PYBY Director Dan Friedman (r.) and students visit Disney Theatricals at the New Amsterdam Theatre

The spring 2009 semester of the ASP of NY, Production of Youth by Youth (PYBY), our developing producers program, got off to a great start with a workshop led by the Castillo Theatre’s managing director, Diane Stiles, along with resident set and video designer Joe Spirito and sales director Gail Peck.  The two-hour session included coming up with design ideas for a hypothetical production of A Season in the Congo and actually getting the young producers on the phones to make sales calls for the production. 

The class of nine students hail from the International Arts Business High School, Bishop Laughlin High School, Abraham Lincoln High School, Flushing High School, the High School of Health Professions, and the High School of Telecommunications, Arts and Technology.  In addition to the workshop with Castillo’s producers, PYBY students this semester also visited the Casa Frela Gallery in Harlem, where they met with owner-curator Lawrence Rodriguez; Robert Baruc, President of the film distribution firm Screen Media Films; and Jason King, the artistic director of the New York University Recorded Music Department.  In addition, they will be the first PYBY class to visit Broadway Video, the video production company of Saturday Night Live.  Disney Theatrical welcomes our students back this semester for a workshop with Todd Lacy, the producer of The Little Mermaid.  (For that session, PYBY will be joined by current students from the Youth Onstage! Community Performance School.)

PYBY students will get hands-on producing experience this semester by working backstage at the All Stars Talent Show audition on May 9th   at Roosevelt High School in the Bronx — and, of course, are guaranteed internships at a cultural organization this summer.