre in the UK and Greece. Drawn to ways in which stories can be told with the body, the mediums she currently engages in include ballet and contemporary dance, devised theater, and modeling. Sara is also a self-taught visual artist who uses illustration to further explore body-mind awareness and the therapeutic nature of art.
Sara believes in the liminal, the spontaneous, and creating for the sheer joy of it.
Favorites
Character: A drowsy cat with a cupcake farm
Power: Flying
Storybook Land: Narnia (not under the white witch’s rule)
About Miss Meryl
Meryl Theo Press has an affinity for play. She brings humor, music, visual art, and empathy to her work with the Crew at The Rabbit Hole. With these tools, she enjoys creating magical worlds for kids to inhabit, in order to stimulate their imaginations, encourage self-expression, and nourish joy.
In the classroom, her focus is on “seeing” the child. In her illustrations, Meryl appreciates detail and seeks a thread of storytelling. In summoning voices for The Rabbit Hole’s audio plays, she digs deep and scoops out the absurd characters within. She uses her longtime love of singing to bring musical elements to Rabbit Hole classes and productions. Meryl studied printmaking and painting at California College of the Arts and has performed with various bands in San Francisco, the United States, and Europe. She has been a part of The Rabbit Hole since 2016. Meryl’s 11-year-old daughter Vida is her most treasured and valuable collaborator.
My Favorites:
Character: Glinda
Power: Ice Magic
Storybook Land: The Shire
Brooke Patton spent that last decade in the classroom developing an imaginary play method designed to nurture creative confidence in early childhood education. She’s the leader of the Crew, having founded The Rabbit Hole Children’s Theater in 2012. Having spent the first eight years in the classroom, she’s created heartfelt experiences for kids both in and out of the school. She’s developed lesson plans, theatrical kits, creative classes, and productions designed to nurture children’s creative development.
She came from a strong foundation in theatrical arts and graduated from The American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City, where she studied Musical Theater. Brooke also holds a strong passion for human development linking the connection play servers for children’s creative development. Her method is rooted in celebrating the creative process and honoring ideas that come from the child—allowing kids to discover the depths of their creative potential and grow up with a sense of worthiness around their ideas. She is a mother to an incredible little girl and loves her family with her whole heart.
