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Our immersive theater experience in an envelope experience, Yours Truly, recently concluded its second run. One highlight of Yours Truly is original music by APTP teen artists. In this interview, Gabrielle (Gabie) Reyes, a junior at Von Steuben High School, talks with APTP Resident Director Devika Ranjan about serving as co-music director for Yours Truly.
Elia Ayala (APTP Class of 2003) hadn’t thought of herself as a performer. In grammar school, she was a self-described shy girl with a loud and infectious laugh. As she transitioned into high school, she knew that she wanted to grow in her capacity to be more spontaneous and to take up more space in a room. Enter APTP.
It’s a joy to introduce myself as a second-year teaching artist for APTP@School, our school-based program. Some of you may remember me as one of the performers who made a cow come to life on stage in Feast or as a high-school student trying to solve his father’s immigration problems in Learning Curve. These are both treasured roles of mine from my years as a teen ensemble member in APTP. Now nearly a decade after my APTP journey first began, I’m excited to once again be part of this wonderful team of humans!
Over the course of three weekends in Spring 2021, APTP gathered more than 50 Chicago students, teachers and artists together on zoom for Remote Learning Curve, a project envisioned by Associate Director Maggie Popadiak to memorialize through storytelling and performance the unique challenges of remote learning during the Covid pandemic.
Schantelle Alonzo is one of 10 members of the APTP Class of 2021 who started college this fall. This amazing class are now bringing their gifts to DePaul, Georgetown, Harold Washington, Pomona, School of Visual Arts-NYC, Stanford, UIC and Wright College. Here’s a reflection from Schantelle on her first months as an art student in the Big Apple.
Since early February, I have been co-teaching a theater and writing course at Stateville, a maximum-security prison located just outside Joliet, Illinois, through the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. In this course, the dozen or so students explore voice, body, and spirit through many of the same exercises done with the teenaged ensemble at Albany Park Theater Project. During one session, students discussed the inability to create a visual and sonic record of the performance art they were creating. As one student said, “I wish we could camcord this.” Recording devices are not allowed in the prison. That same student then made the suggestion that each week a student ought to write down the events of the previous class to document not only the activities, but the impact it had on them and their peers. More than a journal entry, this writing would be the film, the photograph, the audio file, and the documentary they wished they had. These students do work and want the world to know it. Learn more about their work below in the words of students Devon Terrell and Darrell Fair:
This year I had the esteemed pleasure of launching a new, year-long program in my 8th grade classroom at Volta Elementary School with APTP’s Associate Director, Maggie Popadiak, as my teaching partner.
“I was born in Mexico and brought to the U.S. at the age of 3. It’s hard to be undocumented because I can’t do all the things I want, but doing this play inspired me to keep on trying.” (Maria, Elsie Allen High School Student)
“I’ve been the theater director here at Elsie Allen High School for all of its 20 years. Never has a play meant so much to our school and community. Thank you for creating this amazing piece of theater and for allowing us to share in your voice.” (Rob Burt)
Kalamazoo College joined the list of campuses where APTP has performed when 5 ensemble members helped open the college’s WITH/OUT Borders Conference. The performance also gave our APTPians the opportunity for a college visit.