Geva Jurists: Ambassadors for August Wilson (ongoing)

From 2008 to 2011, four successive senior English classes from John Marshall High School will study August Wilson’s American Century as it is presented in productions and readings at Geva. Additionally, a core group of students from the 2011 graduating class will be invited to four sequential years of productions and play readings, as well as select behind-the-scenes events at Geva to gather a more intimate and personal understanding of the cumulative impact of Wilson’s writing. These students and their teachers will craft special investigations and projects to connect the historic legacy of these plays with the stories of their own personal history in Rochester.

Empire State Partnership at RCSD Lincoln Park School No. 44 (ongoing)

This program connects the elementary students at school No. 44 with performances at Geva through classroom residencies. Artist-educators and classroom teachers work as teams to develop units that integrate themes and content from productions, theatre-making skills modeled by the Geva performance, and classroom curriculum goals. The production is explored school-wide and serves as a springboard for students’ own projects and performances. This partnership is a collaboration with Rochester Wolf Trap, and part of a New York State Council on the Arts state-wide initiative for Arts-in-Education.

RCSD Passport Program (ongoing)

Geva provides the Rochester City School District with free tickets to selected performances in every year’s student matinee series, so that classes which might not otherwise visit Geva have the opportunity to experience live theatre, enhanced by the full range of our P.L.A.Y. programming. RCSD teachers who would like to request tickets through the Passport Program should contact Laurie Hidley at (585) 328-0037 ext. 1080.

Our Town with Brighton High School (2007)

The Brighton High School Shadowing Project gave a cast of high school performers staging Our Town the opportunity to meet with their counterparts in Geva’s professional cast, share their thoughts and creative process, rehearse their own production, and then perform the play with full technical elements on Geva’s Mainstage on the set of Geva’s production of Our Town. We were honored to bring a new community of young artists, families, friends and neighbors into a more intimate experience of our theatre-making, both at Brighton High School and at Geva. By participating in this joint venture we discovered immense value for the participating students and professionals alike, and will discuss how to build subsequent opportunities to share this triumph with others in our community. (Stay tuned for future developments!)

Do you envision an opportunity for partnership with our Education department? Contact Director of Education Skip Greer at (585) 232-1366, ext. 3073.

“…Knowledgeable adults working creatively with me on personal expression, knowledge of what it means to be human, and how to have confidence in my own ability, with will and purpose.”