As the school winds down from celebrating the second annual Spark Week, Green Room and other fine arts students are still talking about MUSE, the community fine arts night on Wednesday, April 1. The event, which was a Spark Week-inspired take on Write Night, integrated the visual, musical and theatrical arts in an event for the community.
“The goal was to invite the community and make this celebration of the arts more interactive,” said art teacher Kelly Bott. “MUSE was a celebration of the all of the fine arts and the many talents of our musical, theatrical and visual art students.”
Overall, the night was successful for its first year.
“It was super exciting to have as many people as we did. It reminds us how much the community appreciates what we do,” said theatre director Teslen Sadowski. “At the arts award ceremony later in the night, we actually filled the bleachers in the auxiliary gym. That was a great feeling.”
At the event, community members could choose from a variety of activities including creating their own pottery, improv, making an instrument, sketching student “models,” watching performances and many more.
Prior to the night, the fine arts department and student volunteers met and planned. Then, on April 1, those student volunteers attended to facilitate activities and perform. The night was also a crossover between MUSE and the annual art show.
“We have wanted to do a more comprehensive art show and jumped at the opportunity to pair with Spark Week, along with joining forces with the other fine arts. Green Room and Art Club had a great deal of involvement in the planning and preparations, as we relied on students to run many of the activities. Art Club students were trained to throw on the wheel, and many brushed up on their face painting skills,” Bott said.
Student volunteers were essential to the night’s success, and Green Room officer Lexie Gutierrez helped organize.
“I was on the student leadership committee for the event, so I played a part in the brainstorming of ideas and then ran activities on the night of MUSE,” she said.
In the future, the fine arts hope to expand on an already successful event.
“We received a lot of great feedback in regards to MUSE. There was an overwhelming amount of positive feedback, but also some good suggestions. We plan to put out more publicity and introduce more social media for the event in the future. We are also looking to restructure the showcase and visual art awards to accommodate more student recognition,” Bott said.
Besides raising awareness in the community, the event also reminded students of why they participate and work so hard in the arts.
“Events such as MUSE are very important for the community because there aren’t many opportunities to showcase the fine arts. In addition, it was an opportunity to bring the entire community together and allow all ages to partake in various events and create art,” Gutierrez said.
MUSE was also the night where Sadowski and Clare McConville introduced the line up for next year’s shows. The musical, Tarzan, will be performed in November, followed by the winter “straight show” All My Sons, and the senior directed one-acts will take place in the spring.
“We’ve been doing some workshops for Tarzan already,”Sadowski said. “We are really working to build the strength of students because this is a very athletic show. I am looking forward to seeing their hard work pay off.”
Before the year ended, Green Room wrapped up the semester with their spring fundraiser show on April 25. This year, for the first time ever, the show was an event called Children’s Theatre, where Green Room created their own script.
“We thought it would be great to include the little ones. Sometimes our shows aren’t always geared towards younger audiences, but we wanted to give parents an opportunity to bring their kids to a show they would enjoy and relate to,” Sadowski said. “Our show [was] called ‘Timothy Two’s First Day of School’. We were inspired by Shel Silverstein’s poetry from Where the Sidewalk Ends.”