Terry Hale Artistic Director for the Elgin Opera House participates in prestigious fellowship
By Garrett Christensen on Thursday, July 21st, 2022 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
ELGIN – (Release from Music Theater International) Elgin’s Terry Hale was one of six outstanding educators from schools and performing arts centers around the U.S. to work one-on-one with Broadway professionals at the 11th Annual FREDDIE G FELLOWSHIP which just wrapped. Terry is the Artistic Director for the Elgin Opera House and a teacher Blue Mountain Community College as well as the theater arts instructor at Pendleton High School. The teachers were selected in 2020, but due to the pandemic the New York experience was delayed. The event is underwritten by Freddie (“G”) Gershon, Co-Chairman of the global theatrical licensor Music Theatre International (MTI), and his wife Myrna. Dozens of educators attending the 2020 annual Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta and the Junior Theater Festival West in Sacramento with thousands of attendees, applied for the program, and six in total were selected. The Junior Theater Festival is the world’s largest musical theatre festival dedicated to educational musical theatre groups that work with elementary, middle, and high school students.
The classes and activities honored instructors and teachers who are working to make a difference for their students and communities through the process of staging musical theatre productions in their schools and educational theatre groups. In addition to the all-expense paid visit to New York, each of the teachers’ organization received $5,000 from Freddie and Myrna. The teachers are empowered to identify and select how their respective school’s theatre program can best utilize the funds. To date the Gershon’s have donated one million dollars to the program.
“The four days fully engage the winning teachers in the Broadway musical theatre world and provide one-of-a-kind learning opportunities for them to take back to their schools, students and communities,” says Gershon. “These teachers perform inspiring work with limited financial resources. We want to give them the opportunity to live the Broadway experience and interact with qualified professionals to reward them for all they do to introduce the next generations to live theatre and simultaneously enhance their knowledge, skills and experience. The teaching Fellows act as peer-to-peer guiding lights, viz: teachers helping teachers in their quest to mount the best Junior shows. With 80 plus teachers as Fellows, they pass on tips and skills learned in New York during the week to others.”
This year teachers attended a special master class led by Tony Honor® winning director and choreographer Jeff Calhoun and will participated in dynamic classes covering many aspects of musical theatre. They were immersed in Broadway, attended productions of Between The Lines, Beetlejuice and observed a developmental workshop performance of Beetlejuice JR. During the workshop, the teachers experienced Broadway as theatre insiders…giving their feedback to the developmental process from their p.o.v.
“Without teachers there is no Broadway Junior. Myrna and I feel strongly about teachers and their significant role. This week gives us an opportunity to immerse them in experiential skills they can take home, integrate with their students, and pass on to other teachers,” added Gershon.” Live theatre and the arts are thriving with the private sector supporting both educators and children,” said Myrna, “and teachers deserve to be appreciated.”
Music Theatre International is one of the world’s leading theatrical licensing agencies, protecting the rights and legacies of composers, lyricists and book writers. MTI’s core business is issuing licenses, scripts, musical materials and dynamic theatrical resources to schools as well as amateur and professional theatres across the globe.
With over 400 classic and contemporary show titles from Broadway, Off-Broadway, and London’s West End, MTI shows have been performed by over 100,000 theatrical organizations in the US and in more than 150 countries.
MTI is a strong proponent of educational theatre. In 1996 (after a two–year developmental incubation period) then MTI Chairman and CEO Freddie Gershon launched “MTI’s Broadway Junior musicals” – 30 and 60-minute shows for younger performers. In 2012 he was awarded a Tony Honor for conceiving and creating this revolutionary program. During the past twenty-one years over 5,000,000 students and over 500,000 educators have been involved in at least one of the close to 200,000 global productions of a Broadway Junior musical.
MTI maintains its worldwide headquarters in New York City (mtishows.com), with additional offices in London (MTI Europe: mtishows.co.uk, mtishows.eu), and Melbourne (MTI Australasia: mtishows.com.au).
