Creative Instigator

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Broadway in El Barrio (and The Bronx): For a New Generation of Actors and Audience Members, In The Heights Hits Home

Flashback to early last month:

It's 8:30 PM on a cold February night in Washington Heights. The huge crowd outside of the United Palace Theatre is anxious about missing the opening number of tonight's one-night-only In The Heights benefit performance. When the show's writer/star Lin-Manuel Miranda races around the block, high-fiving fans and hollering, "We don't start until y'all get inside!" people whoop and cheer. But our students barely notice their idol blowing by. They're too wrapped up belting a cappellaversions of the show's greatest hits. Auditions for our school's production of In The Heightsare still a week away, but the kids have already memorized the whole score.

In the history of our performing arts program, I've never seen kids so amped up about a show before. But then, I can't say I'm surprised.

For a decade, the kids in our program have beenstretching far outside their cultural comfort zones to put on musicals that have little do to with their own life experiences. It doesn't matter that we've intentionally chosen a broad range of shows, including ones that prominently feature people of color, like Once On This Island and Aida. At the end of the day, the French Antilles and the shores of Nubia are still a far cry from the corner of 172nd St. and Third Avenue in the South Bronx. And each of those shows, like every other show we've done--with the lone exception of The Wiz whose composer/lyricist is African-American--was created by white people.

It's not like we weren't trying to find Broadway musicals that could have hit home more directly. They just weren't out there.

So when I first saw In The Heights on Broadway five years ago and found a stage packed full of performers who looked exactly like the students I teach, telling stories that Lin-Manuel Miranda could have overheard in our school's hallways, I knew our students' response to the show was going to be epic.

I wasn't naïve enough to think that musical theater's whole cultural landscape would shift overnight as a result of one show. If nothing else, the almost all-white Broadway crowd around me back in 2008 was a clear indication of how much work remained to be done in terms of access.

But ever since In The Heights has been on the scene, I've been less worried about young African American and Latino actors coming out of our program after playing lead roles in Les Misérables only to find that their best hope in the professional world is getting cast as "Thug #3" or the lead character's "Sassy Best Friend."

We've had to wait the better part of five years for the amateur licensing rights to In The Heights to become available, but the time has arrived. And now we're kicking off our creative process with a fieldtrip to see the original Broadway cast show us how it's done.

As we finally make our way to our seats inside the United Palace Theatre, one of my students looks around at the capacity crowd, does her best Home Alone shocked face and nudges me playfully. "Yo, Ms. Q," she says, "There's a lot of black and brown people in here!"

A combination of the show's widespread popularity and organizers' efforts to reach a broader audience with $30 tickets for Upper Manhattan residents means that the crowd is more diverse than any group of theater-goers I've ever seen. (And there's reason to hope that this demographic shift may be part of a wider trend, since the evening's proceeds benefit The Broadway League's Viva Broadway initiative, a new audience development partnership with the Hispanic community to help bridge the world of Broadway with Latino audiences around the country, as well asFamily First Nights, a nationwide program specifically designed to encourage at risk families to attend theatre on a regular basis.)

The rest of the evening is a blur. The audience is cheering and singing along throughout most of the show. Actors pause before the big laugh lines so the audience can shout them out en masse. At the curtain call the whole place leaps up, dancing to the music and waving Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Mexican flags. We haven't come prepared for thisRocky Horror Picture Show level of audience participation, but we join in happily.

The emotional high of the evening sets the scene perfectly for auditions for In The Heightsat our school. This year's turnout is enormous and includes an unprecedented number of first-time participants.

At the callback, one 12th grade newbie named Chris says,

There's no way I would've considered trying out if we hadn't been doing this particular show... Let's just say musical theater was never really my thing. But being Dominican, these characters and the stories they're telling through the music and the dance all really hit home for me.

Once auditions are behind us and rehearsals begin, the students show up with a level of professionalism and initiative unlike anything we've ever seen. Gone are the days of pulling teeth, begging actors to get focused and learn their lines. These kids are off-book at the first read-through, leaping up to perform each song fully memorized with provisional blocking and improvised choreography already in place.

When our leading man discovers that Lin-Manuel Miranda himself has "liked" a rehearsal photo of him posted on Facebook, his comment is the following:

"Omg omg omg, my heart's gonna blow up!!!"

And while I like to think I'm immune to celebrity worship, here's what I comment back to him:

"Yeah. I feel you, dude. Me, too."

This article also appeared on Huffington Post. As always, the views expressed here are my own and not those of my school's administration, and the kids featured here agreed to let me tell their stories.

Performance photo credits: Alejandro Duran; all others: Kate Quarfordt

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Celebrating A Decade of Creative Student Leadership in the South Bronx

Ten years ago I was in a trailer behind the church on Webster Avenue in the South Bronx where my school used to rent classroom space, staring at the bored, glazed over faces of the kids in the first theater class I had ever taught. Those straight A's I was pulling in my graduate program at Teachers College didn't matter worth a damn in that make-shift theater classroom. Standing there in front of those kids, I felt like I had no idea how to teach anything to anyone, let alone an art form based on trust and vulnerability A.) to African American and Latino teenagers whose experiences were worlds away from my upper-middle class suburban roots, B.) at a school that trained teachers to embody a top-down, boot-camp style of classroom management (and routinely fired the ones who couldn't pass muster), and C.) in a neighborhood where street codes punished kids for risking emotional openness with taunts and even violence.

About halfway through that first year, at a moment when I was seriously considering quitting teaching and never looking back, a 9th grader named Denisse Polanco made the audacious suggestion that we put on a musical. I tried to explain to her that I had never directed a full-length show before and that I was way too overwhelmed with my other teaching responsibilities to take on such an ambitious project. But Denisse wasn't having any of it. Never mind that she herself had zero musical theater experience; she arched an eyebrow at me, smiled and said, "Don't worry. I'll help you."

We've come a long way from those days in the church parking lot. A decade later -- (full ofhumbling moments, behind-the-scenes nightmares and hard-won triumphs of student leadership) -- my colleagues, students and I are thrilled to officially unveil a 10-minutedocumentary that chronicles the evolution of the Bronx Prep Performing Arts Academy -- a program which Denisse and many of her fellow Bronx Prep graduates have returned to help nurture and lead. Over the years, the Academy has grown into a multi-generational family of performing artists, designers and directors, many of whom are now pursuing college degrees and careers in the performing arts and mentoring the young actors, directors and designers following in their footsteps.

It feels especially exciting to be marking this milestone on the same week that we're conducting auditions for our 10th musical, a show that pays homage to the classic musical theater forms our students have been steeped in over the past decade while also paving the way for an increasingly inclusive, multicultural generation of Broadway artists and audiences: the Tony-award winning musical In The Heights.

Stay tuned as our kids set aside their corsets, fling off their fedoras and lay down theirFrench revolutionary flags--so they can celebrate their own cultural traditions and family histories in a show that finally feels like home.

Special thanks to Academy co-founder Andrew Simon, Academy co-directors Lou Cardenas and Sarah Rosenberg, the whole Bronx Prep artistic staff, the huge crew of creative professionals who have supported us throughout the years, the alumni who continue to nurture and inspire our students, and especially to Bronx Prep Artistic Director and my creative partner in crime, Dr. Geoffrey Kiorpes.

Video credit and special thanks: Alejandro Duran and The Digital Project.

Photo credit: Kate Quarfordt

This article was also published on Huffington Post. As always, the views in this post are my own and not those of my school's administration; the students featured in this post agreed to let me share their stories.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Students Direct One Act Festival at Our New Home!

We leapt into the 2012-2013 school year with an ambitious project: A One Act Play Festival performed by middle school kids and directed, designed and produced entirely by high school students. The festival kicked off our partnership with Open Hydrant, the amazing new resident theater company at beloved Bronx cultural hub, The Point. Founded by my colleagues Rosie and Lou (of Shakesepeare High fame), Open Hydrant counts Bronx Prep theater alumni among its company members and has welcomed our current students into an exciting collaboration, inaugurated by the One Act Festival.

With student leadership development as our main goal for the One Acts, we took our cues from author/marketing and creativity guru Seth Godin, who laments that we spend almost no time in school (or in life) teaching people how to grapple with questions for which there are no answers, noting that it's much easier to teach kids to follow directions than to teach them how to critique them--or even better--to create them.

As our nation’s schools struggle to emerge from the stifling, test-driven climate of No Child Left Behind, we’re using arts education to re-envision school as a place where learning to follow directions is merely a means to the larger and more meaningful goal of learning to create new and better ones. The One Act Festival was an opportunity for our student leaders to practice taking responsibility for a creative project from beginning to end, not by simply following directions, but by creating a big-picture vision from scratch, then breaking it down to its component steps and guiding others to collaboratively bring it to life. Students received adult mentoring and support, but ultimately shouldered the creative and logistical burdens of the project on their own.

You can read their reflections about the process on their blog.

The cast of "Superheroes" rehearse for the One Act Festival

Cast and Student Directors of the One Acts Celebrate Their First Rehearsal at "The Point"

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Les Mis in the South Bronx: Uprising. Love. Redemption.

I've put on a lot of plays with kids.

But I've never been a part of something like this.

For everything that's broken in our country's educational system--from the havoc wreaked by high stakes testing to the blogosphere flame-wars over school choice to the interlocking systemwide failures of healthcare, social services, and the economy that keep so many students and their families in the South Bronx struggling--and for all the challenges we continue to face in the specific day-to-day context of the school where I work--when I look at these pictures and think of the collective dedication, creativity and passion that made this year's show possible, I can't help but hold out a flame of optimism in my heart.

All throughout the process of putting on this show I've been moved and impressed by this group of students--their willingness to find deep personal connections to a show that at first seemed utterly foreign to them, their creative efforts to bring the look and feel of the show to life onstage, their ability to reflect meaningfully on the show's themes of sacrifice, uprising and unconditional love. I've been humbled watching these young people pour so much energy and work into the creation of a show that embodies the values of fighting for what you believe in and--even in our darkest moments--maintaining faith in the possibility of transformation and redemption. No matter how exhausting it can sometimes feel to be a teacher in the current national climate, thinking back to the magnitude of the kids' efforts--and reminiscing about how much fun we had!-- the idea of throwing in the towel just doesn't feel like an option. To the barricades!

I'm intensely grateful to my colleagues--especially Dr. Geoffrey Kiorpes, Julie Feltman, Chrissy Inserra, and Miranda Small--and to all of the Bronx Prep alumni who returned to help us out.

To Denisse Polanco, my former student who helped me get this program started back in 2003 and who returned this year to Bronx Prep to teach by my side and co-direct this show with me, I'm forever indebted.

Here is a glimpse into the emotional world of the student uprisings in 19th century Paris recreated this spring by students in the South Bronx.

Congratulations to the cast and crew for putting on a truly magical show. I've never been prouder.

Click here to see more photos from the show!

All photo credits: Alejandro Duran

Monday, May 28, 2012

Les Miserábles: Opening Night Preparations!

After nearly five months of preparation, arduous vocal rehearsals, set building, costume designing, and creating intense personal connections to this complex and challenging show, opening night finally arrives! Here's a glimpse backstage as actors, directors, musicians and crew prepare.