On Thursday, Hollywood School begins its month-long artist-in-residency program. Funded in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, according to school Principal Victoria DeVylder, four artists from the Child’s Play Touring Theatre will perform at 9 a.m. before the student body.
Afterwards, the artists and students will then break off into study groups to brainstorm and write story ideas for a student-run theater performance, scheduled to premier Jan. 31 or Feb. 1, 2007. Child’s Play Touring Theatre, according to its Web site, is a national touring theatre company “dedicated exclusively to performing stories and poems written by children.”
“We do this every year,” DeVylder said of the artist-in-residence program. “With a particularly larger program, such as this one, every two or three years.”
The last big project occurred three years ago, she said, when ceramicist Kay Hauck directed students in the creation of a ceramic tile mural, displayed on the north wall of the school’s main entrance.
“An art project like this one is very labor-intensive,” she said, “and requires a solid month of work from both the students and the parent volunteers.”
Hollywood School, the only District 96 school located in Brookfield, serves about 120 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. Every student will be involved in the production process, doing everything from brainstorming story ideas, script writing, rehearsing roles and designing and constructing the set, to promoting the performance and documenting the project’s development as it comes together.
The responsibilities are divided up and distributed to core groups of about 30 students each. Students in grades three through five will compose three main core groups, DeVylder said, responsible for writing, acting and stage crew, but all grades will participate.
“Since this project is funded by an Illinois Arts Council grant,” DeVylder said, “we are required to document its progress.”
In past years, she said, students responsible for promoting the project interviewed fellow students and took digital photographs for a scrapbook documenting the project.
“This year, with the help of our Technology Department, we will be creating not just a scrapbook, but an I-movie and a DVD as well, which document both the performance itself and the production process leading up to it,” DeVylder said. “It will be a ‘behind-the-scenes’ supplement incorporated as a part of the finished product.”
According to Nicole Rohr of Child’s Play Touring Theater, the four artists will work with the students all day on Thursday to create stories and poems, and will return in January to help the students to design the set, costumes and props, to set poems to music and to create a show program.
In all, the artists will spend 20 hours per week in January helping the students through the production process.
“All the stories and poems in the performance will be written by the students,” Rohr said. “The first day [Thursday] is a writing workshop aimed at creating a final performance.”
The four artists in residence include actors Dave Asher, who toured with the famous improv comedy troupe, The Second City; Joseph Lewis, who holds a BFA in acting from Emerson College, and has written and directed two feature films; Erin Schultz, who earned her BA in theatre from Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Ind.; and musician Dan Sherer, a graduate of Wesleyan University. The artist overseeing the residency is Associate Director Perry Cavitt, an experienced actor and graduate of the Theatre School at DePaul University.
Child’s Play usually conducts one artist-in-residency program each year aided by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, Rohr said. And in addition to the program at Hollywood School, the theater group is also currently working on three similar programs in the Chicago Public Schools.
“In past years,” Rohr said, “we have taken on as many as eight programs.”
Plans for the current artist-in-residency program at Hollywood School began about a year ago when Rohr met with Martha Carlson, a representative from Hollywood’s PTA.
“We both liked what the other was trying to do,” Rohr said, “and it was clear that the PTA was determined to work with us.”
Carlson praised Child’s Play as a “renowned” theater group.
“This is a group of artists who sit on many boards and councils that work to bring the arts into schools and communities,” Carlson said.
According to DeVylder, parents of the PTA wrote the grant to the Illinois Arts Council and volunteered their time to both the planning and creative stages of the project.
“It takes much more than dollars and cents to put this thing together,” DeVylder said. “Raising the money is only a part of the greater scheme.” It is a collaborative effort on all sides of the school’s community, she added.