THE RAPUNZEL REPORT 
Our Second Summer Musical
Theatre Workshop Was A "Hairy" Experience
Our second Summer Musical Theatre Workshop in Charlotte, NC, wrapped up on August 15th with a presentation to the community of our learnings throughout the two-week intensive. This year, The Earl Wentz and William Watkins Foundation partnered again with Communities In Schools (Charlotte-Mecklenburg) and brought the services of three professional music, dance, and theatre instructors with international credits to young people ages 8 to 14. The Foundation provided over $3,000 in scholarships to students based on financial need. We are proud that 80% of our students this year were returnees and that we also increased our enrollment by 25% over last year.
Under the guidance of (click each name to view bios) returning instructors Stephanie Foster, John Coffey, and William Watkins, our young pupils met on 
10 weekdays for a total of 45 hours of instruction for each student. Each day consisted of theatre games and acting exercises, martial arts and dance instruction, as well as vocal instruction. We quickly developed the story and script for our final presentation and learned four songs from Broadway musicals, each with complicated lyrics and tricky rhythms. We cast, rehearsed, sweated, stumbled, and laughed a lot until at last we had integrated the songs, fights, and dances into one seamless vehicle, which we called Rapunzel and Her Rainbow Hair, a very-freely adapted version of the fable by the Brothers Grimm.
We switched it up quite a bit: The wicked witch now became a bumbling warlock with a wizard assistant, the enlightened prince now relied on the strength of his sister and her "girl-power" minions to help save Rapunzel, and Rapunzel, herself, 
has been bullied by the townspeople because her hair was different (very long and multi-colored). To make for a happy-ending, once Rapunzel had been rescued from the powers of the evil warlock, all the townspeople who had taunted her before came to make amends. One by one they appeared at Rapunzel's wedding, each having dyed and styled his or her hair in bright colors and long, shaggy styles, to apologize and be in solidarity with their new friend.
Well, of couse, we had to play that to the fullest. Thanks to the generosity of volunteer Denise Smith, whose family owns and operates venerable Morris Costumes, each young actor sported an outlandishly gorgeous wig in shades of blue, green, pink, black, and orange for the final musical number, which naturally was (a modified version of) ... Hair!
Special thanks to Denise and Scott Smith, Morris Costumes, Loretta Washam, Mary Hicks, Jameth McKinney, Ronnie Helms and all our other amazing volunteers who made this program happen!
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Student Self-Evaluations Demonstrate Positive Impact
It was fun, it was exciting, it was exhausting but...how did we do?
Well from a statistical standpoint, focusing entirely on our educational achievements, besides the increase in enrollment and amounts of scholarships awarded, let's let the feedback we got from students speak for itself:
At the commencement of the workshop, each student was asked to identify three goals he or she would like to achieve over the course of the full two-weeks. Each then met with all three instructors at the end of the first week to determine how each student was progressing towards these goals and to identify things that would help each achieve his or her goals.
On the last day of the workshop, each student was asked to evaluate themselves (without input from any of the instructors) as to how they did towards achieving their goals. We let each student determine his or her own criteria for what it meant to achieve a goal.
- 89% of students self-evaluated as achieving 2 or more goals
- 33% of students self-evaluated as achieving all 3 goals
- 56% of students self-evaluated as achieving 2 goals
- 11% of students self-evaluated as achieving only 1 goal.
We also asked each student to evaluate by percentage his or her progress toward achieving each goal (whether that was 100%, 75%, etc.). Criteria for determining percentages was determined solely by each student, not by the instructors.
- 78% of students self-evaluated as achieving 1 goal at a rank of 100%
- 89% of students achieved a self-determined rank of at least 75% on 1 goal
- 33% of students self-evaluated as achieving 2 goals at a self-determined rank of 100%
- 11% of students self-evaluated as achieving 3 goals at a self-determined rank of 100%
Students' determination of whether or not they had "achieved" a goal was up to them. Although some students ranked their progress towards a goal at 98 to 99%, they may not have identified this as actually "achieving" the goal (they could be a little tough on themselves, couldn't they?!) Whether or not a student evaluated himself as "achieving" a goal:
- 89% self-rated at least 1 goal at 75% or better towards achievement
- 89 % self-rated at least 2 goals at 60% or better towards achievement
- 67% self-rated at least 3 goals at 50% or better towards achievement
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Parent Evaluations Still To Come
As of this writing, parent evaluations and comments are still coming in. We'll post those in our next Update. We'll match all that up against the Foundation's own educational goals of:
- developing excellent technique
- fostering individual and group esteem through participation in the arts
- building stronger community through active participation in the arts and interactions with individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives and
- expanding the vision and abilities of young artists by encouraging them to learn about and experience a cross-section of artistic activities
and report to you next time.
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Look At Their Faces And Tell Us What You Hear
In the meantime, though, to give you a little more idea of our achievements, please take a look at the photo montage we've put together that highlights some of our work. Music licensing restrictions mean that this montage is silent but if you listen in your head, we think you'll hear some joyous sounds as you watch.
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Summer Musical Theatre Workshop 2014
Photo Montage |
