photo by: Contributed/Averill Acting Instititute Archives

Longtime theater teacher and actress Jeanne Averill was cast in a speaking role in the new season of Ted Lasso. Her family will host a community watch party on Aug. 5 when the episode debuts that will raise money for a local theater program.

A Lawrence teacher who has been a staple in the local theater community was cast in one episode of the hit show “Ted Lasso,” and she wants to use her opportunity to give back to the community.

Jeanne Averill, a teacher and actress in Lawrence, booked an on-camera speaking role in season four, episode one, of “Ted Lasso,” starring Kansas City-native Jason Sudeikis as an American football coach who takes over as manager for an English soccer team. Averill’s Kansas City-based agency, Talent Unlimited, announced the casting news on Wednesday.

The episode that Averill will be in will debut on Apple TV on Wednesday, Aug. 5, and her family will host a watch party at Maceli’s to celebrate and raise money for a program near and dear to her heart.

While Averill has gotten acting credits in a variety of film and commercial roles, she is most known in Lawrence for her work with the community’s Summer Youth Theatre, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. The watch party will ask for anyone attending to give a $5 to $10 donation to the Lawrence Arts Center Averill Scholarship Fund, which helps young people participate in the Summer Youth Theatre program she helped found.

Averill said while running Lawrence High School’s theater department for around 30 years, she got the acting itch again, which led to her to audition for roles in Kansas City in both theater and film. Averill said she had sort of a “parallel life” of teaching in school and then performing in the summer.

Jeanne and Ric Averill rehearse the melodrama “Dangerous Damsels,” a revival of one of their 1990s productions from Apple Valley Farm Theatre in this 2016 file photo.

In her decades of teaching, Averill has helped countless students, and she said that theater is “so important for the kids that go through it.” While she enjoyed teaching English as well, since theater was an elective class, all the students there “really wanted to be there.” Averill said the skills being taught in theater — how to present yourself, how to speak clearly, how to harness emotion — are really of use in the real world, and she appreciated how she could see students grow “exponentially” in her classes.

“It just brings out so much in the students,” Averill said.

Averill teaches alongside her acting career, partly because she finds the energy of students so vibrant and optimistic. Acting as a career is “a climate of no.” Even the best of actors will only be successful in their auditions maybe one out of 10 times, and that’s if they are lucky. As a teacher, she finds it really meaningful to be able to encourage her students to pursue their dreams even in a difficult field.

“It’s important to say you can do this (to students),” Averill said.

Her recent casting can be a lesson in that, as well as an exciting celebration for a Lawrence theater mainstay. The watch party event will include a live screening of the new episode, photo opportunities and a “Ted Lasso”-themed costume contest. Doors open for the event at Maceli’s, 1031 New Hampshire St., at 7:30 p.m. The screening will begin at 8 p.m.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Performers in the cast of the Summer Youth Theatre 50th anniversary cabaret sing “Seasons of Love” from Rent during a rehearsal in May 2023. Jeanne Averill, furtherest right, helped found the program and will raise funds to support it during a community watch party.