A group of diverse Bloomington, Indiana students ages 13-18 are creating an original musical focused around diversity, equity, and inclusion. This project empowers these students for a lifetime, teaching them the soft skills required of creation, including work ethic, organization, and communication. This performance opportunity serves the express purpose of opening up a space for youths to explore their identities and to use the theatre to communicate to the greater Bloomington community rather than being a purely entertaining event like other local organizations. It is this aspect of youth voice which allows this collaborative community arts project to uniquely enrich the Bloomington community social fabric.
Led by a partnership of professional creatives, the diverse group of students (BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and their allies) were identified as socially engaged and interested in a space for self-expression and civic action, rather than solely for their artistic ability. The professional team consists of Dr. Marcus Simmons (2020, Jacobs School Doctoral graduate with an expertise in African American musical forms), Mr. Paul Daily (Associate Artistic Director, Bloomington Playwrights Project), and Mr. Noel Koontz, (Bloomington Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship, Language Arts and Theatre Educator). The project was conceived and initiated by Dr. Gustave Weltsek. Dr. Weltsek has extensive experience and a national and international reputation for this type of devised work with youth specifically around issues of race, diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. His work at IU with the Emergent Theatre Project (https://education.indiana.edu/about/directory/profiles/weltsek-gustave.html) earned him the IU Building Bridges Award and his research on language equity through creativity in colonized Puerto Rico earned him the American Alliance for Theater and Education’s (AATE) prestigious research award (2013).
This collaborative arts experience is free of charge to the youth involved as a way to lessen the barriers that may exist due to individual family financial restrictions. The students involved are responsible for every aspect of the virtual production process from script, to music, dance and choreography, to playing in the band, and set design and construction.
Read the IU School of Education article about the project here: Bloomington theatre collective confronts racial injustice
Professional Team Bios:
Gustave Weltsek, PhD, Assistant Professor of Arts Education at Indiana University, School of Education. As part of the IU Arts In Education program Gustave teaches graduate courses in imaginative and creative pedagogies and critical performative inquiry as well as a wide range of undergraduate courses in drama and theatre in and as education. His research examines how a critical performative pedagogy (Weltsek and Medina, Pineau) may function as a space of emergent identity for social change and explorations of equity. A sample of his publications appear in; Youth Theatre Journal, Arts Education Policy Review, Language Arts, and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and include; Deconstructing Global Markets Through Critical Performative Experiences in Puerto Rico, and Reading the Maps of Meaning Within Drama: Visible Discourse(s), Multimodal Semiotics, and Analogous Reflection in Applied Theatre Inquiry. His service to professional organizations includes past editor of the Youth Theatre Journal, past Chair of Research and Publications for the AATE, professional presentations at AATE, IDIERI, AERA, and IRA. Gustave is the 2013 recipient of the AATE research award and recently served as one of AATE’s representatives for the writing of the new United States Standards for Theatre and Drama Education. https://education.indiana.edu/about/directory/profiles/weltsek-gustave.html
Marcus Simmons, PhD, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Bethel University, is a bass-baritone from Philadelphia, PA. He has sung for dignitaries including Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and alongside internationally acclaimed performers Simon Estes, Carol Vaness, and Karen Slack. Dr. Simmons has bowed on concert stages from Carnegie Hall and the Saigon Opera House in Hanoi, Vietnam to the Queensland Performing Arts Center with the Reno Chamber Orchestra, Lancaster Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra among others. He has performed over 25 opera roles and has also had the pleasure of premiering several concert works and opera roles by composers old and new like John Cooper, Howard Helvey, and Jake Heggie. Dr. Simmons has performed residencies, masterclasses, and recitals at universities across the United States and was recently the Artistic Director of the Hoosier Community Chorus and the Music Program Director at 1525 The Warehouse in Bloomington, IN.
Noel Patrick Koontz is an English, film, and theatre teacher at The Academy of Science & Entrepreneurship, where he established The Academy Theatre Company to produce original student works. He appeared as Benji in Ivy Tech’s productions of Brennen Edwards’s Coffee Break and as Clov in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. He currently serves on the board of directors of The Bloomington Playwrights Project. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Valparaiso University and a master’s degree in education from Indiana University. Noel focuses his teaching, writing, and research around utilizing visual and dramatic arts across curriculum, with a particular emphasis on arts-based learning strategies and art as critical literacy.
Paul Daily grew up in Kokomo, IN, and began performing in community theater at the age of 10. He received a BA from Indiana University in 1998 where he double-majored in Theater and Drama and Sociology. After graduating from Indiana University, he moved to London, England and then to New York City. In New York, Paul served as Associate Artistic Director for two theaters, including Rabbit Hole Ensemble, a company he co-founded and ran from 2005–2007. Paul’s last show with Rabbit Hole Ensemble, The Night of Nosferatu, was picked up from off-off-Broadway and taken to Wellfleet, where the “Cape Cod Times” deemed the play one of the best shows of 2007. It also made Popshifter.com’s list of Top Ten Things to Love in 2007. In 2008, following the birth of his first son, Paul moved to Kokomo to be close to family. In Kokomo, Paul was instrumental in creating a student theater for the Ivy Tech Kokomo region. He went on to direct its inaugural production, The Little Prince. During the summer of 2010, Paul returned to New York to participate in the 2010 New York Planet Connections Theatre Festivity. He performed in The Manhattan Project and was awarded Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play for the role of Charles. After completing the run of The Manhattan Project, Paul moved to Bloomington, IN where he served as Artistic Director of Ivy Tech’s John Waldron Arts Center until 2020. He finished his MFA in Directing at Indiana University in 2014.