Top news, of course, is that regional legend Len Fonte is retiring this year, after 28 years of directing (7,824 hours in rehearsals!) and 33 years of teaching at Nottingham High School. Well known, loved, and respected for his high standards, quality productions, and puns, Len has created a drama program that is well respected by students, administrators, community members and even college recruitment officers. His work and achievements were honored both at this year's Harm's Festival and in a November article in the Post-Standard. He is quoted as saying he will use his post-retirement time to write, travel and maybe take a nap. Kudos, Len!
Korel Blakely of Lemoyne College has been very busy around the theatre. They are closing "She Stoops To Conquer" at the end of March. Korel will be attending the USITT conference in Louisville the first week in April. Lemoyne College is working on a Theatre Education curriculum. Watch for more details.
Liverpool High School Performing Arts and Dance Club taught by Cathy Osinski & Chris Spring are hosting the Paul Taylor Dancers on Wednesday, March 29. They will perform and talk to the audience afterwards. Holly Adams is coming to our school, also on March 29th, to do a workshop on Masks, acting in masks, and character development in Children's Theater shows. Our upcoming Children's Theater presentation in late May/June will be "Aesop's Fables". The Performing Arts 2 class will perform for elementary schools in our district. Holly is coming to help us prepare for that production. Recently the Performing Arts 2-3 class attended an all day workshop at LeMoyne College. We worked with their theatre staff. Karel Blakely led a session that included a Tech. theater design project. Steve Braddock and Mike Barbour worked with the students on some prepared monologues. Students also got to tour the facility and eat lunch with theatre students. After lunch the students did a voice workshop with Mike. The PA class has been coming to LeMoyne for the past 3-4 years. We always look forward to our trip to LeMoyne each year, and quite a few students decide to attend LeMoyne College each year. Two of our former PA students attend the school now.
Holly Adams has had the honor of working with NYSTEA great Susan Shoemakers on the (enormous) Galileo project at Hamilton City Schools. Students are composing, doing science and math projects, singing-- and I get to help students create original plays about Galileo's life. She does many artist-in-residencies, but the scope of this project makes this one of her favorites. Another interesting artistic residencies, that Holly will be working on is with Moravia Central School District visual art teacher and musician/chorus teacher to facilitate second graders creating a multi-media, multi-art performance piece based in fractals and chaos theory. They will be binding it together with the science and math curricula for an exciting theme-based year of learning. In the fall Holly's performing highlight was portraying Richard III. Holly will also be working on an original performance piece with actor/designer Pete Rush that will tour in September.
November 2005 Sherburne-Earlville CS & Colleen Law-Tefft Drama coach, presented "Life's Little Absurdities, Problems and Quirks: An Evening of One-Act Plays" which included 13 ten minute plays - several were student-directed. After being adjudicated by TANYS, one of these one-acts ("Chicken Wings") was invited to perform at the annual TANYS Festival that was also in November. At the TANYS Festival, one of the actors (Adrian Enscoe) was awarded an Audience Favorite award and the student director of the piece (Justin Utegg) was recognized by the adjudicator with an Adjudicator Discretionary Award. In January, six students attended the NYSTEA conference and had a great time and a real learning experience! This past weekend we performed two of our fall one-acts ("Chicken Wings" and "The Turnover") at the Micheal Harms Theater Festival in Syracuse. Several students were recognized - Justin Utegg was awarded a Stage Manager award and the NYSTEA Scholarship for Student Direction of "Chicken Wings", Adrian Enscoe and Josh Ayers were awarded Ind. Commendations for their performances in "Chicken Wings", Jake von Mechow was awarded the IAOTSE (International Alliance of Theatre Stage Employees) Memorial Scholarship for Lighting. In addition, our school was the runner up for the Technical Ensemble Achievement Award. We are currently in rehearsal for a production of "Great Expectations" to be performed April 28 & 29.
East Syracuse Minoa High School,(Maureen Natalie-teacher )just produced Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It went very well, the community loved it and we sold out all three performances. It was great PR for our musical theatre program. I am currently working on The Taming of the Shrew with a show date of May 19 and 20. We also have out arts EXPO on April 28 and my theatre kids perform one acts, improv and this year, scenes from Shrew. We also create bloody wounds, scars and bruises. The kids love it.
Some of Victoria's recent theatrical highlights include has recently toured the opera "Sundance" to Central New York Colleges. One of her audio books "Gilbert and Sullivan Set Me Free" was nominated for an Audie award in the technical category. She also produced and directed "The Vagina Monologues" for V-Day International and raised nearly $4000.00 in one weekend for the local safe house for abused women & children called The Vera House. Member Debbie Ritchie was kind to loan the use of her business phone for ticket reservations adding to the contributions. Soon Victoria will be directing for The Red House Theatre and Syracuse Stage.
You've seen her at the NYSTEA Student Conference, and if you live here in the Central region, she has probably costumed your show! Debra Ritchey, costumer extraordinaire, has been doing so much that she is actually in the process of moving to a larger warehouse. Some of the year's highlights have included building all the costume pieces for the Syracuse Civic Theatre production of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin Jr. at Longbranch Elementary school, and working with our own Maureen Natali on Taming of the Shrew at East Syracuse Minoa High School. Congratulations to Debra for her expanding business.
