There are healing, mind-expanding and therapeutic properties of theater that are often overlooked by educators these days. In a time of increased pressures on getting students to pass standardized tests that were developed in some educational version of a cookie factory, the dramatic arts are among the first courses to be dropped as if at-risk students need more classes focused on the fundamentals.

If a student can’t be reached through traditional class methods and programs, I can’t imagine that more of those classes will suddenly reach them. But that is the traditional line of thinking. Theater classes are being replaced by reading comprehension classes, for example, under the idea that students who are behind on their language skills need more time with “Dick and Jane” and less time with “Romeo and Juliet.” This line of thinking is flawed for this simple reason: If students can’t be reached through standard educational lessons, giving them more of the same will never change that. Such students need other avenues to learning, such as those provided through arts and theater programs.

This is the theory behind Play Buffet IX, a summer theater program for Japanese exchange students co-sponsored by the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, Broadway Center for the Performing Arts and the Academy of International Education. This will mark the second production at Theater on the Square after a decade in Olympia.

“These are kids who didn’t make it in the traditional Japanese system,” says Olympia playwright and program director Bryan Willis. “They just fell through the cracks. I wish we had more options like this for American kids.”

“It is sort of like summer camp; I see them for five or six years,” Willis says.

“I see them grow up from nineteen to when they are twenty-four or twenty-five years old.”

The learning curve during those years is amazingly profound for many of these students, Willis says. The students spend the summer learning about theater and staging works by mostly local playwrights under the idea that the students will learn more and be more engaged in learning about American culture if the plays are as local as possible.

“We try to pick shows that are particularly American,” he says.

One show — “Tater Tot Terror” — involves the actors wearing tater tot costumes and chatting about the world’s great ills. The play takes on a whole new dimension when the audience understands that the Japanese really don’t have tater tots on their menus. The time spent explaining why teen-agers spent their summer in potato costumes has to comprise the funniest conversations ever.

“It’s going to be one of the best shows,” Willis says. “Sometimes at the end of the day my face hurts because I have been smiling all day.”

Play Buffet includes eight new short plays by Northwest writers, including several of the playwrights featured in last May’s Doubleshot Festival.

The plays showcase the talents of 33 Japanese college students. Most of the students live in Lakewood and attend Saint Martin’s University or Pierce College. They spend four or five years in school and often spend every summer in the theater program.

Play Buffet plays one night only at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 18, at Theater on the Square, 915 Broadway. The program expects to draw a few hundred people. Admission is free.  For more information, call 253.591.5894.