CLEVELAND — If you're looking to break up some of the monotony of quarantine, Cleveland Play House may have just the thing for you.
Cleveland Play House has opened its virtual classes, which started as a program with students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, to people of all ages and from all over the country, from three years old on up.
The free, virtual classes cover topics like audition preparation, self-care and playwriting, and you do not have to have a theater background to participate.
"The Cleveland Playhouse has never closed. It's been open for the last 104 years," said Thomas Kazmierczak, CARE Project director, said. "It hasn't closed during the World Wars. It didn't close during the Depression, so we're thrilled that the Cleveland Playhouse has been able to be open now."
The CARE Project, according to Eugene Sumlin, a CARE coordinator at the Marion-Sterling School, stands for Compassionate Artists Remaking Education. Started a few years ago, it's a theater curriculum created to talk to students in pre-K through 8th grade, focusing on social and emotional learning and also improving ELA scores.
Now, those classes are being offered to everyone during this time.
"We are here to serve our Cleveland community, but this beautiful virtual stage that we can create we can expand our stage out into the various states and even countries," Kazmierczak said.
Colleen Jackson, associate director of the CARE Program, said this is important because it's the way we come together.
"It's so much more than just the production with an audience. It is education," Jackson said. "It is reaching out and connecting with one another [in] a time when we feel very isolated."
"The world needs this right now, especially in a time that's so uncertain and can be a little scary," Sumlin said.
He said there is a lot of theater and dance currently being live-streamed online, and that the arts are really needed in a time like this.
"People need to have some type of joy, some type of laughter," Sumlin said.
Jackson said Cleveland Play House moved quickly to ensure access for students in its partner schools in the CARE program, moving things to a platform where students could either call in or go online.
"Not everybody has the same access in terms of internet, computers, phones," Jackson said. "We worked really close together with the schools to help with technology distribution. We made sure we sent the information to our families about the ways they can access WiFi for free, and then we went right to it to create this curriculum and adapt it so that it could work online."
Marcela Rodriguez Gonzalez, associate director of community partnerships and programming at the Cleveland Play House, said the program had to make adjustments during COVID-19 to make sure students could access CARE, as well as programs before and after school.
"Most of our kids don't have a place that they can go after school, because their parents are working," Rodriguez Gonzalez said.
Cleveland Play House managed to put all its after-school programs into an online platform, providing programming for students in health and wellness, nutrition, fitness, academic enrichment and theatre.
"So [students] really didn't feel the loss of their programs," Rodriguez Gonzalez said.
The next session of the free, virtual classes for all ages through Cleveland Play House begins May 18 and runs until the end of June.
All programs are free, but registration is required. Click here for more information.
