All students from elementary on up are given the opportunity to perform at New Gate School. Debbie Vale, who has been with New Gate School since 1994 is preparing the children to perform plays, musicals and operas. She has attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in NYC. Debbie is assisted by Kim Michiels.

In past years the students from the Elementary and Secondary levels have performed Charlotte's Web, The Wizard of Oz, Treasure Island, HMS Pinafore, Ducktails and Bobby Sox, Much Ado About Nothing, and many other plays.

The Upper Elementary students put on an annual Shakespeare production which for the last ten years has included A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, MacBeth, The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It and Taming of the Shrew.

Opera
Every year, New Gate School students from grades 1 through 6 perform in the annual opera production. Students experience one week of intense immersion with professional opera instructors Sanford and Judy Jones of Youth Opera USA. During that week, sets are created, costumes are designed, singers learn their songs and dancers are ready to perform. New Gate School students have performed in The Burning Rice Fields (2001, 2007), Harlequin (2002, 2008), Pearl (2003, 2009), The Moon Maiden (2004), Persephone (2005) and Hiawatha (2006).

Youth Opera USA takes elementary age children on a practical, fun-filled adventure down what might otherwise be a rather intimidating road, where children discover not only the magic of performing but a newfound appreciation for opera, drama, and many other art forms. In this five day workshop, three essential elements of theatre - singing, dancing, and acting come together in an original, children’s opera. Amazingly, the opera is staged, costumed, rehearsed, and performed before the local community in only one week’s time.

Sanford Jones is internationally known in the Montessori world as an educator, lecturer, consultant, and composer. He has made significant contributions to this country’s Montessori movement, including the founding of three schools on the East Coast. Mr. Jones, a native of Virginia, did undergraduate studies in music and history at Westminster Choir College, Rutgers University, and Roanoke College. He later taught at Westminster and at the New School for Music Study in Princeton, NJ. He is the composer of seven children’s operas and two songbooks for children.

Judy Jones, choreographer, was a ballet major at the University of Utah. In New York, she danced in several Broadway musicals including My Fair Lady, Hallelujah, Baby!, Do I hear a Waltz?, and A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, as well as the film The Producers. Ms. Jones owned and directed two dance studios in the New York area.

Highlights of Playwriting Workshop
As one of their culminating experiences for their integrated English/history semester, 10th, 11th and 12th New Gate School Montessori students worked with Florida Studio Theater’s teaching artists in a weeklong Playwriting Intensive for high school students. Dean Amy Kremer, Kate Alexander, Artistic Director at Florida Studio Theater, and Andrew Bailes, Education Associate/Instructor worked together in a series of planning meetings over the semester to design a theater immersion experience that would allow students to “create plays that speak from the vibrant voice of high school students.” New Gate School and Florida Studio Theater partnered with the goal of inspiring high school voices through writing and performance. According to Kremer, “The Playwriting Intensive with Florida Studio Theater is an engaging opportunity for our students to deepen their understanding of American history topics and to express themselves through performance and writing - the playwriting intensive allowed students to evaluate and synthesize their understanding of this period in history and to give voice to their personal conflicts with otherness, identity and the outsider.”

Over the course of the Playwriting Intensive New Gate School students worked with the teaching artists of Florida Studio Theater in the studio and on the stage in workshops about conflict, setting, character and dialogue. Each day began with warm ups designed “to foster spontaneity, collaboration, and free imagination through the use of improvisation,” according to Abigail Swetz, teaching artist and assistant to the Artistic Director. The students eventually built scenes, monologues and characters inspired by their semester long study of the Reconstruction South and the Jim Crow era through the Great Migration and the cultural, social, economic and artistic realities of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Playwriting Intensive ended with a “works in process” performance of the students’ work. However, Kremer and the teaching artists at Florida Studio Theater hope the students will build on their week’s work to develop a play for the Young Playwrights Festival in the spring and that ultimately they will continue to strengthen their personal voice through writing and involvement in the theater.