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UMass Theater reaches out to the next generation of students

When she officially takes over, chair Gina Kaufmann will tell you more about her goals for her time in the position, but until she does, we're not telling tales to let you know that one of the things she has already begun to focus on as her time in the role of Undergraduate Program Director is the stepping up of recruitment efforts. She hopes to reach out to students who are under-represented in the department, and she hopes to reach out to students when they're just starting to think about college. To that end, she and graduate student Jen Onopa started working on ways to reach out to local schools, and we asked Jen to write up a report for you on what they've done so far.

This year the Department of Theater began exploring opportunities to engage with groups of secondary students from the greater Springfield area.  The purposes for this were both to expand the department’s current community engagement work and to increase recruitment of underrepresented groups of students within the department. 

In the spring semester, MFA directing candidate Jen Onopa, a former teacher in the New York City public schools, worked with Professor Gina Kaufmann to meet with several key stakeholders within the UMass community to investigate effective ways in which to align with current university diversity recruitment initiatives as well as to meet community needs.  

As part of this initiative, the Department of Theater hosted a group of high school students from Springfield’s Renaissance Charter school in April 2016, through a college visitation program established by Leykia Brill, Assistant Provost of Diversity. Over 50 students attended a workshop in the Curtain Theater facilitated by Jen Onopa along with undergraduate acting students Mallory Kassoy and Miguel Angel Paredes that included theater games, a performance by the undergraduate actors, and a discussion about issues in the scene and the students’ questions about college life.  

In May, 2016, through a partnership with Bridget Hynes and Tyson Rose of the UMass Upward Bound program, the Department of Theater facilitated another workshop with ten students from Springfield’s High School of Commerce. The Upward Bound program supports the development of academic and social-emotional skills for students who might not traditionally be considered college-bound. Onopa designed the theater devising workshop to accommodate key aspects of the work that the Upward Bound staff had been doing with the high school students, including a focus on decision-making. Co-facilitating the workshop were two undergraduate theater students, Anderson Lara and Miguel Angel Paredes. 

Due to the success of both the hosting and visiting theater workshops, the Department of Theater will continue these partnerships in the coming school year and will explore additional ways to engage neighboring communities, ranging from initiating an additional secondary school partnership in Holyoke, a community college partnership, and investigate what it would take to initiate a summer high school theater institute.  Additionally, the department is considering tailoring high school visiting workshops that are thematically connected to the mainstage season.