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Education at NYTW: Youth Education 1. Learning Workshop NYTW welcomes young people into its community through Learning Workshop, a multidisciplinary theatre education program that supports their development as artists and audiences by critically engaging them in the artistic process and production of new and challenging work. With continual input from New York City public school educators, theatre artists, community advocates, and NYTW staff members, Learning Workshop strives to achieve the following key goals: •
To enrich young people’s textual, visual, and critical literacies
by exposing them to new and re-imagined works of theatre and the collaborative
processes behind their creation NYTW’s leading partner in the Learning Workshop program is Lower Manhattan Arts Academy (LoMA), a small public high school on the Lower East Side that was founded in the fall of 2005 and has been designated an “Empowerment School” by the New York City Department of Education. LoMA’s mission: LoMA is devoted to the academic, social, and artistic development of a diverse community of learners. Our goals are to awaken a questioning spirit, foster creative expression, and prepare students for college. We believe success can be achieved through hard work, perseverance, and enthusiasm. Every graduate will become a life-long learner and responsible citizen of the world. All aspects of the Learning Workshop program, including a select number of tickets to performances, are provided at no cost to LoMA. In 2006 and 2007, NYTW was honored to receive grants from the NYSCA Empire State partnership program in support of its collaboration with LoMA. This funding is helping us to strengthen our partnership and develop a more thorough planning process for our programs and curricula at the school. We are pleased to announce a new partnership
with Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), a small public secondary
school in Brooklyn that is launching in September 2007 with a sixth
grade, and adding one grade every year until it offers grades 6-12.
The school is sponsored by two institutions: the Arab American Family
Support Center (AAFSC), a community-based organization in Brooklyn that
provides comprehensive social services to Arab American immigrant families
and children as they adjust to a new culture and navigate American laws
and cultural norms; and, New Visions for Public Schools, the largest
education reform organization dedicated to improving the quality of
education in New York City's public schools. NYTW Usual Suspect Leila
Buck, a writer, performer, and storyteller who specializes in activities
that promote Arab American cultural awareness and intercultural understanding,
is leading twice-weekly workshops for the school’s mandatory “expanded
learning time” program during the entire 2007/08 academic year.
Classroom Residencies Learning
Workshop offers short- and long-term classroom residencies in middle
and high school English, Humanities, Drama, and Foreign Language courses.
NYTW staff and teaching artists, including artists from current NYTW
productions, resident companies, and our Emerging Artists of Color Fellowship
program, collaborate with teachers to plan flexible curricula that introduce
new concepts, source materials, and methods while complementing the
instruction students receive during their regular classes. Residencies
can be structured to enhance a literature, history, performance, or
visual arts curriculum, or used as a writing workshop in which students
generate original material for eventual production. This
fall, Director of Education Jen Zoble and teaching artist Jon Levenson
held pre- and post-student matinee workshops at LoMA in order to introduce
students to The Misanthrope and connect the play’s themes
to their own lives. Playwright Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, NYTW’s
2007-09 Creative Resident Fellow, conducted a four-week writing residency
in LoMA’s 10th grade Spanish classes. In the spring of 2008, members
of Elevator Repair Service (ERS) will conduct their next residency at
LoMA in conjunction with the new ERS project based on William Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury, which will take the stage at NYTW in
April. Learning Workshop also provides after-school workshops for small groups of students at collaborating schools and community organizations. These workshops, like our residencies, are led by artists from NYTW resident companies, Fellowship programs, and season productions. Each workshop curriculum is thematically linked to NYTW’s season and built around teaching artists’ expertise, and may include writing, movement, design, and/or performance activities. Last fall, for example, after-school workshops at Broadway Housing Communities were led by Liesl Tommy and used writing and physical exercises to explore themes of transformation and migration from ¡El Conquistador!. Mentor Workshop Series Beginning in September 2007, we have organized a mentoring workshop series for LoMA’s 20 11th grade Drama majors, who come to NYTW with their Drama teacher on a monthly basis to learn more about the behind-the-scenes process of theatremaking and the different kinds of work available to theatre artists. Selected NYTW staff members give informal presentations about their work and lead students in basic activities that introduce them to aspects of theatre that they haven’t yet encountered in their studies. On September 20, Marketing Director Cathy Popowytsch and Marketing Associate Rebekah Paine led a workshop in Marketing and Public Relations, on October 11, Production Manager Michael Casselli, Associate Production Manager Laura Mroczkowski, and Technical Director Efren Delgadillo led a workshop in scenic design, and on December 13, Director of Individual Giving Cheryl Conkling and Manager of Government and Foundation Relations Heather Cohn led a workshop in fundraising and event planning. Future workshops in Sound Design, Lighting Design, Costume Design, Casting, Literary Management, and Stage Management are being planned for 2008. Professional Development During
the 2007/08 Season, NYTW will introduce LoMA faculty to the Critical
Response Process, an artist-led method for providing critical feedback
that was developed by choreographer Liz Lerman. Our staff uses Critical
Response throughout its developmental work, including the Mondays @
3 reading series and Summer Residencies. LoMA educators will be required
by their principal to read the text Liz Lerman's Critical Response
Process: A method for getting useful feedback on anything you make,
from dance to dessert at the beginning of the school year, then
attend a Monday @ 3 reading as a group. NYTW staff will conduct a debriefing
session at LoMA the following week, and any teachers who wish to continue
practicing the Critical Response Process will be welcome to attend further
Monday readings at NYTW on their own. Our hope is that ultimately the
teachers, particularly the arts specialists, will incorporate the Process
into their classes so that all students have a concrete and effective
tool for giving and receiving specific feedback across the curriculum. In
order to reach a broad audience of young people, NYTW also offers special
Wednesday student matinees with post-show discussions for any interested
school or community groups. NYTW will present student matinees for at
least three of its productions during the 2007/08 Season, including
The Misanthrope, Liberty City, and the ERS production based
on The Sound and the Fury. The group student ticket rate for
all NYTW performances, including student matinees, is $15. The individual
student ticket rate for all performances is $20. NYTW annually invites 12-16 college students and/or recent graduates and 2-4 high school students into its offices for internships with our Artistic, Literary, Casting, Production Management, Technical Direction, Development, and Marketing staff. Internships last 3-4 months, offer a $50 weekly stipend and monthly MetroCard, and can result in college or high school credit. Internships are advertised on NYTW’s website and applications are accepted throughout the year, with selected applicants interviewed by staff three times per year. Intern duties include assisting the Casting Director with general auditions, assisting the Literary and Artistic Departments with weekly developmental readings, and assisting the Marketing and Development Departments with major publicity and fundraising campaigns. Interns meet with their departmental supervisors on a regular basis to receive feedback on previous work and guidance on current projects, and to discuss career interests and options. Staff supervisors and interns complete written evaluations at the end of each internship cycle. The entire cohort of NYTW interns gather on one Friday afternoon per month to discuss their work, share ideas, and speak with an invited guest from the theatre community over lunch. The 2006/07 interns met with NYTW Usual Suspect Ivan Talijancic, director and Artistic Director of the experimental company Wax Factory; NYTW Artistic Associate Ruben Polendo, Artistic Director of NYTW company-in-residence Theater Mitu; Aaron Lemon-Strauss, Executive Director of Les Freres Corbusier; director, former Resident Fellow, and NYTW teaching artist Liesl Tommy; director Jo Bonney, writer/performer John Fugelsang and director Pam MacKinnon; and, designer and former Emerging Fellow Clint Ramos. 2007/08 interns so far have met with Rinde Eckert, Howard Swain, and David Barlow, who comprised the cast of Horizon, our first production of the season; Jan Versweyveld, scenic designer from Toneelgroep Amsterdam and a member of The Misanthrope’s creative team; playwright Betty Shamieh of The Black Eyed; NYTW Board President Heather Randall; playwright and NYTW Usual Suspect Kate Moira Ryan; members of company-in-residence Elevator Repair Service; and, director and Usual Suspect Leigh Silverman. NYTW is committed to providing interns with structured and substantive experiential learning that surpasses the free-labor model common to many internship programs. NYTW interns often have gone on to part- or full-time jobs at NYTW and other New York theatres. Four members of our current staff began their relationship with NYTW as interns, and most recently, one of our fall 2006 Artistic/Casting interns, Becca Schneider, was hired as a freelance coordinator for Aswat: Voices of Palestine, a major public program consisting of staged readings and discussions that took place over two days at NYU in May 2007. NYTW is a partner in the Center for Arts Education’s Career Development Program (CDP), which offers paid after-school internships to a rigorously selected group of public high school students who express interest in learning about the business and operations practices of creative industries and arts institutions. NYTW’s Development and Marketing departments co-host one student per semester from this exceptional program every season. Our spring 2007 CDP intern, Jing Wan, was hired to work in our box office during the summer of 2007. This fall, two of NYTW’s interns came to us through programs offered by their universities. We were pleased to partner with the Department of Dramatic Art (http://drama.unc.edu/index.html) and the Burch Field Research Seminars/Honors Study Abroad Program (http://www.burchseminars.unc.edu/) of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Department of Theatre of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (http://theatre.utk.edu/). Please click here for full internship program and application information.
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