Sandy Ryder represents some of the best things about Ann Arbor. She's someone who came to town for school, never left, and then went on to create businesses and good works that she has generously shared with the community for decades.

After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in theater, Ryder taught, worked as a clown and a mime, and did improv with a children’s theater group. In 1979, she started Say Cheese Cheesecakes bakery (which closed in 2006 under different owners). Then in 1980, she cofounded Wild Swan Theater with Hilary Cohen.

Over the past 27 years, Wild Swan has distinguished itself as a place for all people, especially children with disabilities.

“My favorite thing is to have everything accessible -- workshops, traveling shows, everything," Ryder said. "We have ASL shadowed into the show, kids with visual impairments can come to a touch tour on stage. Everyone can share the experience together, everyone can enjoy the play.”

Wild Swan Theater produces an impressive amount of plays every year. Most recently the theater troupe performed Drum Me a Story, a play Wild Swan created about 15 years ago.

“It is a collection of three tales from West Africa," Ryder said. "Between each story, there is a different drum or West African instrument and the kids tap out rhythms or a call and response.”

The play will now go on a tour of schools in Saline and then onto Lapeer.

“We have about 15 shows that are always being toured,” Ryder said, naming Peter Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, and Rosie the Riveter among the many productions schools can contact the theater to arrange a performance.

Wild Swan will next present Rosie the Riveter March 9-11 at its home stage, Towsley Auditorium at Washtenaw Community College. The play is about four women working at Michigan's Willow Run plant building aircraft in World War Two. “They are building the B24 bomber,” Ryder said. “From beginning to end, it took about 55 minutes to construct the entire plane. Then the women sometimes flew the planes over Europe!”

Playwright Jeff Duncan wrote the script after interviewing a dozen women who worked at the plant during the war. The script was based on the stories these women told him, with four actresses playing four characters.

“When we did the show last year, we had many real life Rosies in attendance and we brought them up on stage,” Ryder said, and the women received a standing ovation. “I feel like they finally got what they should have always had -- respect and gratitude for what they did.”

Rosie the Riveter is suitable for kids in upper elementary and older, Ryder said, because “it’s kind of an adult show, in that one big part of the story is how a white woman has a hard time working alongside a black woman. We want the kids to be a bit older [than a typical Wild Swan audience] so that they can understand what it was like the 1940s and how segregated things really were. Through the course of the play, we get to see the white woman’s transformation to understanding issues better. This gives kids the experience of seeing someone change right before their eyes.”

Wild Swan will also present Jack and the Beanstalk March 22-25 and, later, Marketplace Stories: Folktales From the Arab World May 4-6.

But the other big Wild Swan event in March is the theater’s annual benefit concert, An Afternoon of Ann Arbor’s Best, which will be held March 19 at The Ark from 1-3 pm. “We wanted to do a family fundraiser,” Ryder said. “Most of our audience is made up of families, so we have an afternoon show that everyone can enjoy.”

In her typically generous fashion, Ryder said An Afternoon of Ann Arbor’s Best "really is made up of these amazing people Wild Swan has worked with in the past. ... The lineup includes Madcat [Peter Ruth], who did the music for Along the Tracks, which is a play about Harriet Tubman, and Gemini, who did music for Coming to America which is a play about immigration from various parts of the world.” The show also includes Frank Pahl, Emily Slomovits, and Laura Pershin Raynor.

It is only fitting that one of Ann Arbor's best, Sandy Ryder, is a part of this event, too.

Patti Smith is a special education teacher and writer who lives in Ann Arbor with her husband and cats.

Tickets for "An Afternoon of Ann Arbor’s Best" and other Wild Swan productions are available at wildswantheater.org, over the phone at 734-646-8623, or at the door the day of the event. Related: Martin Bandyke's 2009 profile in The Ann Arbor News, "Behind the scenes at Wild Swan Theater."