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| Youth Onstage! |
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| Youth Onstage! artistic director, Dan Friedman (lower left), with the students and faculty from the Community Performance School's Summer Theatre Institute. |
This summer, Youth Onstage! (YO!), the youth theatre of the All Stars Project, graduated a record 23 students from its Community Performance School's tuition-free Summer Theatre Institute. The intensive five-week institute introduced the students to the basics of performance and culminated with a graduation show on August 12. The performance included original sound and percussion; a student-created dance segment that included a merging of traditional African dance and hip-hop, and an improvised theatre piece. In addition to its performance classes, YO!'s Summer Institute also offered Singing for Actors and Playwriting Workshops for graduates of the Performance School. Between the Summer Theatre Institute and the singing and playwriting workshops, a total of 38 students were enrolled over the summer in YO!'s free summer programs. The Fall Semester of the Youth Onstage! Community Performance School, which runs for eight weeks, starts on September 30.
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This fall's Youth Onstage! Experimental Theatre Workshop, which opens its four-week run on November 10, will be directed by Yale graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and YO! Community Performance School founding faculty member, Brian Mullin. Mullin, who has taught the school's Character Development class for seven semesters, previously co-directed YO!'s first two Experimental Theatre Workshops, Casper Hauser (A Language Game) (2004) and Our City (2005) with YO!'s Artistic Director, Dan Friedman. The Fall production, Over There/Over Here, that explores, from the young people's perspective, the war in Iraq and its impact on America and Iraq, will be created by the cast, Mullin and playwright Michael Reyes. Reyes, a 22-year-old Brooklyn native and an Iraqi war veteran, has had two of his plays performed as part of the Youth Onstage! New Voices Play Reading Series.
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Serge Velez, Natasha Danielian, Luis Gomez and Michael Padilla, four graduates of the Youth Onstage! Community Performance School, will be appearing on the Castillo stage this fall in Outing Wittgenstein by Fred Newman. The philosophical farce, which opens October 20 for a six-week run, will be directed by Youth Onstage! artistic director Dan Friedman, who views the production as a great opportunity to bring YO! graduates into a working relationship with professional actors. YO! Community Performance School instructor Athena Freelander is also in the cast.
For more information on the programs of Youth Onstage! or to get involved, contact Dan Friedman at 212-941-9400 ext. 350 or via email.
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