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JPAS Summer Musical Theatre Intensives provide a challenging and high quality musical theatre education to students of the metro New Orleans area. The students who attend our Intensives are challenged and enriched through an encouraging and inviting environment. Summer Intensive welcomes children grades 3-8 and 6-12 each summer. Registration begins in February and often fills up very quickly! Individual attention and fun are our goals, so space is limited. Young performers have the opportunity to work with professional artistic staff. At JPAS, we place the child first and give them the opportunity to spread their wings in a creative and remarkable way.
Recent summer intensive productions include Newsies, The Addams Family Young@Part, Shrek the Musical Jr., Aladdin Jr., My Fair Lady School Edition (Pilot), The Little Mermaid Jr., Mary Poppins Jr, The Wizard of Oz Young Performers Edition, and Annie Jr.
The JPAS Theatre Kids! program gives children year-round opportunities to participate in theatre, experience the process of putting on a show, as well as learning basic acting techniques and skills. Enrollment is by auditions which are held prior to each show. Theatre Kids! activities give young people a chance to have fun with theatre, creating a lifelong love of the arts. JPAS Theatre Kids! proudly presents 2 musicals per season performed by an all-kid cast. Theatre Kids! welcomes children 7-17 years old who want to learn more about theatre and dramatic arts.
Recent Theatre Kids! productions include Schoolhouse Rock Live! Jr., Frozen Jr., Once on This Island Jr., and Home for the Holidays.
The competition team has been inactive since the pandemic, but we hope to revive it in the future!
JPAS Theatre Kids! Competition Team is an intensive program that focuses on performance in a musical and teamwork. It prepares young actors to compete as a team at a National Junior Theatre Festival. Members of the team study and prepare an abridged version of a musical and compete against other youth theatre groups from across the nation. The iTheatrics Junior Theatre Festival is sponsored by Music Theatre International and Disney Musicals. The National Performing Arts Festival is sponsored by Brightspark Travel & Walt Disney World. Young Performers of America Competition is held in New York City every year.
In 2011 at the MTI Jr. Musical Theatre Festival in Atlanta, the JPAS Theatre Kids! Competition Team won OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE in their division. That year, they also made history. A Golden Ticket is an invitation to the MTI Choreography auditions. Students can only attend these auditions by invitation; in 2011, 400 students were invited to audition for choreographer Steven G. Kennedy. Through this audition process, MTI Choreography selects 25 student finalists to perform in instructional choreography DVDs for Music Theatre International titles. The DVDs are designed to empower any teacher or community member to create innovative and compelling musical-theatre dance numbers. These instructional DVDs are used in the thousands of schools and performing arts centers across the country that license the musicals from the MTI Broadway Junior Collection.
In 2011, the first time the JPAS Theatre Kids! Competition Team attended the MTI Jr. Musical Theatre Festival, the entire Team received Golden Tickets. It wasn’t until later that Director LYNNE L. BORDELON learned that an entire team being invited to audition simply doesn’t happen. Ultimately 25 students were cast for the taping. Five of those 25 were JPAS Theatre Kids! Competition Team members.
Additionally, in 2011 Director LYNNE L. BORDELON won the Freddie G. Teaching Experience Award at the MTI Jr. Musical Theatre Festival. The Junior Theater Festival (JTF) renamed its annual awards “The Freddie G’s”, in honor of Freddie Gershon, Music Theatre International chairman and Broadway Junior founder. Ms. Bordelon was also selected as a finalist for the Freddie G. Community Service Award!
Since that first year of competition, the JPAS Theatre Kids Competition Team has continued to shine! They consistently rise to the occasion and show the country just what they are capable of achieving!!
In February, 2020, the team was awarded a Superior Rating at the Brightspark National Performing Arts Festival in Orlando, FL. Also awarded were:
• Lynne Bordelon, Best Choreography
• Meredith Adams - Outstanding Individual Performance (Mary Poppins)
• Garrett DeViney - Outstanding Individual Performance (Bert)
• Megan Levy - Outstanding Individual Performance (Jane Banks)
• Bryson Morse - Outstanding Individual Performance (Michael Banks)
