Ashley Jordan grew up in Milwaukee who loves the performing arts. Describing herself as a “Step One kid,” she said she took many different classes, including music and ballet, but always came back to her “sweet spot,” acting.
Jordan, who is Black, said her performing arts experiences were more beautiful when she saw people who looked like her. He now works to cater for the current generation of young actors, as Black Arts MKE’s artistic associate and as producer of the organisation’s youth performing arts summer camp, which ran for four weeks in July.
“One of the most important things to me is representation, and I am also committed to ensuring that representation in the performing arts remains within our community from generation to generation,” said Jordan. “That’s one of the unique and beautiful things about this summer camp.”
The performing arts camp began in 2019, when children aged 12 to 18 spent four weeks learning how to sing, dance and act, as well as how to make costumes and operate lights, audio and video equipment – all the things that go in take off a musical theater production. They staged their production on the last day of the camp for their friends, family and community members in a ceremony called Kuumba.
While the pandemic has forced changes to the program for the past three years — most notably, capacity limits and the final production in the outdoor Peck Pavilion rather than the Wilson Theater in Vogel Hall — the essentials of the camp experience have not change to a large extent.
According to Barbara Wanzo, executive director of Black Arts MKE, each day of camp this summer began with a mindfulness practice followed by breakfast. The instructors — all working performing artists in Milwaukee — then rotated teaching classes for the students, including creative writing, videography, vocal instruction, choreography and acting.
The instructors helped the students brainstorm ideas for their final production, writing it, then rehearsing the music and acting.
“The whole idea is to do musical theater and let the children have an experience on stage, but also behind the stage,” said Wanzo. “The result is building self-confidence and self-esteem. That’s the most important thing that children said they were proud of.”
Jordan said students sat in a circle on the first day of camp and shared what they hoped to get out of camp. Although many were excited about singing, dancing and acting, their main focus was something else.
“So many of them talked about building confidence, social skills and friendships,” said Jordan. “At the end of the camp, we had definitely achieved those goals. Even the quietest and most introverted students ended the experience with a friend or someone they could relate to.”
In addition to learning what was most important to students during that first week, Jordan’s job was to find out what performing arts skills they had. That’s something she and the coaches learned by leading the students through impromptu games and dance activities.
“We did one activity where everyone comes into the circle and does a dance on their own and then everyone repeats the movement,” said Jordan. “A lot of their moves were strong TikTok picks,” he said, laughing.
