One student was a window. Another was a rock. One was a bearded dragon officiating a wedding, accompanied by lizard-to-English and American Sign Language interpreters.

You never do know what the minds of fifth grade playwrights might conceive.

For the third year in a row, Martinez Elementary School students are bringing a classroom topic to life in partnership with local theater company Theatre Across Borders. Students on Wednesday broke into 19 small groups to flesh out the story with finishing touches, each embodying a character — or inanimate object — in the scene.

They had spent two weeks learning about volcanoes, partly with the help of hands-on demonstrations with instructors at local organization Science Matters. Then, guided by professional actors and artists from TAB, students were prompted through activities and discussions to craft a setting, plot and characters while incorporating information about their topic of focus. Their original, collaborative work will go on tour later this month after some fine-tuning from TAB’s owners and script writers, Melissa and Stephen O’Rear.

The play draws from academic material, like plate tectonics and soil fertilization, while also incorporating what actors say are more “out-of-left-field” ideas. It is, after all, a child-developed play for a child audience.

“I always tend to get the most ridiculous props, and this year it was that we needed a coconut named Frank and a banana named Bob. To watch them just latch onto that idea, and the whole class just wants to see these two fruits become characters in this piece was just very smile-inducing,” said TAB actor Sean Verdu. “I think that was just a good takeaway of the fun and joy of the creative mind of a child and having no limits.”

The partnership is made possible by TAB’s new program, Science to Stage, which teaches school lessons using immersive art. Last spring, a Martinez student-created play about the skeletal system toured 20 D-11 schools and showed publicly for four nights at the Millibo Art Theatre.

“In the end, they all have ownership of this creation,” said TAB actor Tracy Taylor. “No matter what, when they see this complete product, they’re all going to say, ‘I was part of that.’”

The creative process centers on the theater concept of “yes, and.” No idea is a bad idea worthy of outright rejection, actors say. Instead, students are taught to work together and build upon one another’s contributions. Some proposals don’t ultimately come to fruition, but that’s part of the magic.

In the world of visual and performing arts, failure is a key part of learning and growing as a team.

“It’s really hard for kids to learn that because failure is always seen as that awful thing. So then to have a safe way to learn how to fail forward and learn from those failures and build on them, in a creative way that feels safe, that’s so important,” Taylor said. “It doesn’t feel like a test because they’re creating.”

Martinez is one of Colorado Springs School District 11’s two recently designated arts integration pathway schools alongside Columbia Elementary School. Teachers over the summer received a weeklong training on how to bring movement and art into their day-to-day lessons, much like Science to Stage.

“It’s a great example of how learning, movement, art, theater all can combine to happen at once because the kids do know more about volcanoes now and they do understand the different types, and for me as a teacher, I can easily see how movement can be incorporated into a subject like science,” fifth grade teacher Anne Weaver said. “When they can be active, then the learning happens a bit more.”

The show will tour at least a dozen D-11 schools from Oct. 30 to Nov. 17. This spring, the Science to Stage program will expand to Columbia, where those students will have the chance to create a play of their own.