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Exclusive: Education at Roundabout Celebrates 5th Annual Student Theatre Arts Festival!
Nov 8, 2022
Just last week, Education at Roundabout presented its 5th Annual Student Theatre Arts Festival, hosted by Tony nominee Andy Karl at the American Airlines Theatre. The fifth annual Student Theatre Arts Festival featured the work of students from 12 partner schools, representing the five boroughs of New York City. Student performers presented select scenes and musical numbers from original and existing plays and musicals. The festival provided student artists a chance to celebrate their artistic work from this school year and share their talents with their peers.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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I'm at the American Airlines Theater for Roundabout Theater Company's fifth annual student theater arts festival
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which is hosted by On the 20th Century's Andy Carl, and I caught up with many of this year students and teachers
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So this is a celebration of students work
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It's about celebrating the students of today and the artists of tomorrow. And we have 10 schools doing excerpts from plays that they've worked on with the roundabout all year round
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We have 10 schools from about 175. and it's just about celebrating their work
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It's not a competition. It's about schools coming together, and you can actually hear them right now
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In the lounge, they're all singing. There's like 175 of them breaking out in song
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and it's just a celebration of young artistic work. Being a part of this program has given me the ability to see many plays
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and because I've been able to see many plays, I've been able to see different types of sets
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And each set is unique in its own way, and it's very different. It's like, it's always something new
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something that you never expect. Like, two trips ago, I believe, we went to go see into the woods
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and I expected it to look like the woods, but no, it was completely different. It was pianos, pieces of pianos
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the skeletons of them, the wiring, and the ropes stretched all over the stage, making it look completely different
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than when I imagined it. As well as a technician, I'm also the ambassador, so we also have the schools display
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what are we doing in the schools and such, and we also have students from the different
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schools here showing off their theater pieces to the audience the outside world
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we're bringing them into our theater environment to show what we're made of
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basically yeah oh secretly I've always wanted to be on stage but that's like a
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secret between you and me I've always wanted to be on stage and I was never a shy
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kid but I just never like thought of myself as like just the thought of being on
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stage was like whoa so it was really fun how like like
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I took it from like the classroom to like the stage at J.K.O
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Which is our school to the roundabout stage to now Broadway. It was like all of this happened in like the span of three months And I was just like whoa like it was just it was great it was actually great like I don I can find any
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other words for it was it was great and like this is something I know like this is
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something that people like nobody could take away from me because I can say that I
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performed on Broadway and this is like nobody can take this away from me so like it's
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pretty cool I can't breathe in a place where my life is consumed by fear in a place where
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My voice can't be heard, I mean who can? The fact that Alina just accepts it
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The fact that she's conformed to these ideals is mind-flowing. America was supposed to be this birth
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My dreams come true, but it's because I've watched them to mind. All I've learned is either wrong or white
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That's all I've learned. That's all they're going to teach me. So tonight, the kids from Repertory, presenting an original senior distinction project
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written by one of our seniors Cassandra Rivera, entitled Somewhere, and it is the culmination of the senior year research project
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that becomes a piece of original theater that every single student writes
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and then about half of our students end up producing with the other half of the students serving as their artistic team and actors
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Additionally, we have several students doing the stage reading of another original work
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this one written by one of our seniors, Darlene Surreal, who wrote a piece that the first stage of
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reading is going to be tonight and it's going to get produced over the summer for fully
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staged production. My students at Esperanza have written a parody of Into the Woods that we called
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Into the Hood that we took the same four fairy tales and rewrote them for the modern age
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That's crazy. That's great. Yeah, it's so exciting and so funny. Today we're doing a little
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bit of Rapunzel and we call it syndrome because it's a boy instead of a girl in Cinderella
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So they are excited to me on Broadway for sure. So the students that I'm working
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where they produced a production of the Crucible, but it's set in the 1980s at a prep school
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that's called Salem Prep School. Today our school is doing a little snippet
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from our spring musical, Little Shop of Horrors, and we picked numbers that involved the whole cast
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so we wouldn't exclude anyone. And it's a great day. The kids are having the best time, as you can hear
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How exciting was this for you? It was like a rock concert. I know. I just didn't
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I just walked in out of the elevators, we're at the American Airlines Theater, and there's, like, there's kids everywhere that are so excited for tonight, and that just immediately pumps you up
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I'm really happy to be here and really happy to represent, you know, on the 20th century, but also arts and education
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I mean these kids have been doing this all year round coming to these you know roundabout education programs which all leads up to tonight Yeah it like they Tony right I got mine in a couple weeks but these guys it like a big deal
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What's really exciting is that everybody's here, and they're all together, and they're all cheering together, and that's what really theater is all about
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It's about community. It's about building something together that you can, you know, entertain plenty of people with
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But it's a lot about the family of theater. That's what I love about theater, anyway
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you're about to see is a selection of work representing more than 10 schools and 150 young
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people. However, this is the only portion of what we're celebrating tonight. Each year
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Roundabout's Education Department serves over 15,000 students and hundreds of schools throughout
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the five boroughs of New York City. And that goal is to transform the New York City classrooms into theaters and our theaters
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into classrooms. And I'm happy to support education in the arts to young people because guess what
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I was young once, I know that's hard to like grasp. I was young
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This guy in the suit was actually a lanky, quiet, red-headed kid who thought I'd follow my brother's footsteps into football
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And when I got hit in the head a few times, I thought, thank God I can sing
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And my course teachers, they were the ones that encouraged me to follow my music
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I joined the corral and we competed statewide and they asked me to audition for the summer musicals
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where I played Judd Fry in Oklahoma. Yes, you're the cast on my foot from a skateboarding accident
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I had two days before the show started. But my point is arts education
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It's very important. I believe the key to success in anything is encouragement, whether you follow the career in the arts or not
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When a teacher, a professor, a mentor, educates you and says, you can do it. says you can do it, it gives you the spark you need to be brave and amazing, like all of you guys
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and get up here and do what you're about to do tonight and make some magic. Talk about this program, what this program means to you, what is meant to the kids in the school
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Yeah, well, as far as the musical goes, it's been so great for the kids to learn from real
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theater professionals. We've worked with set designers and lighting and sound designers. We've had
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a professional producer come. So it's really helped to elevate our musical from what it would be
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Just bring it to a higher level. We've had professional choreography. The kids got to do a lot more
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character work But aside from the help with the musical Roundabout also comes to my classroom We have classroom residencies And that is just a real treat for the kids because you know instead of doing typical boring lessons they get these actors
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to come into our classrooms and really just, and it links up with what we're learning curriculum-wise
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It still links to the Common Core standards, but it makes it more accessible and fun for the kids
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and it's a real treat. I think it's by and large it's a sense of professionalism. It's a sense of
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of really working in the industry. You talk to our kids who are most heavily involved
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Downstairs we have Maori and Kimberly, who are sort of our ambassadors for this student production workshop
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and they are theater artists. They are working in the fields in nearly every sense of the world
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except that they're also going to high school, and they will go off and pursue this
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and this will be a part of who they are and what they bring to the working world
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And it's just totally, even for a kid who just barely touches the roundabout partnership
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the sense of professionalism and the level of attention to detail that's given to each level of partnership is just tremendous
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Being a part of this for five seasons, what it has meant to you is meant to your kids
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My kids talk about it all year, and it's a big motivator
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They love to come and see what everybody's doing all over the city. In terms of writing their show, this year they were like, this is going to get a lot of laughs on Broadway, writing a line
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I was like, well, I think it might. Yeah, good head, good job. So they love it. They look forward to it and it gives them such confidence
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To be on the real Broadway stage is an amazing opportunity for them. For me, it's just a very rewarding experience because to see these children grow and to see their confidence expand
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and to see them take ownership of their own voice. A lot of our kids come from communities that are disenfranchised and they don't have a lot of opportunities
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So I really feel great that I'm able to give them a gift that I think they will take with them for their
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rest of their lives, whether they pursue theater or not, every student who performs on this stage
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today will keep this memory with them for the rest of their lives as a proud moment and a sense
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of accomplishment in their lives. So I'm just happy that I was able to be a part of giving them
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that gift. It's about a young person understanding that there's a process in what they're doing
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and that their process actually mirrors a professional experience. And if you could see the
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students backstage and they're going, oh, Miss Gail, I'm so nervous. It's Broadway. And I'm like, me too, it's Broadway. I think that's really important for them to just understand that what they're doing could be a career. It could be a profession and that it's attainable
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