Vanessa Strickland: It Matters

Afternoons with Dad

One of my fondest collection of memories of the presence of art in my life was when I was in preschool.  By this age, I was already drawing with crayons on endless reams of paper, playing with stuffed animals and dolls as if they were real, and listening to all kinds of music, from opera to glam rock.  A huge influence for me artistically as I was growing up was my father.  He would show me classic movies, check out huge picture books with amazing illustrations, and have me watch and listen to ballets and operas.  This introduction to opera and ballet by my father is where my favorite memories stem from.

I learned, through my dad, about all the different stories that were told in operas.  When we had long afternoons together at home after preschool, my father and I would plop down on the floor by the stereo and he would explain to me the story as it played out over our living room speakers.  Through these afternoon activities, I learned about the love story between Prince Ziegfried and Odette in “Swan Lake”; I remember being in calmed by the soft sounds of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute;” and bouncing around the room when hearing the fervent strings of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.”  I would get so excited about these stories that I would carry them around with me, telling my friends at school about them and subsequently sitting them down in front of the TV whenever I could to have them watch these great tales.

These stories became so ingrained into me that my father and I would take on roles of the characters in these pieces and start acting out the scenes from the operas right in the middle of the living room.  He would play Grandpapa Drosselmeier and I would play Marie from “The Nutcracker,” or he would play Figaro and I would be Rosina in “The Barber of Seville.”  I’m sure at this point that this may have been the start of my fondness for live performance.

Twenty-three years later and I am a professional actor in the DC area.  I think back to these afternoons with my dad as having a huge impact on how I live my life in terms of how I think and feel, and also how I view the world.  His introducing me to classical music really gave me the confidence at other stages of my life to tell my own stories.  The exposure to art alone, and the motivation of wanting to teach a child about art and encourage them to explore it for themselves emboldens them to create their own art.

What’s your story?

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A young Vanessa dances.

Vanessa Strickland
YPT Actor

Click on the video below to watch Vanessa explain why she believes arts education matters for DC students.

Laurie Ascoli: It Matters

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher told my mom that she feared I wasn’t able to distinguish fantasy from reality.  I don’t think I was ever at that point, but I do know that my imagination was completely out of control and didn’t know what to do with itself at school.  At home I could spend hours thinking up soap opera dramas for my Disney action figures to perform, but at school there were few outlets for my hyperactive imagination and so I had to create them for myself.  When we were asked to write ten sentences demonstrating the uses of vocabulary words, I strung them together to create a complete story.  When instructed to write an essay on why we shouldn’t do drugs, I wrote a play.  When other kids played soccer at recess, I sat in the grass and imagined that we were all toys belonging to a giant who controlled our every move.

In third grade, my school started offering an after-school activity program, and drama was one of the options.  I’d always loved acting in class plays, so I signed up.  The end product of the program was going to be a staged version of Rumplestiltskin, and the director decided to cast the lead female role by having us guess numbers between one and twenty.  I guessed the correct number (thirteen) and excitedly began prepping for the role.  When my big moment on stage came and I stood there histrionically wailing after Rumplestiltskin threatened to take my baby, listening to the audience’s laughter, I realized that my imagination now had a place to go.

As I continued performing throughout middle and high school, I felt a palpable sense of relief at having a safe place to go where my creativity was not only accepted, but encouraged and nurtured.  I went to a standard public high school, but we were one of the few fortunate schools to actually have theater classes available as part of our regular schedule as well as an after-school program.  Theater became a place to escape the cliques of girls in my class who only wanted to talk about nail polish and introduced me to other kids who loved and needed art just as much as I did.  While in elementary school theater expanded my already active imagination, in high school it taught me about commitment, responsibility and passion.  (You don’t give up hours to rehearsal every evening and weekend when you’re 16 unless you really, really love what you’re doing.)  More importantly, though, it taught me about myself.  While exploring different characters in a myriad of plays with a team of other students, I began to discover who I was and where I fit into the world.

Of the core group of theater students in my high school, nearly all of us have gone on to have careers in the arts.  We are theater artists, TV producers, filmmakers, stand up comics and musicians.  I can’t imagine that any of us would have found our passions as easily or held onto them as firmly had we not been exposed to the arts at such a crucial and formative age.

Since my graduation, theater classes at my high school have been cut back, but they still exist.  There is a new generation of students finding their voice through the arts and getting ready to declare themselves theater, music and humanities majors. It’s hard for me to imagine what my life would be like if I hadn’t been introduced to theater when I was.  Would I have followed an entirely different career path?  Would my crazy imagination just have died out at some point?  I’m glad I never had to find out the answers to these questions, and hope that one day arts education will become so standard that no other students will, either.

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Laurie performs at the American College Theatre Festival.

Laurie Ascoli
YPT Program Assistant

Holly Taylor Petty: It Matters

Jen’s Story
*Student’s name changed to protect privacy

School can be a difficult place for students who don’t learn in the same way as the majority of their peers. I saw the pain first-hand when Jen, one of my sophomore dance students walked into my classroom. She was not physically handicapped, but I could see that she was so afraid to participate that she could hardly move at all. She would stand there paralyzed. Jen struggled in many of her regular education classes. I knew that school was a miserable experience for her, and I had a hard time knowing how to help her feel comfortable enough to participate. I began to see Jen open up a little bit when I assigned her and a couple of other classmates to work with a severe special needs student. She was so caring and gentle. Through helping someone else discover the art of dance, Jen realized that she had something to offer the world. When I talked to her at the end of the year she was so excited about her plans for registering for more dance classes her junior year. I heard later from her resource specialist that dance had made all the difference for Jen’s confidence. I saw first-hand how the arts helped Jen recognize that she had worth and that is more rewarding than all of the perfect test scores I graded combined.

Click here to learn how you can help keep the arts in DC schools.

Holly Taylor Petty with Her Daughter

Holly Taylor Petty
YPT Community Member

Holly Taylor Petty focused her arts education on dance and violin. She earned a BA in Dance Education and is a certified Suzuki violin instructor. Holly taught dance I, dance II and dance company at Payson High School in Utah until last year, when she moved to Washington DC. She became a mommy 9 months ago and is loving staying at home with her daughter, while teaching private violin lessons part-time, as well as taking dance lessons. She is currently involved with a nonprofit organization called Artist Interrupted, which helps female artists balance the performing arts with everyday family demands.

Liza Harbison: It Matters

I grew up on the arts. I drew, sang, danced ballet (as much as one can at five years old), made a miniature world out of clay, played piano, and even attended theater camp. In my tween years, however, popularity was the most important art form of all. Everything my parents liked—and I grew up on—was uncool. I had to rebel. And by that, I mean I had to shun theater and devote my life to 98 Degrees. These were the years of trying in vain to fit in by only liking what my peers liked. (Obviously if I was destined to be one of the cool mainstream kids, I would have chosen NSYNC or Backstreet Boys, but part of me still wanted to go against the grain.)

At fifteen, I started questioning my conformist ways, and the arts helped me decide who I wanted to be independently of others. It was the students who were passionate about the arts who seemed to have a knack for this self-discovery stuff. They were not caught up in the social hierarchy and had no interest in anyone telling them they should be.

Soon, I discovered photography and understood why those artsy kids felt so comfortable with themselves: art changes how you see the world. I still compose photos in my field of vision all the time. Through my lens, I can take the most beautiful parts of the world and hold onto them. I can photograph something horrible or unjust and bring attention to it. Photography also created a confidence in this newly defined sense of self. I knew that I had this passion and that was all that mattered. What else might I have an undiscovered affinity for? There was no longer time to waste on what other people were telling me to want.

I started volunteering at a local theater, became the crazy liberal girl on campus, and generally continued to develop an unusual set of interests throughout my high school years. Of course it was important that I unearthed a passion for photography and graphic design because otherwise I would still be jumping from internship to internship trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. But it was what the arts did for me personally, not professionally, that mattered most.

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A Young Liza with Her Face Painted

Liza Harbison
YPT Communications and Graphic Design Assistant

Ian Real: It Matters

My name is Ian Real. In my life I have traveled a lot from place to place, and the last place I lived was down south in Buenos Aires, Argentina. That is where I grew a passion for acting. Now, I moved from Argentina to here in DC  in early January, and I thought that one thing I  probably wouldn’t get to do is act . See, I am very nervous and it often takes me a long time in order to feel one with a particular group of people, and especially act in front of them. But I feel that the major thing that YPT’s Young Playwrights’ Workshop has done for me is to give me a place where I can be myself, not be afraid of failure, and act.

The first time I went to the Workshop, I was greeted. And when they asked us to pair up in groups that day, I had very little trouble finding people who wanted me in their group. It was as if they had taken me in already. When I acted that first day, I was applauded, as was everyone else.

The Workshop relaxed me and gave me confidence, as well as strengthened me as an actor through constructive criticism and acting concepts. See, acting to me isn’t just something I do for fun, or to make people happy, it’s a release. It’s a way to get out of the troubles I may face and become someone else, and that’s what Young Playwrights’ Theater gave me. They gave me a place to relax, and act my troubles, my stress and my anger away into something creative, productive and happy. They took me out of a trap door I thought I had fallen into where acting couldn’t happen, and put me in a brightly lit room where I was greeted, encouraged and happy acting.

Young Playwrights’ Theater is a place to go to if any student ever aspires to be an actor, yet from what I hear, we need help. With the government’s budget going down, funding for arts programs is one of the first things to go, and we need your help. With your money, we can make another student like me have a place they see as encouraging, relaxing and free from harmful criticism you can find elsewhere. With your money, we can make one kid less angry, less stressed and less sad about his life.

With your money, we can introduce a student into a world where they could be whatever they want to be, without scorn or harmful laughter. But we need your funding, your donations, to make this all happen.

Click here to learn more.

Watch Ian and other YPT supporters make the case for arts education.

Ian Real
YPT Student

Raina Fox: It Matters

A Young Raina and Her Sister Alina Play Piano

Ever since I can remember I have loved drawing, painting, sculpting things from play-dough. Any opportunity I had to take an object and make it into something else was for me. I loved digging into my imagination and translating that jumble of images into something tangible.

When I was eight years old, I took an art class at the Portland Museum of Art.  One day, we were asked to paint a real person. A model. I remember this class so vividly – the model sat on a stool with an umbrella, posing seriously as fifteen elementary school children painstakingly drew her.

I felt that I had a different kind of responsibility with this picture. It wasn’t just something I had dreamed up in my imagination, it was a human being that I was representing to the world. I remember drawing and redrawing the handle, not being able to figure out the physics of how it could fit into the center of the umbrella itself. You can see from my drawing that I never did figure that out, but I certainly tried my best.

Part way through the class, we hung all our pictures on the wall and stepped back to admire each other’s work. Then we gave each other constructive criticism to use as we finished our pictures. Someone pointed out that the background was boring, so I added a sun (clearly this would create the appropriate weather condition for umbrella-holding). Someone else noticed that I had forgotten the shadow under the model’s chair. Through other people’s eyes, I was able to see the things I couldn’t, and it made my picture better. In return, I offered my suggestions to help others improve their work.

I was really proud of that picture. The teacher must have thought it was okay too because she asked my mom later if the museum could keep it for their collection of children’s art. Instead of answering, my mom replied, “Why don’t you ask the artist?”

In that moment, I felt I had a HUGE decision to make, and no one could make it for me. Should I let the museum have my picture and risk never seeing it again? Or should I keep it so that my family and I could enjoy it later? I decided that my family would probably enjoy it more than strangers, so I decided to keep it. It has hung on the wall of my parent’s home ever since.

This memory is significant for two reasons. First, it represents the first time I was cognizant of the artistic process as something dynamic: a combination of close observation, trusting and supporting my peers and the confidence to realize I was able to tackle something new.

It was also the first time that I felt like a real artist. Having an adult, someone I respected, value my work, was a huge confidence boost. In addition, being respected enough as an artist to be given control over my work forced me to step into that more mature role.

I see this same growth in the playwrights that YPT works with.  In the classroom, students are given the opportunity to write from their imagination and experience, learn from their peers’ constructive criticism and offer their own perspectives. They learn to communicate not only through words on the page, but to work as a team. And when their words are reflected back to them through adult actors, they are forced to take responsibility for their work. They become playwrights.

Arts education helps students express themselves creatively, but it also teaches patience, teamwork, and responsibility.  These are the values I have carried into my adult life, and they are the ones I want future adults to hold. That is why arts education matters.

Click here to learn how you can help keep the arts alive in DC schools.

And be sure to join YPT tonight at GALA Hispanic Theatre for our final performance of the season!

Raina's Painting

Raina Fox
YPT Community Engagement Associate

Devin Ellis: It Matters

My Story

A love for theater is not the usual path to a career in international conflict management – but it happened to me. Growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, I was a long way from the gruesome wars that wracked many parts of the world, but it intrigued me to understand why instability happened and how to respond to it and prepare for it. Hearing about the fall of Mobutu’s government in Zaire and the wars in the Balkans on National Public Radio growing up, ignited my interest in a career in foreign policy. I would eventually decide to move to the DC area for college and eight years later I’m on the other side of a graduate degree in international security policy.

But that’s only half the story. My development as an adolescent and young adult was profoundly shaped by my involvement in theater – both in school, taking college acting classes and helping to produce shows, and during the summers through the improv theater camp I attended religiously from the age of ten until… well, now my friends run it and I am waiting for my own daughter to be old enough to go.

The power of theater – acting, writing, directing, etc. – for young people can’t be overstated. It speaks to almost every aspect of development we go through as human beings. Theater can teach you to express yourself by becoming someone else, to articulate your own vision of what’s right and wrong with the world, to create something meaningful to everyone out of your own most personal experiences, to explore the realm of imagination. By opening windows into all kinds of experiences, it helps us grow as young people – imparting life lessons in a creative instead of stultifying way. In my own case, it helped me understand that I could draw together my impressions, ideas and dreams into a unique narrative which would not only hold people’s interest, but could genuinely affect their attitudes and ideas.

I started writing scenes and then whole productions for my friends, and discovered things I had never know about myself before. I could tell a joke. I was able to look at situations and understand people’s motivation. Theater helped me understand how people interact with each other. That helped me understand politics. It also taught me about narrative and how to make people suspend their disbelief and accept the truth you were showing them, whether it was real or not.

Today I still work in theater, but my plays are for the Brookings Institution and the Agency for International Development, the Department of Homeland Security and Ford Motor Company. I spend about a third of my time in a suit and tie, talking to clients about the value of using simulations to teach about crisis management and negotiation, and test hypotheses about policy questions in international security and instability in the business world. The other two thirds – to the envy of most of my colleagues – I am leaning back in my office, feet propped on my desk, imagining what MIGHT happen in a million different situations, and then turning my ideas and research into a simulation that will help two peoples resolve a conflict in sub-Saharan Africa, or a big company decide on a crisis communications strategy.

And yes, when I recently designed a simulation about how Somali pirates negotiate ransom for their hostages, I couldn’t help but put a little quote at the top of the introduction…

“Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valor, and in the grapple I boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship; so I alone became their prisoner.”

~ Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 6

Click here to learn how you can help keep the arts alive in DC schools.

Devin Ellis

Devin Ellis
YPT Community Member

Devin Ellis is a Simulation Developer at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management.

Alison Beyrle: It Matters

I experienced the power of the arts at a young age. Even before I knew how to write, I would spend hours drawing and painting and making up stories in my head to go along with my pictures. I dictated these stories to my mother who dutifully transcribed them until my education caught up with my ideas, and I was able to fill notebooks with my own stories. Then, when I was still in preschool, my dad took me to see an elementary school production of The Pied Piper. Now I don’t remember many things from when I was four, but I still remember this play, and how absolutely transfixed I was by the cool, older students playing these characters and creating this world onstage. When the Pied Piper appeared in the back of the audience to speak to the onstage characters, and then led the children back to “the village” through the audience I was spellbound. This was better than TV, better than my favorite videos – these characters were real and right next to me. Looking back, it was probably a mix of fascination and trepidation because to this day I am a little wary of theatre that involves the audience. But I believe it was that moment when my passion for theatre began; and not just an enjoyment of seeing a story told onstage, but an interest in how all the elements come together to create this amazing experience and a desire to get involved.

I was lucky to have parents who brought me to see many more plays, encouraged my writing, signed me up for drama classes and dutifully applauded as my friends and I put on our own plays in my living room. As I grew older and had these different experiences, I realized that acting was not for me, but my four-year-old fascination with the process of creating theatre never went away. Now I work in arts administration and as a stage manager, so not only am I able to see how a theatrical piece gets from page to stage, I play an active, important role in the process. And despite long nights of rehearsal and technical snafus that always seem to happen right before the show opens, there is always something magical about running a show for an audience for the first time that makes me want to do it again and again.

We all need to learn math and science along with drama, art, and music. And while some kids might be inspired by a cool science project or enjoy doing math puzzles in their free time, other kids will be inspired by the local drama club’s community play, or will run home after school with a story in their heads that is begging to be scribbled out. Cutting arts education and arts programs robs these kids of experiences that will entertain and inspire them and perhaps, in cases such as mine, drive their future path. It matters. A lot.

So let’s make sure we keep the arts in schools and in the community. And if you have kids, think about taking them to see a play (or bring them to YPT’s next performance on May 23rd!). You never know when it’ll be a life-changing experience.

Click here to learn more.

A young Alison expresses herself through painting.

Alison Beyrle
YPT Development Assistant

Karin Fagella: It Matters

Second Grade Easter Bonnet Parade

The graffiti on the wall going into the subway in Park Slope Brooklyn in 1960 was about the only kind of arts available to my then seven year old self. If there was any one in the neighborhood being supported in any kind of artistic development it was hidden so well no one ever knew?  My mom, bless her soul, had not a crafty, artistic bone in her body.  Maybe having six children in ten years contributed to that, but little old me wouldn’t have dreamed of asking for art supplies.  Making annual Easter eggs was it until the following year.

So, when Mrs. Ahern told my second grade class there was going to be a contest on who could make the best Easter bonnet and that the school was going to open up the rollaway walls on the four adjacent classrooms  for a parade so they could be judged by class parents and teachers, well, I thought I didn’t have a clue or a prayer in hell of winning.

I went home to tell my mom how embarrassed I already was at the thought of my potential bonnet.  Money was non-existent, so what we had in the house was going to be the supplies I needed to use.  Mom, knowing her own artistic shortcomings, came up with an idea so far out it made me think maybe, possibly maybe, I could pull something off that would let me save a little face.  “Why don’t you just make a funny hat, filled with all your favorite things, and we can make it out of a cardboard box?” It was so wild, I thought I’d go for it.

So off to the scavenger hunt around the house. This would become my material. Crayons, chalk, buttons, ribbons from an old dress, candy, Sunday comic strips, balloons from an old birthday party, nail polish, and finally a couple of feathers from some pigeon we found in the park about a week before. My brothers got into the action with donated chewed up GI Joes. Baby sister Betty’s bib made the cut too. Out came the old paste jar and my bonnet came to life. Feeling really happy with myself, I let myself feel some relief.

The next morning, off to school I go. Then reality happens. All these beautiful bonnets, no doubt almost completely done by really talented mothers, show up and I am dying a slow death. They line us up and to the tune of “In your Easter bonnet.” The parade begins in the completely opened classroom. Then, as I am walking past, I notice every adult talking about my bonnet – some smiling, some laughing, but all in a nice way.  Mrs. Ahern has a grin from ear to ear mouthing how proud she is of me, and I start thinking could I possibly win??

Well, this is a true story, and one of those traditional bonnets won, but something better happened. I learned that day that there are many ways to express yourself.  My idea of a bonnet may not have been traditional, but it was art in the true sense of the word. It gave me confidence I didn’t possess before that day, and I know it changed me a little for the better that day.

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Karin Fagella

Karin Fagella
YPT Community Member

Fatima Quander: It Matters

I don’t even think that I can describe my first experiences with the arts because, quite honestly, the arts have always been a part of my life. I was born into an artistic family and, literally, grew up in an art gallery because my mother, Carmen Torruella Quander, is a representational artist and curator whose personal studio and gallery (The Torruella Quander Gallery, Ltd.) also served as my childhood home! Growing up, my siblings and I assisted our mother on all sorts of exhibits and events and we each knew how to properly hang a show by the time we were 10 or 11 years old! The three of us have grown on to become professional artists in our own right: my sister is a fabulous fashion designer and artist living and working in NYC, my brother is a photographer here in DC, I’m an actor and, now, even my father has jumped on our artist bandwagon through becoming a published author—having written two books and already working on the 3rd and 4th! In short, art was just life for us.

Aside from all the art happening at home, I also participated in various arts programs and organizations around DC. I played the violin with the DC Youth Orchestra and took a number of after-school classes at Fillmore Arts Center in DC. On many occasions, I was the youngest person in my class and remember quite vividly sitting in the front row of the class, drawing charcoal still lifes, and listening to my 13 and 14 year old classmates marvel at the fact that I was only 9 years old! Not surprisingly, art gave me confidence.

At home—also when I was around 9 years old—I started to draw cartoons and caricatures. During this time, I focused my energies towards creating my own comic strips and hoped to, one day, draw for the weekend funnies section in The Washington Post. Although this temporary dream never materialized, I soon started my own Christmas card business called “Fatima’s Cards” where I created all sorts of hand-drawn Christmas cards that I successfully sold at my school’s annual Christmas bazaar. That year, I was able to purchase beautiful Christmas gifts for both my immediate and extended family and realized that, despite the fact that I was a 4th grader, I could make an honest dollar from my own creations! What an amazing discovery!

Many, many years later, I’m still successfully making an honest dollar from creativity and art! Although I’ve come to be a performer and not a visual artist, I have no doubt that my early experiences with visual arts—and the arts in general—have contributed to who I am today. They assured me of the power of my own creativity, ability, and resourcefulness and I am absolutely thankful for all that art has given me and continues to give me everyday of my life.

Click here to learn how you can help keep the arts alive in DC classrooms.

A young Fatima and her sister play dress-up.

Fatima Quander
YPT Actor

Click on the video below to watch Fatima explain why she believes arts education matters for DC students.