Arts Activities Support

In our survey, feedback was unanimous that all children gained knowledge in theater arts as a result of our theater educational program. This is a great success to our program. Every child should grow and the parents are seeing that result. In order for our program to feel successful, every child should experience personal growth within the range of skills we teach. Our goal is that every child feels a part of the whole production. Each child learns that every role within a production is important. We feel these goals were achieved. For example, there were a couple young boys (3rd graders) that were assigned the role of trumpeter. At first, they didn't feel it was a role. By production time, the trumpeters had 4 scenes and multiple blocking that needed to be used. This was in addition to the roles in the chorus. The boys came up to me, the choreographer, and said, "This trumpeter role is really turning out to be a big deal." This is one of many examples. As always, this is a strength in that we can do this for everyone in the cast. It is a challenge to find and deliver all these opportunities. Another challenge we faced was ensuring that the younger group, our Rising Stars, also felt a part of the whole production. Their show runs prior to the main show and they can feel isolated. They come and go at different times from the "big" kids. We did do some joint learning sessions, but think that next year we will incorporate more of those opportunities. Our Junior Director program worked better than the prior year. This year we assigned the Junior Directors to shadow different production personnel. Most Junior Directors had a primary assignment and a secondary assignment. That allowed for them to learn multiple facets of the show in depth. It also helped to cover absences. At show time we put the Junior Directors in teams of 2. They were each assigned an area to work the shows in those teams. We had a Stage Left a Stage Right and an Audience Stage team. The helpers worked well to facilitate all the children and their props. We feel that this was very successful and will expand upon it next year. We worked hard to advertise our program throughout the community. We utilized print and social media. We used an ASL interpreter. We had a free preview night. Our preview night was attended, but we hope to have more attend in future years. We were able to accommodate some children with special sensory needs. We had some senior community members attend. A group that wanted to attend from the local assisted living facility was unable to attend due to last minute transportation challenges. Overall, our attendance numbers were similar to prior years. This was the first year we sold tickets, but our attendance didn't change. We kept ticket prices low in order to make it accessible and that strategy seemed successful. Even with those successes, we are working to include more groups in our preview night experience. We have already arranged for someone to head a committee to work on this - specifically targeting the special needs community. In addition, we are increasing our network of assisted living homes and branching further outside of Forest Lake. As always, all children who register for our program are able to participate and are accommodated. Scholarships are offered to those in need. Our scholarship need rate has stayed similar over the years. This year it dropped a little, but we have never denied any scholarship requests.