For 20 fast-paced minutes at last Tuesday’s School Board meeting, several rotating teams of acting-talented students took the stage at Lin Howe School and entertained the capacity crowd with imaginative performances.
This was opening night for the School District’s new theatre collaborative, Front and Center, featuring student performers from La Ballona School, the Middle School and Culver City High School’s AVPA program, the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts.
The Front and Center Theatre Collaborative has been formed to sustain and increase theatre education in the District during the current economic downturn and beyond.
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The collaborative includes stakeholders from the District’s learning community, The Actors’ Gang, Center Theatre Group, We Tell Stories and the Culver City Education Foundation. The Front and Center Theatre Collaborative aspires to a future with a sustainable, comprehensive, K-12 theatre arts curriculum and program.
The Board meeting was an occasion to celebrate the collaboration that has brought ambitious acting opportunities for students across the District.
Carl Weintraub, founder and Chair of the We Tell Stories Board of Directors, Diana Tanaka, Artistic Director, and Gerald James, Core Member, presented the theme “Literacy” by building a bridge between storytelling and theatre.
They used a presentation from an assembly program called “Let Them Eat Books” – a portion of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll from “Through the Looking-Glass.”
The AVPA’s performing cast (in the accompanying photo) included Adam Caicedo, Sybyl Cowrey, Olivia Finnegan, Justin Forsythe, Olivia Grim, Angi Harvey, Nicole Julian, Amy King, Marina Martinez, Cameron McGowens, Kevin Mitchell, Aaron Moses, Conor Murphy, Sierra Parsons, Tristan Price, Lena Ransfer and Eli Reich.
La Ballona students who performed were Isabella Chardiet, Kaleb Callaban, Maggie Guthrie, Arely Hernandez and Jacob Miller.
The cast from the Middle School included Folashade Adewunmi, Hannah Berkovich, Lucas Dos Santos, Ricky Ramirez, Mel Rowe, Khrizia Allen Torres, Matthew Villena and Autumn Walters.
