Since 1961, The Academy Theatre for Youth Artist-In-Schools Tour Team has developed and toured original plays aimed at addressing issues affecting young people. After careful consultation with educators, psychologists, parents and students, the productions are developed and performed by a multi-racial cast of four professional actors. Show topics vary from an understanding of teenage pregnancy to the effects of bystanders on potentially violent confrontations. The Academy has been touring plays into schools for decades, however with dwindling arts education school resources and pandemic gathering issues, touring into the schools has become much more challenging. To address this change in the schools, the Academy has decided to start adapting our theatre for youth plays into films and licensing them to school systems across the country.
To combat the shrinking theatre audiences, the Academy Theatre is embarking on a Theatre for Youth Film Project. We are excited to share details of our upcoming project and seek funding to support the creation of the film version of one the Academy Theatre’s most successful theatre for youth plays – Bullies and Bystanders (appropriate for middle and high school students).
Bullies & Bystanders
Bullies & Bystanders explores many of the crucial issues surrounding bullying, which is rampant in our schools today. In creating a film version of the play, the Academy Theatre seeks to raise the awareness of bullying dynamics and curtail incidents of violence in our middle and high schools by reaching far more students through film than through a regular southeastern school tour. The Academy is in the process of developing relationships with the appropriate staff in charge of licensing character education materials for their schools’ systems.
Larry Robertson, Academy board member, is a multiple award-winning cinematographer and director, who has been shepherding the Academy as we have entered the film world. He has decades of experience in all facets of film and video. He has substantial contacts while the Academy has immense original content. Larry helped us produce our first professional short film in 2021. He will be one of our film consultants and cinematographer on all the Academy’s film endeavors.
Steve Feldman has extensive directorial experience with films for young people. He, along with Larry, will be a film consultant as well as the Bullies and Bystanders director. Steve has operated his own company for 25 years, focused on multiple genres and audiences. He’s an experienced director, producer, and EP, with a diverse list of credits, creating in live, prerecorded, and digital environments. We are honored to have Larry and Steve onboard to help the Theatre realize our new film goals.
It is important to note that the Academy Theatre is as committed to live theatre as we have ever been in our 68 years of existence. However, in the post COVID world, we are acutely aware that the mores of theatre goers are changing and that the status quo is no longer working. With this in mind, we are turning to some film programming and attempting to make our live theater production more of an experience which is what we have been told is what young and older people must have to leave their home and venture out into the world.
