It’s MYT’s 10th Birthday!

In 2002, MYT presented its very first ensemble performance of Persephone, The Reasons for the Seasons with its entire student population of 14 students. Now MYT has grown to serve over 600 students a year on site and in our local schools. We are proud to be a high-quality and fully accessible community youth theater program.  We have a lot to celebrate!

We have an amazing performance lineup for 2012. Incredible shows for each of our elementary, middle school and high school performing troupes, all with very special artists and collaborators!

Plus, a ten-year MYT celebration, July 1 at 5 pm!
Join us for this 10th anniversary year!

In honor of our first production, MYT recreates the myth of Persephone, Goddess of Spring, Queen of the Underworld- this time with a Cuban twist. It’s an honor to work with the great Afro-Cuban music and dance specialist, Roberto Borrell, who will assist us in transforming Persephone’s family of Greek gods into Cuban Orishas, each with his or her own music, dance and costume. Our core MainStage team of Lisa Quoresimo, John Ramirez and Susana Aragon will direct and create sets and costumes for the show.

MYT is very excited to announce our first collaboration with Community Music Center! Latin music specialists, Chus Alonso and Martha Rodriguez-Salazar will direct the production band: CMC’s Mission District Young Musicians Program. Persephone Cubana will rock with the rhythms of Afro-Cuban and modern Cuban dance music.

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MYT's Audition for Jip His Story
Entering grades 9 and up.
(late teens, early 20's students welcome)
Still looking for male actors. Auditions by appointment. Contact myt@themarsh.org
Rehearsals: June 2–June 28; M, W-Sat 10-4 pm
Performances: June 28-July 15
Activities Fee: $150
(work exchange available)

MYT remounts its popular 2005 production of Katherine Paterson’s historical novel about a 1850’s Vermont boy caught in a web of racial and class prejudice. Jip knows only that he was left on the side of the road when he was a toddler and brought up on a poor farm. Who are his parents? Where is he from? When Jip discovers the truth, his whole life is changed. Two-time Newbery Award winner Katherine Paterson is the National Ambassador for Children’s Literature and one of the nation's best writers of young people’s fiction. This will be an auditioned production for MYT Teens with a few additional younger actors included.

Jip, His Story will be directed by one of the Bay Area’s best-known directors, Ellen Sebastian Chang, who informs her directing with a keen interest in social and racial issues. Ellen is the Artistic Director of The World as It Could Be human rights education program and has dozens of directing credits. Read about Ellen on our Faculty Bio page.

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Entering grades 9 and up
Rehearsals: October 2012-February 2013 (Details TBA)Performances: February 2013

MYT is thrilled to have received a prestigious Creative Work Fund grant to collaborate with the great writer and poet, Gary Soto to create a new play about undocumented teenagers. This important issue touches all of us—from the teenagers whose dreams of college and future employment are stymied by their immigration status, to their documented friends and families who yearn to include them fully in the community’s collective visions.

Director Cliff Mayotte, in his role as Education Director of McSweeny’s Voice of Witness, will train MYT’s Creative Corps in oral history methods. MYT Teens will then interview undocumented peers throughout the community, whose stories will be combined and fictionalized in Soto’s script. This is an incredible opportunity to work with a world-author in creating an important new work theater and social justice.

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January 17 – March 25, 2012
Performance: March 24 & 25

“Once there was a perfect town, in a perfect world, where there were rules for everything and a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and nobody ever broke the rules-except sometimes." So begins Starhawk's eco-fable, The Last Wild Witch. MYT is thrilled to collaborate with one of the Bay Area’s most celebrated earth-based writers, activists and spiral dance leader.  We’ll create an original musical theater adaptation of Starhawk’s fable The Last Wild Witch, using drama, music, dance, improvisation and visual art.

This year’s first stage will be directed by special guest artist, Sally Davis, from Telluride Colorado. Sally was one of MYT’s first teachers and we’re so happy to have her back for our anniversary season. Sally is famous for waking up the storyteller within young performers, providing joyful creative collaboration and miraculous theatrical moments. She’ll be joined by MYT’s beloved Maica Folch and other special guests.

When the wind is in the west, and the last wild Witch is brewing her magic brews and singing her magic songs, some of the wildness might get inside you!

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