Florida Stage's Groundbreaking 'Gen Z Takes The Stage'
By: Beau Higgins May. 06, 2011
GEN Z TAKES THE STAGE
A GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL PROJECT
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE
West Palm Beach, FL - Florida Stage's groundbreaking international educational collaborative, Children of Conflict has been transformed into a broader artistic initiative called Gen-Z Global Stage. The theatre, along with the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach and theatre directors and students in Singapore, the Philippines and Chile has created a completely unique global educational opportunity. Gen-Z Global Stage is an effort to cultivate a web dialogue among young artists across the globe, and to facilitate artistic collaboration using digital technology. The web-based exchange will culminate in a multi-media theatrical piece on Monday May 9, 2011. The result will be the creation of a collaborative presentation that will represent all of these amazing young voices and in the process leave all the participants with a deeper vision of themselves as a part of the broader global landscape. This year's project takes another step in that process with a fresh group of students. The final project presentation will be free and open to the public and will be held on Monday May 9 at 7:00 PM. on the stage at Florida Stage, The Rinker Playhouse at The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.
Children of Conflict was the brain-child of Susan Hyatt, former Director of Education for Florida Stage and focused primarily on connections with war-torn countries. The new Gen-Z Global Stage under the guidance of professional filmmaker and playwright Robert Goodrich seeks to focus more on helping students to discover their common connections through artistic expression. With a dialogue that functions via a Google Groups website, young people from all of the participating countries share their thoughts, ideas, fears, hopes and triumphs. The project has at its heart the desire to teach young people that even though they are separated by thousands of miles, and in very different cultures, they have more in common than they would have previously realized.
Robert Goodrich is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He has worked in both theatre and film for the past 20 years. The Cherry Lane Theatre in New York granted his play Occam's Razor a staged reading in 2001. His feature film ICON won the Directors Prize at the Video Tusculum Festival. He was awarded Best Director for his short film Spaceship at The Palm Beach International Film Festival, Voices of Local Film. Among his produced plays are Room 101, Other Fish and Signal 20. He is currently the Media Arts Specialist at Florida Stage.
The public can follow the discussion and interaction among the students through Google Groups by following this link http://groups.google.com/group/gen-z-global-stage
For twenty-four years Florida Stage has had at its core the precepts of community involvement and educational outreach as a key component of its mission. Now, as the nation's largest professional theatre producing exclusively new and developing American plays, Florida Stage finds itself in the unique position of being able to facilitate this exciting new program.
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