Picture a 19th century red-brick factory building…now imagine that the building was once a stable for the horses used by the Toronto Street Railway Company. These horses were used to pull the street cars…before it was refitted as an electrically generated facility of course! From the looks of it it would be the perfect setting for a production of Oliver Twist. Picture this…the building renovated into a youth theater. Now doesn’t that sound like the perfect location for our first assignment day? We sure thought so…and so we introduced our students to The Young People’s Theater!
The Young People’s Theater is a place where High School students (and younger) come for theater classes year-round. They have a comprehensive drama school complete with a killer prop and wardrobe department! We’re beyond lucky that we were able to secure this program as the location for our first assignment!
After a quick morning critique, we ate an early lunch and then jumped on a big yellow school bus to head downtown Toronto. The ride downtown, incidentally, was EXACTLY the sort of ride you remember from your last yellow school bus ride: it was loud and bumpy, the windows were down and students were making faces at the passing cars and trying to get cars to honk all in the name of rambunctious fun…
And now a Blurb from One of our Advanced Students: Sara Addetia
We started our day 4 like any other day, with a critique. We then viewed the stories produced by the beginners group a few years ago. This gave us a general idea of what a picture story is. We ate a delicious lunch and picked up our camera’s. Then we were off to our first story, which took place at The Young People’s Theater in Downtown Toronto. We saw multiple amazing sites such as the wardrobe and prop shops, theater classes and kids activities. We completed our shoot and headed back to the Ismaili Centre Toronto. Once back we downloaded our pictures, ate dinner and did our nightly group critiques. Overall we had a productive day.
Check out some of the student work below: