For one more weekend, Hopewell Valley Central High School students will dazzle theatergoers with their production of Pippin, the Tony Award-winning musical. It is the story of a young prince who longs to find passion and adventure in his life.
Pippin, which ran Feb. 27–28 in the school’s Performing Arts Center, returns Friday and Saturday, March 4–5, at 7:30 p.m. for two more showings. It features a colorful troupe of performers led by the energetic character, played by Bryan Hill. The music is by Stephen Schwartz, composer of Broadway’s Wicked. Productions like Pippin are elaborate to stage and have costly licensing rights. Without Central High School’s Music and Theater Parents Association (MTPA), a parent booster club, they wouldn’t be possible. When Peter Griffin, Visual and Performing Arts supervisor, was hired in 1998, he was surprised that there wasn’t a parent group dedicated to the music program. Back then, there was a strong music program but no curricular theater or dance, and no extracurricular marching band.
To expand the high school’s performing arts facilities and curricular opportunities, he says, “We needed a parent group to support the programs.”
With about 40 parents in attendance, Griffin started the Hopewell Valley Music Parents Association, as it was then called, in the high school band room. “I explained my mission today,” he said. “It was to help support the music, theater, and dance programs in the high school by providing resources that go above and beyond what the school district budget allows. ”
The MTPA supports, in time and money, a staggering number of curricular and extracurricular programs. These include virutally all of the high school’s artistic offerings: music and theater productions, recitals, winter guard, winter percussion, choral groups (Vox Central Jazz, Regazze, Chamber Singers, Concert Singers, Con Brio, U Got Male, She Major), Marching Black & Gold, Symphonic Band, Orchestra, and the Jazz Ensemble.
In a time of life where it is said that teens push parents away and do not want them involved in their lives, MTPA board members find the opposite. Mary Kate Lundquist, the association’s co-vice president of theater and dance, joined MTPA after her daughter Bella, now a junior enrolled in CHS’s Performing Arts Academy, came home last year and asked her mom to become involved.Lundquist did, and does not regret the decision. She wants to live up to the 40 Developmental Assets which are promoted weekly in email communications by the district. In particular she draws upon asset number 7, “Young person perceives that adults in the community value youth.” Though her volunteering feels like another full-time job during theater season, Lundquist says the work she is doing makes the kids really feel cared about. “What they do has value. We need to support that,” she said.
Also on the current MTPA executive board are Lisa Donaldson and Melissa McKillip (co-vice presidents of instrumental music), Catherine Silva (co-vice president of choral music), Sheri Crerand (co-vice president of choral music) Donna Nardozza (vice president of orchestra), Douglas Carter (vice president of technology), Lauren Yeh (treasurer) and Felicity Toto (recording secretary). Anne Rutman, who is the other co-vice president of theater and dance, echoes Lundquist’s sentiment. When her twin daughters Julia and Lily were in third grade, she was told to prepare herself for her girls’ eye rolling when she came into school as a PTO volunteer. Undeterred, she became president of the school PTO and through middle school stayed active in Timberlane Middle School’s PTO. Now in high school, daughters Julia and Lily give her a big hug when she walks into the building alongside fellow performing arts teens who run up to her yelling her name. Rutman believes that it’s important to act as good role models for the kids, and she believes that they see all their hard work and appreciate it.
This year’s co-presidents, Valerie Stuermer and Marianne Carter, oversee an organization that supports district performing arts staff members and the more than 400 students involved in curricular and extracurricular performing arts activities. Each year, the MTPA raises between $4,500 and $7,000 by hosting a large performance —this year it was the Faculty Musicale—soliciting private donations and various other small fundraising efforts. The money goes towards grants that are decided upon by faculty members and given to staff in each of the performing arts disciplines. This year each discipline (instrumental, choral, and theater and dance) has a budget of $1,500. Items like a new PA system for the Marching Black & Gold, performance tuxedo shirts and bow ties for the men’s concert choir, hats for dance, supplies for indoor color guard, and professional musicians to play with students during orchestral concerts, have been financed through mini-grants. Additionally, money raised goes to MTPA funded receptions following many performances, the Celebration and Awards Banquet, and this year $4,000 in Senior Book Awards will be given out. Regardless of the performing art MTPA member children perform in, members volunteer their time across disciplines. “This district is really unique in that it’s like family. It’s not just like the band, the chorus, the performing arts. They are really united,” Carter said. “They come together and support each other.”
All members of the MTPA are asked to do such things as cleaning robes for the choral ensembles (Vox Central Jazz vocal ensemble, a new CHS choral group, took third place a few weeks ago at the Berklee College of Music High School Jazz Festival in Boston), sewing flags for the Color Guard, selling hotdogs and tickets at this year’s district-sponsored USBand Competition, and bringing dinner to the hungry cast and crew of Pippin.
As fast as Peter Griffin and the students come up with new programs, the MTPA is figuring out ways to support them.
“It’s a true partnership between the parents and staff,” Griffin said. “We couldn’t do what we are doing without the support of the MTPA. They are instrumental in raising funds that provide overnight trips and resources for productions and concerts, but also they are advocates for the kids and programs. We have a voice and seat at the table. People listen to us. Parents make it a priority here.”
Big ideas and new programs are constantly evolving in the high school’s performing arts program. When asked what his long-term goals are, Griffin says it is to “build a school within a school” where someday the Performing Arts Academy, a high school magnet program, will have over 200 students from within and without the district.
Such a vision would bolster the school in times of low enrollment. High school students that have auditioned and been accepted into the academy take all of their electives in the performing arts. Upon graduation, they will receive the traditional Central High School diploma as well as one that states their graduation from the Performing Arts Academy.
Though the MTPA is separate from the Performing Arts Academy, many children of the organization are enrolled, and it is a source of much pride. Carter and her family live in South Hunterdon’s district, but took advantage of the state’s Interdistrict Public School Choice Program. Carter’s daughter was among the nine that enrolled in last year’s inaugural class, and Carter began coming to MTPA meetings immediately.
Carter, Rutman, Stuermer, and Lundquist have all been involved in PTOs prior to joining the MTPA.
“In a lot of ways this is much more rewarding,” Stuermer said. “When I go down to the theater and I hear the kids practicing, I cry. It’s so rewarding to know that I have been a little cog.”
Carter adds that the MTPA is involved more with students while PTOs interface more with parents.
Passion, a theme of Pippin, is clearly also a theme of the MTPA. The result of it is evident in just about every dance, choral, theatrical, and instrumental performance at CHS and in all of the smiles worn by teens involved in the performing arts.
Tickets for the March 4–5 shows can be purchased online at showtix4u.com.
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