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THE NYC EXPERIENCE - BROADWAY WITHOUT BORDERS AMT Theater youth partnership program with IDEA Guadalajara!
This week, AMT Theater welcomed a group of 11 talented, young musical theater students from Guadalajara, Mexico, and provided them with outstanding training by Broadway professionals!
This group of kids also had the opportunity to experience first-hand what happens behind a Broadway stage and, of course, enjoy the finished product on stage - compliments of Bettinger's Luggage!
It has been an eventful week for these kids and they have been soaking it up like the talented sponges that they are. We started off by introducing the lovely AMT Team - which involved telling them to follow their dreams and along the way pick up as many skills as possible because if you want to survive in the creative world you need to be multi-talented and offer a wide range of skills. You also need to be determined and take every opportunity that comes your way. We emphasised being a team player and respecting every aspect of a production and the team, because if you burn bridges the only way is forwards for you, no one has time to rebuild that bridge. I cannot emphasise this enough - even in stressful situations you need to at least be respectful of the time people are giving you, they will only give you that time and energy for a finite period of time if you repeatedly disrespect them. Thankfully these lovely young performers seem kind and keen, a winning combination!
For almost all of the 11 students that arrived on Tuesday night it was their first time in the Big Apple. If you are not orignally from NYC then try to remember how absolutely exciting and overwhelming this giant city can be - the bright bright lights, the sky scrapers towering over you, the way everything seems familiar because you have seen it a thousand times in movies and tv, but it's actually still so foreign! They have been feeling all of that and attending workshops, shows, master classes and sightseeing! I heard via the grapevine/whatsapp chat that they even had an adventure in Brooklyn, which is always a rather fun place to be! I envy their energy, just planning this trip and thinking about it has made me tired.
Special thanks to Mary Lauren for giving the group a fantastic master class, I am sure they learnt loads and will be a bit stiff tomorrow - good times. Ivan Goris and Sean Church-Gonzalez also stepped up and gave a wonderful talk back session in Spanish to the group after they watched Bettinger's Luggage, they learned so much from the two of you!
Despite all the worry and fear we are all feeling, this partnership with IDEA Guadalajara and these 11 joyous, talented kids has brought some light into our lives. We look forward to doing this again next year and for many more years to come!
Thought for the weekend: Don't burn those bridges.
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