In “The Secret Life of Your Third Grade Teacher,” showing at Soho Playhouse, author and performer Micaela Blei teaches the audience the disastrous consequences of “playing pretend” in her thrilling, comically human and heartwarming tale of a teacher and her students. Blei battles witches, leads her class through the heart of the forest and forges letters from a far-off queen. In another world, she struggles with confidence, love and the inevitable fate of growing up.

The script was written to elicit laughter while portraying real-life truths combined with fun-filled make-believe worlds. In order to talk to her students about her real life, Blei translated her experiences into a language that they understood. She created fantasies and child-friendly versions of the truth.

Blei learned from her students about real life too. “When I meet adults, I like to imagine what kind of a third grader they would be,” Blei said with a twinkle in her eyes. Her imagination allows her to understand grown-ups the way she understands children.

Through heartbreak, disaster, joy and love, Blei learns that, contrary to the belief that students are the ones doing the changing as they progress through the school system, “teachers change too.” As Blei and an especially-difficult student named Edward huddled under the principal’s desk on the last day of school, she remarked, “It was nice to stay in third grade for a minute longer, before we both had to go out and get older.”

The set consisted simply of a whiteboard on which Blei drew checkmarks next to titles as she completed each phase of the story, ending each scene with witty cliffhangers. She wore a blue polka-dot dress that provided a pleasantly contrasting color scheme with the yellow wall and warm lighting.

Through enchanting storytelling skills, a vibrantly charismatic personality and comedic script, Blei kept the audience members bursting with laughter. She created an interactive aspect of the play by speaking directly to each member of the audience and including remarks that resonated with the crowd. Because of Blei’s easy personality and the fact that the stage was level with the audience, the atmosphere held a warm intimacy as though the audience was sitting with a close group of friends listening to Blei tell her story — or perhaps, in a circle around their third grade teacher.

As Blei posited, once in awhile, everyone needs “silly voices and dunk tank and letters from robots.” In “The Secret Life of Your Third Grade Teacher,” she reminds us of the inextinguishable beauty of childhood, that there is no lesson plan for pursuing real-life and how to “play pretend.”

“The Secret Life of Your Third Grade Teacher” is playing as part of the Fringe Encore Series at SoHo Playhouse at 15 Vandam St. until Oct. 14.

Email Khrysgiana Pineda at [email protected].