Our Programs Schools Our Students Curriculum

Core Programs

Opening Act’s voluntary, weekly, after-school theater programs span a full year and use improvisation, acting games, and writing exercises to help students unleash their creativity, foster collaboration, and develop professional acting technique. Through their artistic achievements, Opening Act students develop leadership and problem solving skills and strengthen their abilities in writing and self-expression. The culmination of each program is an original production, created and performed by the students in professional theaters. Past years’ productions have included theme-based ensembles, series of individually written one-acts, full length plays created through group improvisation, and a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. The plays have been performed at The Public Theater, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Chashama, and Baruch Performing Arts Center. Click for video.

In designing Opening Act’s programs, we heard again and again that voluntary after-school theater programs are difficult to sustain because students quickly lose their initial enthusiasm and soon stop coming. Opening Act has defied those odds, using a curriculum that not only engages students in a unique and supportive artistic community, but also fosters the commitment needed to see the creative process through to the end.

Out of Class Activities

In addition to Opening Act’s regular weekly programming, students participate in special ‘out of class’ activities. In 2009-2010, our Sixth Annual Winter Gathering provided an opportunity for students from all of our programs to gather together at the presitgious Lincoln Center in Manhattan to share their experiences, show off their improvisation skills, and feel a part of a larger acting community. Students from all eight partnering schools will also attend a performance of the Broadway musical West Side Story in May, where they will have the opportunity to participate in a private ‘talk back’ with the show’s cast following the performance. For many of our students, this will be their first opportunity to see a professional theater production. Opening Act is also piloting its Saturday Master Class Program, which will give our students the opportunity to explore career opportunities in the arts in greater depth. For our first Master Class, we focused on auditioning and applying for college theater programs. Future classes will focus on Design and Technical Theater, Arts Administration, and Theater Management.

Scholarship Program

Opening Act’s Scholarship Program awards $500 to one actor from each of our partnering schools that can be used toward the student’s continued professional acting training or college education. We are enormously proud of our scholars, who have taken classes at Manhattan’s HB Studios, Upright Citizen’s Brigade, The Pit Improv Theater, and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. We are enormously proud of our Scholars, a number of whom have so impressed the staff of these professional studios with their enthusiasm and commitment that they were awarded additional scholarships by the school to continue their training once their Opening Act scholarship was complete.  Read more about our Scholars.

SCHOOLS

Participating Schools

Opening Act currently provides year-long theater programs to ten New York City public high schools: Clara Barton High School in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn; Samuel Tilden High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn; Franklin K. Lane High School in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn; Cobble Hill School for American Studies in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn; The Walton Educational Campus in Kingsbridge, Bronx; Samuel Gompers High School in the South Bronx; The Christopher Columbus Campus in the Bronx; the Norman Thomas Campus in Murray Hill, Manhattan; and the High School for Graphic and Communication Arts in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.

OUR STUDENTS

Our students, while sharing a passion for artistic expression, reflect the diversity of New York City’s school population, representing immigrant communities from the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa, whose many first languages include Spanish, Filipino, and Haitian Creole. More than 90% of our students are African-American or Latino.

Reaching Out to the Neediest Schools

Opening Act reaches out to schools with less than 50% of students graduating in four years. At Samuel Tilden High School in Brooklyn, only 36.1% of students graduate in four years.

We reach out to schools with less than 30% of freshmen reading on grade level. At Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn, only 15.6% of freshmen read on grade level.

We reach out to large schools with a severe lack of arts and after-school opportunities for their students. At Samuel Gompers High School in the South Bronx, where overcrowding is 104%, there were no theater programs for its more than 1500 students.

For more information and statistics on our individual schools, go to www.InsideSchools.org.

CURRICULUM

The Opening Act Acting Program is series of 24 2-hour workshops – broken into two semesters – that are designed to give students a strong foundation in acting technique and an opportunity to create and perform two ensemble pieces. The program gives students a weekly space where they can feel safe to have fun and develop their own skills as actors and performers, and to give those students the powerful and unique experience of creating a true ensemble performance.

To achieve the goals of the program, each workshop depends heavily on group exercises, theater games and improvisations as well as acting exercises and playmaking activities. Toward the beginning of the year, workshops will use extensive group activities, theater games and improvisations to establish an environment of trust and fun so that students can feel free to explore and take risks (ie be able to be goofy and ridiculous in front of their peers). As the year progresses workshops will focus more on using acting exercises that will both give students the skills they need to approach performing a scene and will lay the foundation for the creation of original scenes and plays.

Opening Act is happy to share its Curriculum and Teaching Artist Manual with fellow teachers, artists, and organizations. Please contact us for more information.