We have a shiny new blog!!

Hello!!

I hope you all have had wonderful summers and are enjoying the beginnings of Fall! As ever, it's been an exciting summer for all of us here at Daytime Moon!

This summer marked a lot of firsts for us: Our Summer Workshop Series brought incredible, established artists into Daytime Moon classrooms to share their unique fields. It was amazing to bring in so many different artists to teach our students!

We also made some pretty phenomenal new friends, as Daytime Moon Creations began a partnership with the incredible family at Emerge and See Education Centers!! We've been going in to offer workshop classes during the Emerge and See Summer Camps and have longer programs in the works- so stay tuned for updates! In the meantime though, check them out at www.emergeandsee.net.

I hope you followed along during our Summer Workshop Series classes: Music, Movement and Physical Theatre, Dance, and Creating a Character! You can relive all of the highlights, photos and updates on our YouTube page, our Twitter Feed, and our Facebook. As well as right here on our BRAND. NEW. BLOG.

That's right. Perhaps the biggest change of our summer is the facelift we've given to our social media. You sat front row with us as we navigated launching a public YouTube channel, went into our classrooms through increased Tweeting and real-time Facebook updates, and now I'm so excited to share our new blog with you! This beautiful new space, created by the AMAZING Rachel Murphy at tunes and spoons blog design (www.tunesandspoonsdesign.blogspot.com) is our new home to all things update! Take a look around when you have time, but here are the highlights:

-Choose what kind of blogging experience you want! So many of us here at Daytime Moon have a blog presence, but now you can choose who you want to hear from. Our teachers share stories from the classroom and updates about upcoming programs. Our performers' blogs include interviews with our participants, video blogs by our interns, and insights into Daytime Moon programming that can only come from the people who experience it. And our friends do all sorts of amazing things: These blogs can be from guest teachers, from intellectuals sharing insights into the theories behind Daytime Moon's work, and from leading therapists, teachers, artists and clinicians taking your questions!

-Check out the links at the top! This time around, our blog is more than just articles and stories. It's a chance to get to know Daytime Moon Creations in an exciting, multidimensional way. You can see a brief introduction to Who We Are, without leaving the blog to go to the full website--and when that teaser gets you super excited and you want to learn more, the option to leave and explore our full website still exists. On our "Who's Blogging" page, you'll see photos and short, funny bios about the people who write for our blog. And you'll be able to choose people to ask questions of! And of course, you can donate directly from this blog to help Daytime Moon make a difference in the lives of children and young adults with special needs by helping us provide arts programming.

-Social Media! On the left hand side of the blog, you'll see the icons that will help you stay in touch with us in so many ways: Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Join our Mailing List, and now you can follow us on Instagram too! And for those of you who also blog: don't forget to grab and share one of our buttons so that you can share what we do with all of your followers!

From all of us at Daytime Moon, so many thanks to Rachel for putting this together!!

Now that it is, in fact, fall, I can share with you all of the plans that have been brewing all summer long here at Daytime Moon:

Given the success of our Summer Workshop Series, we've chosen to move 3 of the classes from July to September so that people can have a weekend dose of the arts to ease the transition back into school! On September 15th, Ben Sidoti will be teaching Film; on September 22nd, Meredith Hackman will be teaching Creative Writing, and on September 29th, Christine Fuchs will be teaching Storytelling. Class descriptions, Teacher bios, and Registration materials are all available on the website at www.daytimemooncreations.org/current-programs.

And in October, back by popular demand is our hallmark Daytime Moon Program: Stars of the Stage, an 8 week theatre program that will culminate in an original production!  This session will run from October 20th until the final performance on December 15th, from 12-2PM every Saturday at 440 Studios. Registration materials can also be found on the website.

And last but not least, we're thrilled to be headed back to the Cooke Center Academy SKILLS Program for our third in-school residency with their young adult students. Can't wait to see what they all come up with!

So, happy fall and happy blogging! Can't wait to share all of our updates with you on this beautiful new stage!

Cheers,

Jenna

From the Archives- Spring 2012 Updates

April 17, 2012 

Hello Everyone!

Happy Spring! It’s taken a little while longer than planned, but I finally have photos from last month’s production of “Martian Mayhem:The Musical” to share!!

The show was absolutely brilliant. Every student brought in costume pieces (some much more than just suggestions!) that helped with their characters. All of our Martians decked out in red, which created an amazing visual against the red of the stage accents. And everyone got a chance to shine as they told the story of a group of astronauts crash landed on an unknown part of Mars, in conflict with the royal family, but working together to put aside differences for what’s best for both planets. It was a hysterical and heart warming script, written entirely by the participants in our workshop with the Cooke Center Academy SKILLS Program and the CCA Alumni Association.

Check out the pictures:

Nagisa, Geraldine, Carrie and Emily as the Astronauts preparing for takeoff

Christina as Jasmine, Princess of Mars

Jake and Alexis as Koba and Soray, King and Queen of Mars

The whole cast with Michelle, Ken and I celebrating their amazing achievement!

In other exciting updates, our spring extracurricular program, Stars of the Stage, kicked off on March 17th with our biggest group yet! Every Saturday we have 9 participants ages 11-15, plus our volunteers, Meredith, Michelle and I. We also are thrilled to welcome back Meredith’s favorite partner in crime, CCA intern Nagisa Mikami, for her third time as assistant playwright. The group is hugely varied, with so many exciting and creative personality types. We spent the first few days playing theatre games and doing creative improv exercises, getting to know each other and getting comfortable in the group. Here, you can see Teddy take us on an interactive imaginative tour of his favorite place to go. Come join us!

Teddy took the group to Coney Island:

After the second class, it was clear that our group was passionate about exploring, and a lot of their games had to do with treasure hunting and exploring unknown islands. What an exciting premise for a play! When we began working with the group to craft characters, we found even more excitement–a man who lives in an underground gold castle and lives for finding treasure, a werewolf king who sends his wolf subjects out to canvas the town looking for his lost treasure, a crazy witch who concocts secret potions and spells to help people, and a cranky old sea captain were among the characters our group came up with without any prompts from us, just an old box of costume and prop pieces! Needless to say, Meredith and Nagisa have had tons of raw material to work with.

We don’t have our final script yet, but armed with this premise, we’ve begun doing more character exercises and improvised scenes. As we started developing characters, our actors came up with inventions that their character would need on the magic island. Here, Alex and Shachi share Alex’s magic pen that can bring to life anything it draws:

By class on the 21st, we should have a final script, and I can’t wait to share the story with you! Stay tuned, there are lots more exciting stories to come!

Cheers,
Jenna