Studio-Specific Events on Friday, October 2nd
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The Atlantic Theater School
Atlantic will convene a town hall of faculty and students for the last hour and half of the studio day. The students will be led in a guided meditation about community. Neil Pepe will discuss the Atlantic community’s beginning and how it was born out of Tisch Drama. He will impress on them that even in the distant future they may work closely with the people they are sitting next to today.
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The Classical Studio
Classical will meet for a meal together early Friday afternoon, after which they will join Dramatic Writing for a discussion on the politics of representation: Where do artists draw the line between entertainment, artistic integrity, and offensiveness? They will look at this from the perspective of both the writer and the actor. The recent controversy over the “Mikado” production at Skirball will provide a launching pad for the discussion.
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The Experimental Theater Wing
First Year students will participate in a collaboration with PS 3 Fourth Graders - along with other students and Faculty facilitators from ETW, Production and Design, Open Arts, Dance, Grad Acting, and Graduate Music Theatre Writing. Afro-Haitian dance teacher, Pat Hall, will take Second Year classes to visit a senior center on 12th street and Third Avenue for storytelling and dance. Upper Level and Transfer Track students will have lunch with Rosemary and 6 ETW alums that have focused their professional work on community-based theatre and social activism. Each student will make a "promise to community" for the months ahead. ETW students will define a community they are grateful to be part of and identify someone in that community they do not know. They will write a handwritten letter to that person and personally deliver it to them.
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The Meisner Extension
The students and faculty of the Meisner Studio will gather for a talk about what "community" means to them and discuss the service activities of faculty, current students, and alumni. Meisner administrators have set up a "community board" listing local non-profit organizations that accept volunteer service commitments ranging from an hour to a day. Students will be told that at the end of the year they will gather with faculty to share and reflect on their service experiences. Later this term, faculty member Lucas Caleb Rooney will discuss his experience founding Zara Aina. Zara Aina offers children in Madagascar the tools to succeed as students and story-tellers by delivering school supplies to their villages and producing their original works of theatre. The Studio will also invite back former Meisner student Noelia Mann, recipient of the Department’s 2014 Community Connection Award, and former Assistant Director of Girl Be Heard.
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The New Studio on Broadway
All full-time faculty at NSB are devoting time in their classes to discuss ideas of community and humanism on Friday. For example, Kenneth Noel Mitchell, Head of Acting, will work with seniors to write letters to first-year NSB students. These letters will welcome the new students, describing the different communities they have joined (studio-, department-, and school-wide) and explaining how they can contribute to these communities. Michael McElroy, will address community and outreach in his classes, discussing his on-going work as founder and director of the Broadway Inspirational Voices choir and with Ronald McDonald House. New Studio students have been performing at special events with Michael at Ronald McDonald House events for the past four years. Dawn-Elin Fraser, Head of Voice & Speech, will select a community-themed poem for work in her classes, and use this as a spur to class discussion.
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Playwrights Horizons Theatre School
Girl Be Heard, a nonprofit theatre company and educational program that works to bring girls center stage, will join first-year PHTS students for their Process Classes. On three days in the weeks following Community Day, Upper level students will participate in a Lab entitled "Community-Based Theater" with Laurie Woolery, the Associate Director of Public Works at The Public Theater. The Lab will introduce community-based theatre to students by exploring the practices of the Cornerstone Theater and the Public Theater's Public Works program.
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The Production and Design Studio
Select P&D students will participate in the PS-3 Fourth Grade Community Collaboration. Working from kits created by faculty, P&D students will lead fourth-graders in creating properties, costumes, and backdrops for their show. Beginning at an early morning gathering and throughout the day, P&D will use the Post-it-Note project to spur conversation about community.
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The Stella Adler Studio
Adler has invited their Outreach Faculty, current participants in the Outreach Division, and alums of the program, to meet with current NYU students to discuss these programs and what the Stella Adler Community means to them. Adler’s award-winning outreach program has brought Adler students and faculty to under-served schools, drug and alcohol recovery programs, community centers and the nations two largest jails: Rikers Island in New York City and Twin Towers in Los Angeles. Tommy Demenkoff, Director of Outreach, will facilitate the event which will feature Susan Petch Eam from the Phoenix House Theatre Project, Nelson Nieves from Adler Youth, Lily Lipman from NYU and Yolanda Gonzalez, a student of the Stella Adler Studio on Rikers Island. On Community Day, the studio will bring this extended community together for an afternoon of communal celebration and inspiration.
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The Stonestreet Studio
Stonestreet will host a lunch-time studio get-together, during which they will film interviews of students speaking about what community means to them. Studio head and administrators will focus on how Stonestreet has and will continue to find new ways to foster a sense of unity and collaboration.
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The Strasberg Institute
Strasberg will hang a large map of the world in the studio, and ask students to place a gold start on their hometown, along with starts for NYU and Strasberg. This will display how students have come from around the US and the world, and are building their own community here. During lunch, students will write words and phrases that express why the following communities are special to them: Hometown Community, NYC Community, NY Theatre Community, NYU Community, NYU Tisch Drama Community, and NYU at Strasberg Community. Students will be encouraged to contribute to the Strasberg drive for the Holy Apostle Soup Kitchen on that day. The faculty will incorporate the theme of community into their opening remarks of each class and they are working on ways to infuse it into their class lesson.