Shadowbox is proud to announce a partnership with the Columbus City Schools Unified Arts Department. The alliance will allow Shadowbox to provide a variety of opportunities for high school and middle school drama / theater students to work with Shadowbox professionals.
The program, aligned with the school district's drama curriculum, is designed to supplement the students' arts education, specifically performance and technical skills.
The program will begin Monday, April 6th when students will watch an abridged version of Shadowbox's current musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The students have been provided a study guide and are invited to participate in a talk back with the members of the cast and production team after the show. Shadowbox will repeat the performance for a second student group on Monday, April 20th.
"We've had some success with this type of thing on a smaller scale," said Stacie Boord, Shadowbox Community Relations Director. "Groups from local middle schools, high schools, and universities have been in attendance at our musicals and Lunchbox shows and have participated in talk backs and workshops afterwards. This project, however, is the first ‘private' show we'll be doing for students."
In addition to these special shows, plans are underway to incorporate other outreach programs for Columbus City Schools.
"We've got interest from several schools to have us come in to the classroom to perform short shows and lead workshops, help them prepare their musicals - whether that be working with the students to prepare for auditions or helping them with choreography, vocal performance, directing and so forth - and hosting them for special shows and workshops with Qs and As at Shadowbox," continued Boord.
The partnership with Columbus City Schools and the performance project with Metro High School are the first steps to what Shadowbox hopes will be a long, high impact relationship with the community. "We have a vested interest in our community, and they have shown interest in Shadowbox's success. To that end, we feel we are uniquely suited to fill a niche as surrogate arts educators and we're very pleased to accept the opportunity make a mark on tomorrow's performers," said Boord.
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