Rural and Community Art Project

Our goal is to assist in ways not provided in the Ely School's budget to make this a once in a lifetime experience and performance. By the end of this project, the student musicians and actors will have honed their skills and learned new techniques. The student technical staff will become proficient at running lights and sound (always done in the past by adults). We are bringing more people into the process: both community and students. The skill level of the choral students, the student actors and musicians, and community personnel working on sets, lights and sound, technical issues, and costumers will increase through this challenging project. We will involve many who have never participated in a theater production before, and bring some new faces into the theater as audience and arts appreciators. Our goal is a sold out show. Our ask is money for stipends for professional musicians and puppet/prop designer. Part of the assessment will be easy. Right now, there are no students in the school that can design the lighting and run the lighting console or run sound for a show. So, at the end of the project, if some students can do this, the outcome is what we hope for. The same is true for students who will learn the techniques for costume design and manufacture. Measuring the student musicians improvement is a little more subjective, but could be measured with a rubric that will be used at the audition and making a similar rubric at the end of the process. There are very complete records of the attendance at the high school musicals, so the attendance can be compared and an increase will indicate the widening of the circle of people supporting the arts. We will track attendance, we will gather feedback from participants and community members. We will pay the professional musicians as well as puppet designer.