ARTreachUS.com BLOG

Few slots open for PATRICK BRISTOW’s Improv Workshop
Screenland Studios
July 25
3 – 7
$50
Do not miss this amazing performer/director/teacher
Call 323.868.1352 for reservations.

August SCENE STUDY with Mark
I’m taking ten students only for a four week scene study, Monday evenings, starting the first week of August. NO craziness, NO nonsense, NO expensive price tag. Just your work and a showcase of your work.
$100 for four three hour classes + $25 showcase fee.
Call 323.868.1352 for more info.

AUGUST 22
A MASTER CLASS with one of my favorite people in the world – KAY COLE.
Join Kay and and her music director for eight hours of work.
Participants who perform – $150, including lunch
Observers – $35, including lunch

Ross Hellwig was a big crowd pleaser during the recent ARTreach performance workshops in Wise, offering workshops in stage combat and other performance skills. (Chuck Clisso photos)

ARTreach brings theatre pros to Wise
Coalfield Progress
By: JODI DEAL / Staff Writer

Posted: Friday, July 17, 2009 1:15 am

Key members of the theatrical community in Los Angeles are buzzing about Wise County.

A team of seasoned performers and instructors with resumes that include plenty of Broadway experience, both onstage and behind the scenes, visited Wise County in mid-June to provide a series of free workshops for about 40 middle and high school students.

The classes were a collaboration of the Wise-based Appalachian Children’s Theatre and the L.A.-based ARTreach program, founded by Wise County native Mark Salyer.

Local students’ dedication and enthusiasm, Salyer and ACT President Melissa Wharton agree, absolutely blew the seasoned professionals out of the water.

“There was this magical and very earnest creative impulse that just wowed everybody. They’re all buzzing, saying ‘When can we come back? When can we come back?’” Salyer said in a recent telephone interview.

“These people are the cream of the crop,” Wharton said via telephone Thursday. But just because the teachers Salyer has recruited to work with his organization are big names doesn’t mean they feel above local folks, she added.

“Not only were they great teachers — they were real human beings, some of whom cried when they left here,” Wharton said.

The series of intensive workshops in acting, singing, stage combat, Shakespeare and more that local students experienced June 15-20 is just one part of the local ARTreach program, which will culminate in a spring gala to showcase local kids’ talents, Salyer and Wharton noted.

ONGOING WORK

Salyer visited last November to meet the local students, conduct auditions, help the middle school and high school participants pick monologues and songs, and provide a little preliminary instruction.

When he returned this summer, he brought friends, including Broadway veterans Julia Gregory and Tony Abatemarco, and experienced teachers Ross Hellwig, Rene Urbanovich and Shannon Levy-Heath.

The grueling schedule of intensive courses had students as young as 9 years old participating in high-level theatrical training, and it was all free.

“We had five straight days of eight-hour days — literally, it was like these kids were in a job,” Salyer said. “I think some of the parents were trepidatious about how long we were going to have them in class, but it was fun, exciting material with really dynamic teachers.”

The kids performed masterfully, Salyer and Wharton reported, and wowed big-time visitors from possible funding agencies, like a group that visited from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts one afternoon.

ARTreach isn’t a one-time thing. Salyer and the group of artists he’s pulled together are trying to plan similar outreach workshops in other rural communities, including South Boston and Galax.

The local classes will culminate in a fall workshop with Broadway alum Kay Cole, known best for her work in Chorus Line, who will help students hone their monologues, songs and dances into a community performance.

In addition to working with ACT students, the artists who visited in June also conducted an afternoon workshop with students from the Flatwoods Job Corps Center. Those students were so talented, particularly when it came to singing, that ACT wants to include them in the performance to conclude the local program.

BREAKTHROUGHS, EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES

Tony Abatemarco said in a recent telephone interview that he was “really pleased and surprised” at the level of talent and dedication the local students exhibited.

“I was surprised at how precocious the young ones were,” Abatemarco said with a chuckle.

As he coached students on how to deliver Shakespearian language, Abatemarco said, the rich oral tradition in Appalachia “came in very handy.”

“Stories and storytelling — we’re all part of the same tribe, the tribe of storytellers. We don’t have to think of ourselves as actors with special skills — we can all appreciate what it means to tell a story and hear a story,” Abatemarco said. Local children connected to this, and became particularly engaged when they began to understand the details of the Shakespearian stories they were telling, he noted.

That will serve them well, no matter what they do with the rest of their lives, he noted.

Wharton agreed. She recalled that some of the youngest students begged to be allowed to sit in on older children’s Shakespeare classes, simply because they found them entertaining. Other children went out on their own and checked Shakespeare’s works out of the library.

“A lot of these kids aren’t going to end up in live entertainment. They’ll be English majors, music majors, some will be teachers, or nurses, or different things. But it’s a nurturing experience for them to learn and work together,” Wharton said.

“Art and music, they just break down all the barriers,” Wharton said, recalling, as Salyer does fondly, a moment when young ACT students broke into an impromptu song with Job Corps students. Both also recalled moments when students broke down in tears of joy after teachers coaxed hidden singing or acting abilities out of them.

And that’s what ARTreach is all about — making sure everyone has the opportunity to experience the unifying power of art. Instruction in fine art helps youngsters discover more about themselves and about their peers, she added.

To learn more about ARTreach, including instructor biographies and a blog by Salyer chronicling the group’s experience here, visit www.artreachus.com.

Patrick Bristow is the most fabulously talented improv dude I know! Come work-out with a class of 20 max and this funny, funny guy!

July 25
North Hollywood
$50 for four hour class
Choose one of two sessions –
10 – 2, or
3 – 7
CALL TODAY, these classes will fill fast.
323.868.1352
or e-mail me at Mark@artreachus.com