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SpringboardNYC Alumni Step into the Spotlight
The telephone message went something like this: "Randy! It's Amy! Call me back! I have news for you! It?s BIG - as in BIG HAIR!"
When Amy Toporek attended the American Theatre Wing's SpringboardNYC program in 2005, she was one of a group of select undergraduates from universities around the country who wanted to launch careers as professional artists in New York City. Each student who attends takes a different path as they start their career. For Amy, that included one more year of college, followed by another year of pavement pounding, volunteer performance, and internships in casting and production. Then, this past spring, she booked her first professional gig: she would play Tracy Turnblad in the National Tour of Hairspray!
SpringboardNYC's mission is to help ease the school-to-career transition for young, aspiring theatre artists by directly immersing them in the community of working creative artists of New York City. Taught by industry professionals, the two-week summer intensive gives young actors and directors practical career tools so these graduates can gain a foothold in the competitive theatre business. Sessions include audition training with directors and casting directors plus seminars with industry's leading agents, managers and working actors. SpringboardNYC also offers a survival guide for living in New York.
"When we created the program, we were dedicated to making the beginning career of an artist a little bit easier", said SpringboardNYC Director Randy Ellen Lutterman. "Our goal is to shed some light on, what is for many, a mysterious process?how to make the leap from school to the 'real world' of New York theatre." Now in its fifth year at the American Theatre Wing, the program has alumni working all over New York and the rest of the country in their chosen fields. "I frequently receive messages like the one from Amy?our kids are doing very well," said Lutterman.
Toporek says, "SpringboardNYC definitely helped me with my auditions. Even with all of my college education, I felt that if I walked into a New York City audition the day after I graduated I would still have NO idea what to expect. Participating in all of the workshops and mock auditions at SBNYC really gave me the confidence and great perspective. It made an immediate difference in my work."
Once a student has been through the SpringboardNYC program, they become part of the American Theatre Wing's extended family of creative artists in New York. Students develop peer relationships within their Springboard class, with SpringboardNYC alums from other years through social networking opportunities created by The Wing, and with program mentors who have a vested interest in seeing them succeed.
Springboard alum Charles Swan has been working around the country, and internationally, for the past several years. He appeared in the Alley Theatre's production of Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Scott Schwartz, and was featured in a national Samuel Adams commercial. This winter, he is assistant directing The Light in the Piazza at Mainstreet Theater in Houston Texas. Swan says, "I have stayed in touch with many from my SBNYC class. I have been blown away not only by the valuable resources they are, but by the relationships that I formed and continue to nurture. They have played a significant role in securing auditions, connecting me to NYC, and making me feel a part of the NYC arts community."
Charles' first professional audition occurred while he was attending SpringboardNYC. After being seen on his feet in a SpringboardNYC Master Class, Charles was asked by a SBNYC casting director mentor to audition for an Off-Broadway show. "It was a great opportunity, and because of that audition I have been able to stay in touch with that mentor. This is one of the great things about SpringboardNYC - you are automatically entered into the great 'SBNYC Fraternity of Artists'", said Swan.
SBNYC alum Ryan Walsh feels the same way. "I made good connections with useful people, and I also got great advice with ZERO sugar coating. It was nice to have it all laid out for me so I would have a realistic idea of what my capacity was for success as an actor in NYC," Walsh says. The actor just returned from The Kennedy Center's Broadway: Three Generations project in Washington, DC which was directed by SBNYC directing mentor Lonny Price. "Lonny actually did remember seeing me at Springboard. He had great things to say to me, and a few years later we are working together."
SpringboardNYC is one of several American Theatre Wing programs devoted to serving emerging artists around the country. Through outreach and recruitment visits to colleges and universities, and extensive scholarship opportunities, the program helps a talented, creative and diverse student body of promising artists take their first steps each summer in a notoriously competitive industry. By teaching them how to audition and interview for jobs, survive jobless periods financially and emotionally, and acquainting them with the full range of theatre-related professions, SpringboardNYC ensures that more young graduates find satisfying, long-term careers in the theatre industry.
SpringboardNYC 2009 - June 1 through June 12
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For more alumni spotlights, keep checking our reflections page
The Isabelle Stevenson Award
With the establishment of the new Isabelle Stevenson Award for the 2009 TonysŪ, the memory of the awards' greatest proponent will be forever linked with the honors themselves.
The new award, to be given by the Tony Administration Committee, which also determines the recipients of Lifetime Achievement Awards, Special Tonys and the Tony Honors, will annually recognize an individual from the theatrical community who has given significant volunteer time and effort on behalf of one or more charitable organizations. It is modeled in part after the Motion Picture Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Isabelle Stevenson devoted more than half her life to the American Theatre Wing, first joining the board of directors in the mid-1950s. She was named President in 1966, following the death of Helen Menken, and at a time of great turmoil for the organization.
"At the time Isabelle become President of the Wing, the future of the organization was very uncertain," said current ATW executive director Howard Sherman. "The Wing's largest program, the Professional Theatre School, had been closed in 1965 and indeed even before she passed away, Helen Menken had been seeking to step down from her role given the pressures of the position. Had Isabelle not stepped up, for what was initially thought of as an interim term, the Wing might well have ceased to exist."
That interim term became a 32-year tenure as President, followed by five years as Chairman - entirely as a volunteer. Isabelle's love of the theatre, born of her days as a specialty dancer in vaudeville, with credits on three continents (including a performance for the Queen in the 1920s), meshed perfectly with the mission of ATW.
Isabelle Stevenson could be said to be the mother of the modern Tony Awards, since in her then-new role as president of the American Theatre Wing, it was Stevenson who forged the agreement with the League of New York Theatres (now The Broadway League) which led to the Tonys first national broadcast in 1967. While there had been national radio broadcasts since the inception of the awards, as well as New York City telecasts (typically after the 11 pm news) since the 50s, the Tonys fully took their place alongside the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys when they were seen on ABC-TV on March 26, 1967. After 10 years shifting between networks, the Tonys found a permanent home at CBS, where they have been seen since 1978.
The Tonys, of course, were named for another American Theatre Wing Chairman, Antoinette Perry, who led the organization during World War II, passing away in 1946. Originally an actress, Perry was one of the earliest women directors on Broadway, with more than a dozen credits including plays by Clare Booth Luce and Preston Sturges; her greatest success, the comedy Harvey, was in the midst of a four-year run when she died.
Stevenson herself became a national figure through her own annual appearance on the Tonys, in the so-called "Wing Minute." Elegantly attired, and often accompanied by a well-known stage star (Frank Langella notably swept her off her feet in what turned out to be her final appearance), Stevenson took the stage each year to remind the audience that the Tonys sprang from the good work of the Wing, including the student programs and the "Working in the Theatre" broadcasts which had been initiated under her leadership.
"In the couple of weeks since the establishment of the Isabelle Stevenson Award was first made public, the response has been extraordinary on two fronts," said Sherman. "Many people have called or written to say how particularly fitting it is to tie Isabelle's name to an award for service, since she was an exemplar of what a volunteer could achieve for a cause and an organization. In addition, people have already begun to make suggestions of individuals that the Tony Administration Committee might consider for the very first award, demonstrating the sheer number of people in the theatre community who are giving their time in the service of good causes. I think Isabelle would be proud."
What They Said Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson discussing "The Talley Trilogy" (Fifth of July, Talley's Folly, Talley and Son) on Downstage Center, October 2008:
"When I started out, I was going to write about five plays that took place there, during various wars ? I ended up doing two from the second world war and one from Vietnam. Then Terrence McNally wrote a wonderful play, and in it you were at a producer's house on opening night. He's opened an incredible bomb and at one point the producer answers the phone and says, "No, Lanford, she won?t talk to you. She?s sick of the Talleys. Everybody is," and hangs up. It got this huge laugh - and I realized I was pretty sick of them too, at that moment."
Do You Know...
Which 2008 Tony®, winner once wrote the song "Gary Come Home" for an episode of SpongeBob Square Pants....?
Need a hint? This 2008 Tony®, winner spent years, before becoming a Broadway sensation, traveling through Europe trying to "find the real." Click here for the answer.
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