With the generous support of Umpqua Bank, Wells Fargo and the OAC Arts Builds Communities Fund, Teatro Milagro traveled to Prineville, Oregon to conduct a four day bilingual arts-integrated environmental sustainability theatre residency.The cast arrived on Wednesday, April 15 to begin the residency with a BEAT – Bilingual Educator Arts Training. This first day was followed by two days of classroom visits, and all day rehearsal on Saturday and then a free community performance of Milagro’s bilingual play El Ultimo on Saturday night.
In attendance at the BEAT in-service were teachers from Spanish language, theater arts, visual arts, natural resources and home economics. All of the teachers participated in the exercise of designing a sustainable community. Pictured here is Anita Hoffman, theater arts and Brian Wachs, Natural Resources.
“It was a fantastic experience across the board; the residency was versatile and terrific!” – Anita Hoffman
The next two days were a little intense. The four Milagro actors spent the school days visiting over 300 students in thirteen different classrooms. Classroom visits included doing ecodrama with the drama students, making paper with the visual arts students, creating hand-crafted tote bags from scraps in sewing, solar-box pizza ovens in cooking class, designing utopia in Spanish class and creating cob structures in natural resources.
Student Ecodrama highlights included a scene about an oil worker who wants to do what is right to clean up his oil spill, but his company won’t give him the money. Hand-made paper, tote bags and cob structures were part of a lobby display, pictured here.
The natural resource students dug up clay from outside behind the school and straw for the cob mix came from the drama teacher’s farm. This community has been hit very hard by the recession, but teachers and students continue to come up with brilliant creative ideas to keep their projects going. Utopian designs included such innovative ideas as using parachutes for transportation and ropes made out of human hair.
In addition to spending the day visiting classes, after-school the actors engaged volunteer student actors in creating new original scenes to add to the play. These student thespians also became volunteer performers and performed with the Milagro cast on Saturday night as they donned simple costume accessories and became Mapuche Indigenous and environmental activists. Approximately 50 people from the community turned out to see this bilingual performance.
“The Milagro actors are really cool, great teachers and funny too. I hope other students have the chance to work with them” – Student actor
