Honeybees Are Important! @ The Woodruff Arts Center

Some of you may have seen a performance of  my play for family audiences about the importance of honeybees at the Bug Out Festival at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta last August and September. A school version of Honeybees Are Important! will be performed Friday, February 25th at 11 a.m. – presented by Young Audiences at the Rich Auditorium at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta.

Michael Hickey, Jerilynn Bedingfield and I (Sandra Hughes) utilize masks, music, drama, mime and dance to encourage students to experience, understand, participate and learn about the importance of honeybees to our food supply - as well as their important role as pollinators of  the food eaten by animals.

In 2006 after working to help dying honeybees at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland (with support from the Ford Foundation and Alternate ROOTS) I returned to the U.S. and founded The Bee Project with support from Gateway Performance Productions. The  Bee Project exists to raise awareness about the current global plight of the honeybee and to create performances, workshops, and programs that give the public the opportunity to learn more about how these tiny insects benefit our planet.

We have two other upcoming school performances of Honeybees Are Important! through YAWAC in the Atlanta area :
Monday, February 28, 10 am: Seaborn Lee Elementary School, College Park
Friday, March 4, 8:30 am: Garden Hills Elementary School, Atlanta

These performances are part of a national Young Audiences' process - currently implemented locally by YAWAC’s Program Consultant Gregg Johnson - designed to encourage artists to create new school programs

If you’re interested in  having  Honeybees Are Important! or one of our other performances performed for a school,  family or general audience, please contact: gatewaypp@masktheatre.org   or 404 222 9262 for information, availability and fees.

Gateway is on the following Touring Arts Rosters for Performances, Workshops, Residences:
Young Audiences Woodruff Arts Center: Metro Atlanta.
Georgia Council for the Arts:  Statewide,  fee subsidy available.
Alternate ROOTS/Ford Foundation:  Regional, 14 Southern States, fee subsidy available.

Sandra Hughes and Michael Hickey are on the following Artist Rosters as Teaching Artists: 
Young Audiences Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta
Georgia Council for the Arts, Aritists in Education.   

All three upcoming performances of Honeybees Are Important! are made possible in part by a National Young Audiences’ Classic Initiative Grant award and a grant award from the Fulton County Commissioners under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council.  The performances at the Woodruff Arts Center and Garden Hills Elementary are  also made possible in part by a grant award from the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs.

Gateway Performance Productions is a 35-year-old non-profit arts and education organization. The company creates new works for the stage and video and has toured performances, workshops and residencies locally, statewide, regionally, nationally and internationally to 34 states in the US and 13 other countries. Video productions have been distributed nationally for Public Television and showcased at the American Film Institute Video Festival in Los Angeles. Gateway is a member of Alternate ROOTS.

The MASK Center - a project of Gateway Performance Productions - is located in the Little Five Points Community Center, 1083 Austin Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA, 30307. The Center is an artistic home to theatre, dance, mime, music, mask theatre and visual artists and is also utilized for projects by poets, filmmakers, puppeteers and community organizations.

Gateway Artists-in-Residence at The MASK Center include:
Jerilynn Bedingfield:  performer, choreographer
Michael Hickey:  performer, mask-maker, visual artist, theatrical designer, teaching artist
Sandra Hughes: performer, director, choreographer, musician, writer, producing artistic director, teaching artist
Tom Spach: composer, musician, songwriter
Hilda Willis:  performer, director, producer, writer, teaching artist

Current Gateway Guest and Affiliate Artists include:
Gwyneth Bragdon:  actor, dancer, choreographer
Park Cofield: producer, director, puppeteer, scholar
Lynn Hesse: dancer, choreographer, writer
Allen Pittman: martial artist.

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