by Patrick Torres, Middle School and High School Program Director
Theatre Action Project’s 5th annual Youth Arts Festival will be held this Saturday, May 12th from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Boyd Vance Theatre. This festival is our opportunity to share the imaginative work of our Middle and High School students you, our community. You do not want to miss this festival!
This year’s line-up represents a broad spectrum of creativity from the region’s youth, from a movie about vampires, a digital story inspired by a classic opera, a mural created to inspire a school community, to a play about the voices that try to control our choices.
These original works of art will inspire you as you experience the imaginations and bold voices of our students. The festival will feature work by more than 100 students from 12 middle schools in 4 school districts from the Austin area. Festival hosts and keynote performers will be from the Changing Lives Youth Theatre Ensemble.
Schools featured at the festival include, Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, Bastrop Middle School, Burnet Middle School, Cedar Creek High School, Cedar Creek Intermediate School, Del Valle Middle School, Dobie Middle School, Garcia Middle School, Manor High School, Mendez Middle School, Ojeda Middle School, Webb Middle School, and the Changing Lives Youth Theatre Ensemble done in partnership with Theatre Action Project and SafePlace.
Come out on Saturday and support the work of our region’s youth!
The Youth Arts Festival takes place at the Boyd Vance Theatre at the George Washington Carver Museum, 1165 Angelina St. Austin, TX 78702. Admission is Free. For more information, click here, or call: 512-442-8773.
This past weekend TAP was lucky enough to participate in the Girls Now Conference at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. We led two really exciting workshops. The first was simply called “Image” and was about helping girls discuss the messages they are getting from the media and their peers about what a girls “should” be, then taking some time to think about what we REALLY think girls should be, or can or be, and created our own ads with positive slogans promoting what we called a REAL SuperGirl.We had 5th-9th grade girls from all over town. The girls were so incredible. They jumped right into the activities and had a really rich conversation about the pressures they feel, and how the media affects them. They were so creative and funny and made ads with slogans like “Be Beautiful, Be True to Yourself” and showed examples of girls supporting one another and shunning the pressures to have lots of stuff like cellphones and expensive clothes.Our second workshop was led by our youth company “The Changing Lives Youth Theatre Ensemble”. This was an interactive performance workshop which focused on gossip and how it can led to bullying and unhealthy relationships. The Changing Lives youth presented several negative situations that stemmed from a rumor, and ended in somewhat of a mess. We then asked the audience to give suggestions to the bystanders in the scenes about what they could do to clear everything up. The audience was highly engaged in debate, discussion and ideas, and they came up with a few different ways the bystanders could make the situation better.
