Kids: The Heart of the Arts

The Kids: Heart of the Arts program exposes students from four to fourteen to the wonders of the performing arts and the connections between them.

The program runs from 8:30 am until 1 pm each weekday. Each student rotates through an age based four-class schedule. The classes are an hour long.

The program seems to expand its artistic vision each year without losing sight of its basic theatrical vision. The program has spawned a full year program. There are four eight-week sessions for students in acting, specifically improvisation and creative dramatics.

Both programs draw students from the Montgomery and Delaware County area from all racial and socioeconomic groups (30% minority). There is no audition process and the program is kept small to allow attention to the children's artistic and social needs. In our oldest group, 60% of the students have been with the program since its inception. The program has a high rate of return and we have been forced to increase the overall program size to include both the new students and our returnees. The teacher student ration on any given day is 7 to 1 while overall there is a 5 to one ratio. Students pay a low tuition to be a part of the program and each year we offer scholarships to 20% of the attendees.

The programs dance component, one week long last year has extended to four weeks. We have increased our variety of acting teachers to create a more diverse base for their later experience of the arts. The Kids: Heart of the Arts program is not about serving some political or social cause, instead the program focuses on the arts as an idea unto itself and the arts as an expression of human emotional and a manifestation of human skills. Our teachers are practitioners in the arts as well as educators. The students in the program are exposed to the actual ideas behind the arts, the arts lifestyle and temperament as well as the actual activities in the creation of art.

The program is focused on the perfuming arts. The students practice playwriting, improvisation, music performance and composition, dance and acting. Each of these areas are interconnected.

The program also includes a fine art component, which touches on ideas behind set, costume and properties design. The students experiment with many facets of fine art as a release from the performance and an enhancement of the overall artistic experience.

The program is focused on process not product. We have a final showcase but there is no focus on the end result, instead we guide the students toward an understanding of the work of theater rather than the applause. The building of community of artists and the collaborative nature of the artistic process are the specific goals of the program. In music, the students are composing works for their own performance and as incidental music for the plays they created in playwriting. The kids are using some standard instruments, Orf instruments and some of their own creation. One group will produce copper glockenspiels. The kids are not just engaged in the creation of the music but in the development of the instruments, which make the sound.

In art, the kids created collages using some dada techniques, trash art, grid transference portraiture, batiquing and three-dimension molding. The students have used some of these techniques to create props and costumes for their plays. The kids are making masks and a giant American Flag using the wax dying techniques for their play about September 11.

Each dance group has worked both on actual routines and creative dance techniques. They are also doing some calisthenics and physical conditioning.

The kids have become marvelous improvisation practitioners. They have two teachers exposing them to the work. They are also working on a Shakespeare short, not specifically for performance but as exposure to the language of Shakespeare.

Teach day begins with a brief full group warm up. This year our oldest group, lovingly called the Bigs, each lead one session of the warm up. Students from our two oldest groups, from 11 to 14, will be running lights and sound for the final performance as will be exposed to the use of a digital lighting board and state of the art ETC instruments , which they will focus for the performance.

As always our program includes some visiting guest who produce workshops for the students. This year Oni Lasana talked about reading the works of Paul Lawrence Dunbar aloud. We also had a professional violinist who shared her music along with technical innovation like looping sound to create music with our students staff. We have had a illusionist and a comic book inker. Our spotlight this year was a day of candy making where the students made candy and then shaped it as sculpture into logs and roses. This mixed the basics of sculpture presented in the art classes with an unusual vision of that work. Again the candy making focused on creation since every one of the candy creations were eaten.

The program again went into the heart of Norristown to create art around the courthouse and entertain the community with some youthful street theater. This year the focus was on "America" as we visited the courthouse ground on the third of July. The students produced a giant American flag and played patriotic music. The acting class created living fireworks.

The enhancement of the program including the diversity added to the acting staff and the increase in dance has broadened the scope of Kids: heart of the Arts.