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Pledge Tees for JumpStart Theatre: At a new middle school event in California, Junior Theatre Festival West, conducted by partners, EdTA and iTheatrics, iTheatrics sold special pledge tees to benefit the JumpStart Theatre program. The design and the decision to commit the proceeds to JumpStart Theatre were approved by Stephen Sondheim himself. The shirts were also sold earlier in the year at the Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta. The response was phenomenal and the shirts sold out!
Audition/Rehearsal Updates: JumpStart Theatre mentors, Dee Anne Bryll and Becca Kloha Strand, visit the schools regularly, providing feedback, guidance and support. These are a few of their observations from this month's rehearsals. Just as you'll find in any theatre production, there are plenty of challenges and triumphs to keep the directors on their toes!
 Students and teachers from the JumpStart schools rehearse for their upcoming productions.
Aiken: The director keeps a journal with notes, detailing each item to accomplish during rehearsal and checks them off as she goes through. The students have a clear idea about what needs to be completed by the end of the bell. Props and costumes are coming along nicely, very creative and functional. Teacher-led warm-ups have proven more successful than when they are student-led, where students tend to be more unfocused.
Dater: The students can have a tough time trusting their own talent and positive feedback, the director noted that this might be because they are let down so often in their lives, they have difficulty seeing the potential payoff at the end. Despite this, the dance numbers are coming along nicely, students are learning the material and they've been getting a lot accomplished in each rehearsal.
Finneytown: The students are enjoying the show and seem to work well together, fantastic comraderie. The director does a great job of giving students ownership of the production. Winter illnesses have made reliable attendance challenging for both teachers and students, making it difficult to cover new material.
Felicity-Franklin: There are some talented students and the instructors are doing a nice job discussing character building and teaching the music. The crew have started working on the posters, supervised by a parent volunteer. One student, who has faced some tough times, is brilliant in his role, but frequently interupts slower periods of rehearsal with discipline issues, so the teachers are looking for more ways to keep him focused and engaged.
Gamble:They are about two weeks away from finishing the show and anticipate having about two weeks to clean and run it before the performances. The teachers are prepared for rehearsals and great at keeping the students' attention. They are working on building characterization and physicality, one student in particular realized that her negative mood that day was affecting her character's mood and they discussed how to overcome it in future rehearsals.
Holmes: Despite some unexpected challenges with their rehearsal space (part of the ceiling fell and is being repaired), they continue to work on completing their blocking and choreography. The students are given a lot of creative freedom, but the teachers need to help them nail down specifics as they get closer to their performance dates.
School performances are next month! Make plans to support these schools by attending a show!
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