LIFE STORIES YOUTH ENSEMBLE

CLICK HERE to view The New Group's Life Stories 2012 Video

Life Stories is a free theater education program for teenagers from the New York City public schools offered by The New Group in collaboration with Urban Arts Partnership. Life Stories provides acting and playwriting lessons in a professional environment and builds invaluable life skills that will benefit the students' academic and professional careers, as well as their personal lives

In 2006, Life Stories started as an ensemble of 15 students. Today our enrollment totals 53.

The young people in this program have become an integral part of The New Group artistic community, and see our theater as a safe place to learn and be inspired by one another. Almost every student has returned to the program each year until graduation and some return after graduation to assistant direct and mentor younger students.


Approximately 25 students apply for 15 spots per year. Students are chosen based on recommendations from teachers, their writing sample, and an interview. We look for students with passion; with an ability to put themselves forward, and articulate their ideas and goals; and with a proven track record of committing to programs. Moreover, we look for kids with a willingness and potential for being part of, and contributing to, an ensemble.


Life Stories students participate in two 12-week acting sessions, one 16-week playwriting session, and one 3-week summer intensive. They perform before an audience in a day of improvisational skits, a day of readings from the playwriting class, a final production from the acting course and the final production of the student plays rehearsed in the summer intensive. In addition, they take part in the 24-Hour Plays where the most advanced playwriting students write a short play on a Saturday and then on Sunday the acting students, working with theatre professionals such as Rosie Perez, Lynn Whitfield and Michael Kenneth Williams, memorize and rehearse these plays all day for an evening performance.


Life Stories continues The New Group mission to nurture and support the next generation of theatre artists. And what a talented generation it is!