Look Who it Was Random video

On Location: Festival 56 (by Leepertown Grade School, Bureau, IL)

84 views · Published 10 July 2018 · 5:11 · Indexed 30 October 2026

Channel: Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning · 2018 · Education

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What great American art form has amazing action, romance and so much more? Theater gives us the opportunity to examine the world around us and teach us about ourselves. It allows us to look at the things around us in a reflective way. Theater allows us to examine who we are either through music, drama, or comedy by looking at a reflection of ourselves through a playwright. Festival 56, a theater group in Princeton, IL has found a way to bring all of the wonderful aspects of theater to the community.

Located in historic Princeton, Festival 56 is Illinois’s largest theater festival and one of two major projects of Princeton Theatre Group, a not-for-profit and completely volunteer driven organization. Every year for six weeks, Festival 56 assembles talented working artists from across the country to present a wide spectrum of programming, from free productions of Shakespeare, to classic and world premier musicals, and even the masterworks of playwrights such as Steinbeck, Ibsen and Tennessee Williams. Festival 56 is committed to championing the American theatre as an art form by creating a home for the artists who are its heart and soul.

Theatre, especially outdoor festival theater, has been a strong pillar of the performing arts since the dawn of Greece and Rome. Today, it remains an opportunity for communities, large and small, to remain entrenched in the presentation of literary masters like Shakespeare, Albee and Rodgers & Hammerstein; while allowing for new and untapped talents to take the stage through New Artist gatherings like the regional Fringe festivals. From audience member, to technical theater worker, to the actors themselves, enjoying theater is for everyone and will be for centuries to come!

Bureau is a rural community located in the north central part of Illinois with a population of 400 citizens. Everyone knows their neighbor and the general local gossip is almost as common as the rows of corn. Despite the nostalgic picture, there is very little access to the arts. Ten miles to the north in the neighboring town of Princeton, a local theater group has sought to change that by bringing art to the community. Through the transformative power of theatre; Bureau can thank Festival 56 for helping transform their community as a whole.

From 2008-2010, nineteen schools from across the United States created videos as part of the On Location program. A "media studio on wheels" visited each school for two weeks and provided students the gear and training to tell the story of the arts in their community.

From go-go music in Washington DC, to gullah woodburning in Beaufort, South Carolina, to modern dance in Berkley, Michigan, the arts of a community can be as different as it's geography.

The Kennedy Center traveled the country to help students tell the story of the arts in their community, and the result is a video collection reflecting a rich diversity of local artists and art forms across the United States.

The videos in this series were scripted, produced and edited by students using professional equipment, under the supervision of Kennedy Center teaching artists.

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