If We May
At 24th Street Theatre, we believe our job as theatre artists and educators is to inspire people with our various education programs and performances. We’re proud to say that over the last few weeks we’ve been quite busy inspiring folks around the world.
We returned to El Salvador last month for the fifth time, where we represented The United States in the new International Alternative Theatre Festival in San Salvador with our long-running hit, La Razón Blindada, by Aristides Vargas. Read more about our trip... Dispatch from El Salvador by Jay McAdams
While graduation celebrations were being cancelled all around us, our afterschool theatre students performed their year-end sketches after 30 weeks of free theatre classes and enjoyed some pomp and circumstance.
We wrapped Phase 1 of an exciting 4-year partnership with USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, where USC neuroscientists are literally studying the brain pathways for empathy built in our kids’ theatre classes. The study is for the NIH. 2 more cohorts of brain-scanned kids and 2 more years to go. Hopefully those brain scans will PROVE beyond a doubt that we inspired those kids.
On our Los Angeles stage this year, we’ve been inspiring 10,000 students from all over LA County with our acclaimed Enter Stage Right program. And the best part is that we’ve done it 100 kids at a time, so 100 performances of it this school year. It’s up-close and personal for every single one of them. Over 100,000 students have experienced ESR over the past two decades and we’ve employed so many actors, musicians, stage managers, and teaching artists. We’re so proud ESR! Of the thousands of letters we’ve received from schools, our favorite quote came from a principal in Boyle Heights;
“My God, what is it that you people do over there? Every time a bus returns from 24th Street Theatre, the teachers and students are absolutely raving about it.”
Teachers and principals, now is the time to reserve your date for next school year. We fill up fast.
We were beyond thrilled in May to be nominated for 8 NAACP Theatre Awards for our show, Rapunzel Alone, by Mike Kenny. We commissioned our favorite British playwright Mike Kenny (Walking the Tightrope) and co-produced this world premiere with The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills and performed it in 90210 and at 24th STreet Theatre. Mike’s story is about the major WW2 plan that transported thousands of kids from London to the safety of the countryside during the bombing of London. In the English countryside the kids were temporarily cared for by strangers until the war was over. Rapunzel Alone focused on the challenges of a mixed-race city girl sent to live in a very remote and mostly white village with a resentful and reclusive old lady. We are thrilled to have taken home the NAACP’s Best Lead Actress Award for Jacquelin Lorraine Schofield, who was absolutely wonderful in the show. So well-deserved, Jacquelin. All of us at 24th Street Theatre are truly honored.