The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati Establishes Groundbreaking Resident Artist Company

The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati (TCT), the country's oldest professional theatre for young audiences, is proud to announce that it is accepting submissions for its very first Resident Artist Company. The nine-member troupe will receive a full-time salary with benefits. Each member of the Resident Artist Company will be guaranteed four to five performance projects each year and participate in touring, teaching, new works development and arts administration.

"This is not a gig," said Roderick Justice, Producing Artistic Director for The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati. "Each recruit will be a full-fledged employee and part of the TCT family. This is the opportunity for nine extremely talented artists to be a part of something fresh, exciting, and rewarding. We are looking nationwide for a diverse and passionate troupe of artists, teachers, and versatile performers. The actors we will hire must be able to step into a variety of roles, yet be flexible enough to learn and cultivate new arts administrative skills." Employment will begin August 1, 2017.

Those interested should send a headshot and resume to submissions@tctcincinnati.com. Submissions will be accepted only until Friday, March 24, 2017.

The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati is the only professional theater in the region that devotes its entire MainStage season to children. TCT brings more than 97,000 people downtown annually and reaches over 68,000 students through touring productions. The company's TCT Academy offers arts training to children in a variety of disciplines.

Since 1924, The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati (TCT) has been educating, entertaining and engaging audiences of all ages through professional theatrical productions and arts education programming for schools and families throughout the region. "We are helping to create the future arts patrons for our city, while at the same time are filling a gap left by the reduction in arts education in schools," said Kim Deaton, Managing Director and CEO of The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati. TCT brings art to life for children and the young at heart through three key programs: TCT MainStage at the Taft, TCT on Tour (including WorkShops), and TCT Academy (performing arts instruction).

Our TCT MainStage at the Taft series performed in downtown Cincinnati includes daytime performances for school audiences and weekend performances for the public. Four production runs are held each year, with individual shows formatted into one-hour, family friendly events. For each Broadway-quality production, we present seven performances for public audiences and ten performances for school students.

TCT on Tour brings the magic of live theatre directly to those who would otherwise be unable to enjoy it. TCT tours five productions each season, serving children of all ages (kindergarten through high school) with titles taken from classic literature, fairy tales, history and other works studied in school curricula. The acting troupe travels with innovative sets, which are designed to be both portable and visually enticing. TCT on Tour prides itself on productions that are both educational and entertaining, as well as affordable for schools and other venues across the broad geographic spectrum of Ohio. TCT on Tour also includes the WorkShop division, which takes a teaching artist directly into individual classrooms or after school programs, for a more interactive arts integration experience with children from pre-K through 16 years of age. Many of the workshops we offer examine contemporary concerns through the introduction of historical figures, such as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Langston Hughes; while other workshops bring social topics such as healthy eating, self-esteem and anti-bullying to life through theater, music, writing and role-playing.

Both TCT MainStage and TCT on Tour school shows are followed by a question and answer session between the audience and the cast and/or TCT representative (often, the Director) and are accompanied by complementary study guides, with state and national standards in mind, available on our website. Our productions are intended to act as a bridge for local curricula, giving schools access to high quality arts education as well as serving as a catalyst for integrating the arts with other subjects.

TCT Academy offers arts training to children in a variety of disciplines through our twelve-week, one hour/week class sessions, our one-week themed summer camps for introductory arts makers or our audition-based, two-week STAR Camp Red Bank program and one-month, audition-based STAR Intensive NKU summer program for children with demonstrated talent and interest in the performing arts. In addition to learning the arts, a primary objective for these arts integrated classes is to provide students with the necessary tools to become successful adults. Whether the students continue in an arts field or choose a different career path, the skills they develop in these programs can be leveraged and will last a life time.

The TCT Showtime Series at Red Bank is a brand-new destination for theater education expanding TCT's reach into the community. The Ralph and Patricia Corbett Showtime Stage is a small 152-seat performance space housed in our new facility on Red Bank Road. This new theater gives us the opportunity to program for new audiences, including preschoolers as well as middle and high school students. Thus, we begin the creation of future arts patrons in Cincinnati at an even earlier age, and extend their engagement through high school. The Showtime Series will allow us to program the new space with more than 64 performances. The two productions slated for the coming year are: Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat June 2-July 9, 2017; and the regional premiere of Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical February 23-March 25, 2018.