Inside A.C.T.

By Stephanie Wilborn  In The Rueff, students from Downtown High School (DHS) are pacing back and forth, memorizing lines, and putting up lights in the rafters. After months of preparation and hard work, they are putting the finishing touches on their exhibition, A Mask I Do Not Fit , a collection of original works on topics of gender and identity. DHS Movement Class 2016. Photo by Stephanie Wilborn. Since 2012, A.C.T. has collaborated with DHS to explore educational opportunities through theater. The school’s Acting for Critical Thought project allows the students to learn and discover thought-provoking performances through acting, playwriting, and movement. At the beginning of the semester, the DHS students came to A.C.T. once a week and studied acting techniques with A.C.T.’s Community and Artistic Director Tyrone Davis. Together, the students and Davis built a trusting relationship through improv and ensemble-based games. They learned theater terminology...

Posted by Selena Chau, Web Development Fellow Joseph Givens graduates from Downtown High School at the end of May. Since the fall of 2011, as part of its ACTsmart arts education programs, A.C.T. has hosted an intensive  Downtown Continuation High School  (DHS), a project-based learning school that serves San Francisco youth who have not experienced success in conventional public schools. Participants in DHS’s  Acting for Critical Thought  project attend weekly acting classes in A.C.T.’s studios, are encouraged to attend all A.C.T. mainstage and conservatory productions, and write their own original monologues and short plays, which they perform in exhibitions for their school and families in A.C.T.’s Hastings Studio Theater each December and May. (This spring’s exhibition—entitled  Borderline Freedom —will take place on Thursday, May 23.) The Mission-based  826 Valencia  literacy initiative provides tutors to guide students in their writing an...

In summer 2011, just after becoming A.C.T.’s first director of education, Elizabeth Brodersen met Eunice Nuval, a teacher at San Francisco’s Downtown High School (DHS), who was developing a new Acting for Critical Thought project, designed to engage her students academically and artistically through the study of theater. Nuval wanted to partner with A.C.T., and Brodersen said, emphatically, “Yes!” DHS is now in its fourth semester of residency at A.C.T., and the partnership has been one of the greatest success stories of not only the A.C.T. Education Department’s short history, but of A.C.T.’s history as a whole. For her work at DHS and her distinguished career in public education, Nuval was awarded a 2012 San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Dreamcatcher Award. Inspired by the Native American talismans that are believed to ensure beautiful and happy dreams, the annual awards (now in their seventh year) honor leaders who have inspired our educational community though th...