For the professional theatre artists living in this community: Too often, theatre artists work for free, especially in Acadiana. This leads them to leaving our area to seek paid work in their field. One of my goals, as a citizen of Lafayette, is to create job opportunities for our local performing arts talent. This is one small project, that if executed with care, can grow into a program that impacts children and supplies theatre professionals with jobs in future years. Performing arts programming is often the first line item removed from school budgets. This negatively impacts both the children and theatre professionals in our area. This project will bridge the gap in performing arts offerings in our community by being accessible due to its mobility. With this project, teaching artists will travel to students who will benefit greatly from this experience.

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Our team wants to share our knowledge of why theatre is important, what we can learn from theatre, character development, relationships, and storytelling with children in our community. Our hope is to introduce these concepts to children to give them a creative writing and performance outlet. First, the kids will be led through improv exercises that build self-confidence. Then they will become part of creating a story, giving them ownership and a sense of pride in their work. Volunteers from the group of children will be allowed to become our actors for the play we create together! They’ll dress up in costumes and use special props to aid them in acting the story out while the story is narrated by the instructors. Those not performing the piece will be part of our interactive audience. The instructors will give them cues in the script to listen for, and various things to do (make a sound effect, clap, stomp, etc) when certain things are said by the actors on stage. This demonstrates that all jobs in theatre are important, even being an audience member!