‘How to Eat Like a Child’: Inside Orcas Island’s first children’s musical in a decade

Published 1:30 am Monday, March 9, 2026

By Darrell Kirk

Staff reporter

“Pancake.”

It came out of nowhere. Corah Pechacek was in the middle of a rehearsal one afternoon — singing, dancing, acting in what will be the island’s most ambitious children’s production in nearly a decade — and she just shouted it. No reason. No context. Purely, wonderfully, inexplicably childlike.

It stuck. The cast adopted it as their anthem. It means nothing. It means everything.

And that, in a way, is exactly what “How to Eat Like a Child, and Other Lessons in Not Being a Grown-Up” is all about. It will run March 20-21 and 27-28 at 6 p.m. and March 22 and 29 at 2 p.m. in the Black Box. Tickets are available at www.orcascenter.org.

Youth in the lead

What makes this production remarkable is that children are running it.

Grace Zwilling serves as musical director, spending weeks recording individual vocal tracks — for some songs, as many as 10 recordings, one per voice — so every cast member could practice their specific part at home. Stella Dillard, an advanced dancer and 11th-grader, choreographed the show, her first at this scale.

“It’s been a lot more difficult than I expected,” she says, “but I think I’ve had a really good group of people who’ve been supportive and helped me figure it out.”What struck her most was watching younger children throw themselves into movement they’d never tried before. “Even people that have never danced — they’re so enthusiastic about it.”

Dillard has known Grace since she was a tiny child running circles in the Zwilling house during homeschool dance classes — and is only now adjusting to the fact that Grace is a full, capable human person.

Grace puts it warmly: “Ever since I was little, I’ve always looked up to Stella. We’ve known each other since I was teeny tiny and you were a little shorter. It’s just really fun to be working together this way — we’ve always worked together, but in different situations.”

Dillard laughs at the memory: “It’s really crazy to see you do this — because in my head, you’re still that tiny little child running circles around the dance studio while we were trying to dance. And now you’re an actual person, doing things, being your own person. It’s so cool to see that.”

Behind the scenes is Monee Darling — stage manager, backstage anchor and what she cheerfully calls a “professional dance mom.” When Katie Zwilling came to her last summer with the idea, Katie’s pitch was simple: “I’m not doing it without you.”

During performances, Darling will guide two child stage managers — Leo McCune, youth assistant stage manager and sixth-grader, and Owa Nunes, youth assistant stage manager and eighth-grader — through running the show from backstage. The goal, as with everything here, is to put children in charge of as much as they can handle.

Katie cast deliberately across the island’s social geography — different schools, different backgrounds, different skill levels. Over 30 children auditioned for 15 parts; this wasn’t a camp where you sign up, you had to work for your spot.

“They genuinely enjoy each other,” Darling says. “They’ve bonded.”

A message the world needs

Katie directed the show, plays one of only two adult roles, and chose this piece with intention. She performed it herself as a child.

“When they get to that age, there’s this drive to grow up and be very grown up,” Katie says. “I really wanted to remind everybody — what the value and fun and joy is in being a child. You don’t actually have to grow up that fast.”

The show is structured as a series of lessons: How to Beg for a Dog. How to Stay Home from School. How to Torture Your Sister. Each scene is a child demonstrating, with great authority, exactly how childhood works. Corah even has a real-life version of one of the numbers — the family cat arrived home in a carrier meant to help a neighbor find stray kittens. Corah and her brother went over to help, the neighbor handed them a cat and they walked home with it.

“My dad was a little bit against it,” Corah says, “but now he loves the cat.”

The comedy runs deep, but so does the message.

“So many of us listen to artists,” Katie says. “It’s a place where everybody can always have a safe voice.” Giving these children that platform now, she believes, means they’ll carry it with them for the rest of their lives.

Darling, who has watched her own daughter grow and never stopped learning from children, puts it simply: “There’s so much about them that is honest and vulnerable and joyful. Those are probably attributes we all need to aspire more to be.”

Pancake

Here’s what Darling saw one afternoon after a rehearsal: a group of children who, three months earlier, had arrived from different schools — public school, Salmonberry, homeschool, some brand new to the island — sitting together in a braid chain, everyone’s hands in someone else’s hair, quietly hanging out.

“Oh my gosh,” she thought. “You’re all friends now.”

That’s the other thing this show built. This hasn’t happened on Orcas in nearly 10 years.

“Everybody is coming in with a hundred percent of their energy and joy and beauty,” Katie says. “It’s magnificent.”

Three, two, one.

Pancake.