[SML] OT: Cultural Arts programming at your educational institution

[gbierly]

On Jan 6, 2015, at 3:34 PM, John Lucs via Stagecraft <stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:

> How does you facility go about making your programming choices especially if it is an all school required event?  We are looking to form a committee of 10-15 people consisting of performing arts related students and some faculty outside of our department to help develop a working list of acts for next year.  We hope that this may bring the masses to enjoy the events we go with for 2015/16. Would love to hear of your experiences in this matter.

We have our entire high school student body (@2400) to attend 1 music dept assembly, our musical, our spring dance show, and our variety (talent) show each year.  We seat 1300 so do two seatings.  Each assembly is a sample/abbreviation of the evening productions, typically 40-50 minutes.  This gives them a brief introduction the event and does typically pique the student interest in attending the full evening productions.  Up until last year teachers could assign extra credit for attendance to an extra curricular program and many did if it tied into their course (i.e. Shakespeare, etc)  Parents can sign a form and have their student opt out of attending an assembly but this is fairly rare.   Many times proper theater etiquette is covered in the opening announcement.  We have some issues but not as many as you might expect.  Let me know OL if you need further clarification.  


Greg Bierly
Performing Arts Center Manager
Hempfield High School