The following is an original production of AZPM News.

(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, meet a student athlete balancing baseball and fatherhood.

(Chaz) Super awesome to see like a baseball team come together and actually raise a kid.

(Tom) Reclamation, confidence and community through burlesque.

(Stella) I find the whole experience like scary, a way to push myself.

(Tom) We'll go under the seams with some of Tucson's most acclaimed costume designers.

(Renée) You have to have a passion for it because it's not the simplest career.

(Tom) Plus, a native option to replace poisonous oleanders.

(Adam) The plant itself creates a very nice habitat.

(Tom) And get to know AZPM's Classical Music Director, James Reel, in our latest episode of Speaking Personally.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara here at our brand new home at the Baker Center for Public Media.

And first up, U of A baseball student athlete Chaz McNelis' life took an unexpected turn and he found out he was going to be a father at the age of 19.

Well, rather than quit his studies in his beloved sport, he decided to embrace fatherhood.

And now he's happily raising his son, Baby G, along with the rest of the U of A baseball team.

♪ TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME ♪ (Chaz) Ever since I became a father, I've learned so much more patience.

I'm more driven, I'm more disciplined.

I've never worked harder for anything.

I have someone that looks up to my everyday actions, so I wanna be the best person I can and teach him to be the best person I can.

That's what he does, he throws everything.

That's how you know he's a baseball player.

He's the best baby of all time, and he changed my world for the better.

I'm Chaz McNelis, I play baseball here at the University of Arizona.

I'm an outfielder and I'm the father of Baby G. Before Baby G was here, it was kind of a crazy life, but normal life.

I was living in Las Vegas, we were very family tight.

When I was two, my dad died in a car crash.

Ever since then, I've always wanted to be a dad.

My mom raising my brother and I, and my sister by herself, really inspired me.

♪ SOFT GUITAR ♪ I'm 41 because my dad was number 41, he played football, and I just always like to represent him.

I'm 20 years old, and Baby G is one years old and two months now.

And I had him when I was 19 years old.

Last year I was at a community college called College of Southern Nevada.

I was red shirt, I didn't know what was the future gonna look like.

I didn't know he was coming.

Baby G's mom, she took the pregnancy test on my mom's birthday, which is April Fool's Day.

She was like, this can't be right.

At first I was like, wow, maybe I do have to quit baseball.

That was kind of going through my head, and that's why the whole day it was built up anxiety, not telling my mom.

That was probably the most nervous I've ever been in my life.

But she told me everything will be all right, and I can make my dreams come true.

And honestly, I can make them come true even better.

We also got matching tattoos that says no matter what, cuz no matter what, everything will be all right.

With every coach that I ever reached out to me, it was the first thing I told them.

I let them know I had a kid, it's not stopping me from my dreams, it's only making me push more.

The coaches here were obviously very accepting of it.

They told me that we're gonna take care of Grayson.

I was expecting a little bit of, wow, he was a kid already, but they all love Baby G. See how he's very hungry.

-Yeah.

The staff, the students here love him, the athletes love him.

Just everyone loves him around here.

-Did you get some pancakes?

-Oh, yeah.

-Yeah, it's every day for you, huh?

Honestly, he's living my dream childhood.

During breakfast, he sits at the high chair, he's at the head of the table.

The uncles feed him sometimes.

Sometimes he'll take a chocolate chip off of one of the uncle's plates.

But they all share his food with him, and they all carry him, they hold him.

You gonna high five?

-High five, bro.

-Yay.

[ LAUGH ] Hell yeah.

All right, see you boys later.

Super awesome to see a baseball team come together and actually raise a kid.

Just watching me is teaching them how to be good fathers, and now they know how to be so good with kids, and kids habits and everything.

They learned so much about life itself as well, just having a kid.

-Is that good?

Since he's been around, I've calmed down so much.

So I just think that's why he can honestly just feel the energy and feel how I feel.

And he sees 40 other dudes calm, he might be calm as well.

♪ WARM MUSIC ♪ If he, for some reason, didn't like baseball and I just made him play baseball, he wouldn't enjoy working hard for it.

But yeah, he seems like a baseball star already.

My goals are honestly bigger now.

I wanna have a 20-year MLB career and multiple time All-Star Hall of Famer World Series champ.

And hopefully, honestly, have the chance to play in the MLB with him, just like the Griffey's did.

And my goal in general is just to be the best dad I can possibly be and give Baby G the best childhood he can ask for.

And just always make sure he's happy and healthy no matter what.

Next, you'll see how a group of burlesque performers share the stage to reclaim their bodies, find confidence within themselves and find support in the community.

♪ CALM MUSIC ♪ (Lola) Without breaking eye contact, I'd like you to give each other facial expression of flirtatious.

♪ RELAXING MUSIC ♪ When I started teaching my workshops, as they're known as Reveal, the first group I had was two people.

The next one was four people and it grew exponentially.

The demand is coming from such a wide range of people.

There's something really transformative about just saying, I don't care.

I don't, for at least three minutes, I'm gonna not care what I look like.

I'm just gonna have fun, I'm gonna entertain these folks.

And then also the realization, like "Oh they don't care either.

Nobody else cares what my body looks like."

Burlesque, it is a sexual art, but it's like an art form.

And it celebrates the human body, all sizes and shapes and stuff like that.

It's pretty healing.

Saying, "I'm not blank enough."

"I'm not tall enough."

"I'm not young enough."

That's part of why I continue to do it.

It really has transformed me as a person.

I feel I move in the world as a better human.

My athletic background in gymnastics was traumatic.

I did a lot of damage to my body.

The process of coming back and reclaiming my body is something that she has been such an incredible guide for.

Totally changed the way I see my body.

(Lola) The workshop itself is currently six separate sessions it's approximately every other week.

So it goes on for a few months.

And then most of the time the show date is just a couple weeks after the workshop ends.

The first thing that you're gonna learn is this is way harder than you expect.

♪ BUBBLY TECH MUSIC ♪ (Lola) Okay, here we are, Halloween show [ CHEERING ] We have the Reveal Show, we love it.

Traditionally, a single burlesque performer creates their own act, which means their own choreography, their own costume, picking the song.

(Stella) She had a, like just a one day workshop and I was like, well, I'm just gonna try it.

On the last day, she asked all of us, we had to commit to go to the show or not.

I said yes and immediately burst into tears.

And so like it was very, like I find the whole experience like scary, a way to push myself.

This next performer is Tucson's pocket rocket, okay?

[ APPLAUSE ] Give it up for Stella Roch!

♪ SMOOTH ELECTRIC GUITAR MUSIC ♪ (Stella) I think if it was a space where it's like, "Oh need to stick your butt out" or "Do this with your leg" I wouldn't have been there.

But I mean, her criticism is "I just wanna see more you."

"I don't see you enough."

And that's, yeah, it's amazing.

[ CHEERING ] (Miss Eisley) Felt really meaningful to get my story across.

I am on the autism spectrum.

I directly referenced RFK Jr.

and his thing about how autistic people are not productive members of society.

Which a lot of the argument is like, yeah, but a lot of them are.

But that's not the correct argument.

The correct argument is that we're human and deserving of love and respect.

♪ GUITAR BASS MUSIC ♪ I'm just so grateful that I got the chance to do it.

Know what resonated.

Know other people felt it.

Know that people who were autistic felt represented.

(Vera) My butterfly act, which is I come out of a cocoon.

She kind of ends up into her most raw form.

♪ RYTHMIC BEAT MUSIC ♪ I did have somebody come up to me after one of those performances and was just in tears.

And she's like, "I don't know how you were able to depict exactly what I'm feeling and what I'm going through in my life right now, but you did it.

And I've never seen anything like that before.

(Lola) One of the things that's really important to me is that there's always respect and that my green room and shows are a safe place for folks.

It's a very vulnerable thing that we're doing and people need to feel that they're held.

I've been in green rooms that weren't friendly.

I know what it looks like, and I know why it is.

It's because that's the culture that was cultivated, and I'm trying to do the opposite of that.

[ CHEERING ] (Stella) The audience members are so supportive, and I think it's because they recognize the courage and bravery it takes just to be up here.

(Vera) I've always felt like people are home to me, And she has- I've felt that in this space too.

♪ BOLD MUSIC ♪ (Lola) I think everybody can benefit from taking their clothes off outside of their home.

[ LAUGHING ] We love to entertain you.

I'm Lola Torch, and thank you so much for coming out.

Now lets drink some tequila, and dance a little.

What do you say?

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC ♪ Costume design sits somewhere between imagination and reality.

It's where character, history and emotion take shape, and those in the theater industry will tell you it's an essential tool for storytelling.

♪ CURIOUS MUSIC ♪ (Patrick) There's so little magic in the world, especially now.

It's a hard time to be alive and a hard time to be happy.

I had a professor in undergraduate school that called the theater the temple.

And I always think of it like that.

I still get chills when I walk in theaters because magic happens there that can't happen anywhere else.

We suspend our disbelief and we believe these characters that come to life.

And it's a communal thing.

Yet there's so little opportunity for us to come together and share an experience anymore.

So to me, that's still kind of magic.

Label it, ready for set.

Okay.

Awesome.

(Maryann) freshman year, we went to see a Shakespearean play, the Merry Wives of Windsor, and it was done as a woodcut.

And it was like the light bulb went off and it was like, oh my God, this is what I'm gonna do for a living.

(Rick) I have not had a linear career path, but that's something I always share with my students also that, you know, if you're an artist, everything that you do in your life informs who you are as an artist.

So, you know, nothing you do is a waste of time.

For a number of years, I was a professional dancer.

In between seasons when I was dancing, I worked in costume shops because I knew how to sew.

When I sort of like aged out of dancing, I went back to grad school, got a degree in costume production, and then that's what I've been doing since then.

♪ STRINGS PLAY ♪ They had a guidance counselor in high school who told me that I could never have a career in theater, so I should choose something more realistic.

So I believed her and I went into graphic design.

I saw how much fun the theater kids were having and I decided I'm just gonna do what I really, really want to do.

My dream was to work on Broadway.

So I took my little measly resume and I said, okay, I'm gonna do this.

Ray Diffin's Stage Clothes hired me as a stitcher.

So I got my foot in the door.

(Besty) I've worked with Maryann for 30 some years.

Big chunk of my life.

She has been costuming me on stage, making me everything from a crab, I played Countess Crustacea at the Gaslight, to Tallulah Bankhead at the Invisible Theater, and everything in between.

(Ivy) When I think about Maryann, she just doesn't teach skills.

She teaches possibilities.

She opened my eyes.

The same person who can sew a tutu can sew a spacesuit.

(Susan) For the Invisible Theater, Maryann was a resident costume designer, so we collaborated brilliantly, but beyond that, what she saw on the stage, I trust her implicitly.

In addition, she worked with a conversation with Edith Head because she made some of the costumes, and she taught me things from a costume designer's point of view that I can incorporate so that people truly believe I'm a designer when I portray the legendary Edith Head.

(Renée) Working together here at the Gaslight Theater for about 10, 11 years, that's when we started really getting into the whole theater.

That I've been sewing since I was really young, same with Maryann.

You have to have a passion for it, because it's not the simplest career.

It's not the highest paid career.

The people that I know like Maryann, that do it, they have the same passion otherwise.

And the film work and stuff and theater work, it's difficult, you know?

It's a lot of, you're the first one in, the last one out, all the time.

(Maryann) Yeah, always yeah And the last one mentioned and the least appreciated.

We're the little behind the scenes... kind of like the tecs.

Except they seem to get a little bit more recognition because they're on the stage.

We're literally behind, behind the scenes.

We just, you know, people forget about us till they need us, and then it's like, oh yeah, you guys.

When you're working on a play, it's a lot of collaborating with the other people on the production team.

There's finishers, stitchers, drapers, first hands, and then, what, a shopper, costume shopper.

The costume designer comes in, and also working with the actors to discover how they are progressing their character.

That's why I love working what I do too, because we're telling that story.

A good costume does a number of things.

It defines the character.

The costume allows them to do everything that they need to do in the performance, as far as like freedom of movement, quick changes, or anything like that.

It just supports the performance, and it supports the performer.

♪ INTRIGUING MUSIC ♪ This deck of cards is called the bicycle deck.

That led me to researching bicycles.

This was the beginning of the women's movement, and the bicycle helped project it forward.

So I ended up using all different bicycle parts.

I chose blue because I was trying to mimic the blue card.

And the second deck during World War II was called the escape deck.

When you immerse it in water, it opens up to a map of different parts of Europe.

I decided to do that with this.

When you look at the inside of the jacket, it looks like a normal lining.

When you open it up, it becomes the women's movement on a bicycle route.

It starts out March 31st, 1776, with Abigail Adams' letter to John Adams.

That's when they were writing the Constitution.

In 1963, Congress passes the Equal Pay Act.

Then in 1973, there was the Roe vs.

Wade, and it was a woman's right to safe and legal abortion.

We all know where that is now.

August 26th, 1920, 19th Amendment passes.

Women are given the right to vote right there.

And then, of course, we have January 2020 that Kamala Harris is the first female Vice President of the United States.

And then I put this decoration on here too because every time we try to move forward in freedom or anything, as we go forward two steps back, it's never a straight line.

It's always a zigzag.

Most importantly is you have to be willing to develop trust in yourself as an artist first and know that your art and your feelings and your thoughts have value.

It's hard for young people.

We develop that as we grow older.

There is no specific channels of follows.

It's something you have to try, like anything in life.

And then you learn the skills you need to be successful.

You don't have to come in with those skills.

And you gotta go with your heart.

You gotta go with that passion of what drives you.

And you know what?

It will.

It really will.

That's what drove me.

And now to the hop bush, which is a native thornless evergreen shrub and a great replacement for the non-native and poisonous oleander.

And it offers substantial benefits to wildlife too, like birds and insects.

♪ GUITAR MUSIC ♪ My name is Adam Farrell-Wortman and I'm the director of horticulture here at the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

And surrounding me right now is Dodonea Viscosa or the hop bush or hop seed bush.

This plant is an evergreen native to the Tucson basin but also all around the world.

Every continent but Antarctica.

That said, our species is a little different in that our species is evergreen and can take colder temperatures than species found even as close by as California.

So one of the things I love about this plant is how versatile it is for different styles of landscaping.

You can train it to be a single trunk if you really want to.

I don't recommend that because the more training you do, the more work you have to do throughout the whole plant's life.

And so I personally prefer letting it have its natural shape.

Now this plant is evergreen which is another reason why it's a desirable plant for your space.

It's also one of our desert natives so it can take very dry conditions.

The drier you let it be, the more sparse the foliage will be.

And so if you want it to be a very densely foliated plant, you do have to irrigate it a little more regularly.

Some other benefits to this plant is that it has no thorns.

It's a nicer plant to have close to the home and it's also a non-allergenic plant.

A lot of hedging plants especially tend to have sap that can be caustic or poisonous or people have an allergy to.

This plant tends to not have those properties.

The flowers on this plant are inconspicuous, just meaning they don't really stand out.

They're not a showstopper.

But after the flowering period, when it puts on its seed pod, the seed pods can be quite attractive.

They come on green and then they go into a yellow and then fade into a brown and they're a winged pod.

It brings a whole other dimension to the plant during that season.

One of the misnomers about this plant is it's called the hop bush or the hop seed bush.

And it has no relation to hops, that ingredient that we use in beer making.

There is some stories about cowboys thinking the seeds looked like hops and tried using those seeds in making beer while they were out doing their cowboy thing.

Back in the early development of the western states.

But actually the seed is one of the only poisonous parts of the plant and is not recommended for making beer out of.

The seeds are edible for birds and then the plant itself creates a very nice habitat.

Birds nest in it.

You'll find a lot of hummingbirds making their home inside the plant but not using it as a food source.

If you're looking to transition your landscape into a more native friendly or native centered landscape, this is a great plant to use instead of oleander or boxwood.

Even if you want this plant to be lush and so you're going to water a little more than it has to have, it's still going to take less water than those plants more suited to other regions of the world.

And now to our latest episode of Speaking Personally, where I sat down with the man working behind me, that's AZPM's Classical 90.5 Music Director James Reel.

And we discussed how a kid from Yuma managed to grow into a rich life in the arts community.

You wrote the "Timmid Soul's Guide to Classical Music."

Why are we so timid about certain genres, certain forms of music like classical?

Lack of familiarity, I think, is the basis of it.

If you're going to play classical music, you really need to achieve a certain level of facility on some sort of instrument.

You know, the joke is for rock music, you play three chords on a guitar and you got it.

It's not that easy, but still the classical music, it tends to be harder.

And because a lot of it is non-vocal, you don't have lyrics to hang off of.

So what does this wordless music mean?

How do I follow it?

And it's long more often than not.

Do I have the patience to sit there and listen to something that isn't telling me a love story through words I can understand?

I think not having the opportunity to sit down and give yourself time to experience it, especially in person, is what keeps a lot of people at arm's length from it.

It's different going to a concert than sitting in your home.

Because at home, you can get distracted by any number of things and not pay attention.

Sometimes that means it can wash over you and you can enjoy it that way.

But at a concert, you have to sit there and pay attention to what's going on, whether you like it or not.

Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara and we'll see you again soon.