Alley Theatre to Host Teen SLAM POETS Event This Fall

On Friday, November 11 at 7:00 p.m., Slam Poets @ Alley Theatre will hold its Teen Fall Slam in the Neuhaus Theatre. Students from participating Partner Schools compete in the Teen Fall Slam where the top two winners become Sacrificial Poets in the 6th Annual Bayou City Slam on November 19. Advance reservations are recommended and can be made at alleytheatre.org/education. The event is free and open to the public.

Finalists for the Alley Theatre Fall Slam 2016 will be chosen from Alley Partner Schools - The High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Sharpstown High School, Heights High School (formerly Reagan HS), Ebbert L. Furr High School, Academy of Choice and The Briarwood School.

Additionally, Rain will be the feature poet. Rain is a published author, national slam poet/spoken word artist, playwright and actress. Over the last eight years she has performed in various venues locally and state to state. She currently attends the University of Houston where she's majoring in Mass Communications and she is also a Teaching Artist with the Alley Theatre's Slam Poets @ Alley Theatre in-school program. Cara Goodman, also an Alley Teaching Artist, will host the event.

Addison Antonoff was the first place winner of the 2015 fall slam. She is currently a freshman at the High School for Performing Arts and continues to participate in the Alley's in-school residencies.

Slam Poets @ Alley Theatre brings positive change in confidence and literacy, writing skills and competitions to provide a stage for young poets. Last year the program reached more than 3,000 students and over 40 teachers.

The program creates poised, proud, quick-thinking and creative young adults. Students draw from their personal wealth of knowledge and experience to write and share their unique stories and emotions through performance in a welcoming community atmosphere. The program instills students with the courage to articulate and defend their most personal ideas and experiences in a public forum. Slam Poets is a 5- to 16-day in-school residency.

For more information on the Teen Fall Slam Competition and Slam Poets @ Alley Theatre please visit: alleytheatre.org/slampoets and check out a video of last year's competition HERE. For Applied Theatre at the Alley updates visit thier Facebook page and follow #TeenSLAM

The Alley Theatre, one of America's leading not-for-profit theatres, is a nationally recognized performing arts company led by Artistic Director Gregory Boyd and Managing Director Dean R. Gladden. The theatre was founded in 1947 and welcomes more than 170,000 audience members each year. The Alley produces up to 16 plays each year in our newly renovated theatre, ranging from the best current work, to re-invigorated classic plays, to new plays by contemporary writers. Home to a Resident Company of actors, the Alley is one of the few professional American not-for-profit theatres to embrace this ideal. In addition, a 75,000 square foot state-of-the-art production center houses scenery construction, costumes, properties, wigs, lighting and sound design - all on-site. Alley All New, the initiative to commission and develop new work year round, features the Alley All New Festival each season presenting workshops and readings of new plays and musicals in process. Additionally the Alley serves 65,000 students annually with award-winning education and community programs including in-school arts integration residencies, school tours and student matinees. A recipient of the Special Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, the Alley has brought productions to Broadway, 40 American cities including New York's Lincoln Center and internationally to London, Berlin, Paris, and St. Petersburg throughout its 69 year history.

The Alley Theatre completed a $46.5 million building renovation in the 2014-2015 season, the first major improvements since the building opened in 1968. With more than 500 performances in 2015-2016, the Alley will produce more shows than all other performing arts organizations in the Houston Theater District combined.

Photo Credit: Christopher Diaz

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