| My final creative project was an original production of the musical Into the Woods by Stephan Sondheim, a project in which the power of mentoring youth and role-modeling is combined with effective education in the performing arts. I implemented a formal mentoring component within Canandaigua Youtheatre, a community theatre camp, in which a group of older, more experienced high school students created a collaborative mentor relationship with a group of younger adolescents. Over the previous years I had mentored a group of students who are now completing high school. This year, I encouraged my mentees to mentor a younger student and help them create the same characterization in the musical. The younger students portrayed the character in Act 1 and the older students portrayed the same character in Act 2. I reached out to a multi-aged and inclusive group of dedicated musical theatre students, their families, and their larger community. I developed insights about what worked well, how it did so, and the most important things I learned as an educator and artistic director. These things were the relationships, inclusion, and the artistic choices to support them. |
