Her second act

Bobbi Wolf took the leap three years ago and reinvented herself - followed her dream - when she retired as a public school teacher and founded the Wolf Performing Arts Center (Wolf PAC) in Wynnewood.

She loved running middle school drama programs in the Lower Merion School District for 20 years, but began to feel that drama in public schools wasn't center stage.

"I really felt in order for me to be creative, and to share what I feel is most important with children, I wanted to start my own place," she said.

Wolf has taken over Wynnewood's Church of the Holy Apostles in the afternoons and evenings, holding acting classes for children, casting and rehearsing plays, and fulfilling her mission to use theater to make children more confident, creative and better citizens.

She likes to say, "Children who create do not destroy."

Her life now is precarious and frantic - and could not be more fulfilling.

"Here I am at 60 doing just what I want to do," she said. "The director of our summer program is my daughter Betsy. All the staff are young people I had taught in public schools. The kids on stage are the next generation, and I'm sitting here with my 1-year-old granddaughter on the lap, and my 91-year-old mother is with me folding brochures. How lucky can one person be?"

Wolf doesn't sit for long.

She is the mother of three, one of whom is a severely disabled daughter. Wolf has worked hard to make Wolf PAC inclusive, to attract and include children of all abilities and disabilities.

A key role in her current production,

Mother Hicks

, to be performed Dec. 7 to 9 at the Narberth Community Theater, is a deaf child. Wolf found and recruited Dylan Panerra, 13, a deaf boy who lives in Jackson, N.J.

"I'm so glad she searched out a deaf actor for a deaf part," said Cindy Panerra, Dylan's mother. "Bobbi has a handicapped child, so she gets it. It would have been so easy to have somebody pretend. I think being celebrated and accepted and wanted - not just the token deaf kid at school - has really done a lot for Dylan's confidence."

Wolf said she has children from 30 schools in her classes.

Her copilot at Wolf PAC, officially her administrative assistant and the codirector of

Mother Hicks

, is Gabriel Nathan, 27, who starred as Captain Hook in Wolf's production of

Peter Pan

at the Bala Cynwyd Middle School 15 years ago.

"I don't think anything could make her happier," said Nathan, who is getting his master's in education and hoping to become a drama teacher.

"She cares and she's totally invested in theater education," he added. "It's in every word she speaks and every breath. I've never seen anybody work harder for what she believes in. She's never going to stop. One day she's going to be here at 91, sitting in the basement, folding brochures."

Glenn Brooks, a chemistry teacher at Lower Merion High School, is playing an adult part in

Mother Hicks

.

"The work she's done with young kids in the school and community is remarkable," he said. "So when she asks me to be here, I'm here."

Brooks has known Wolf since his children went through her middle school drama program. "She always had a huge amount of energy," he said. "If possible, she may even have more now - because its hers."

"She's here all the time," said Haley Conboy, whose daughter Kelsey, 7, is taking a class. "And always wanting to make sure everyone's happy and having a good time."

As Conboy spoke, Wolf walked past with a trash can, picking up after a classroom performance of

Pippin

.

"We always talked about doing this," said daughter Betsy Wolf, 30, an English teacher in the Abington public schools who moonlights as a teacher and director with Wolf PAC. "I just never thought we would do it."

"She loves watching it unfold," said Betsy Wolf, who added that her mother's highest moment so far may have been when Wolf PAC sold out all four performances of

The Wizard of Oz

at Rosemont College.

"If you count smiles and applause," said Wolf, "we're very successful. But turning a profit is very hard in the nonprofit world."

Her greatest challenge, said Wolf, is finding performance space.

It seems every venue - high school, college, community theater - is booked.

This weekend, she and parents and cast will move their props into Narberth Community Theater in preparation for

Mother Hicks

.

Among other new skills, Wolf has discovered how to be fast.

"I've learned I can do it in two weeks," she said.