A summer theater program is helping Grant Sawyer Middle School students understand the grief, fear, and anger that gripped the nation in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which took place before they were born.
“War At Home,” drawn from 2001 journal entries of New York youngsters and teachers and bolstered by original writing by the Sawyer students, is set to be performed four times this month.
It caps months of work by the 35 students involved in the Sawyer Summer Stage program, which was funded through a grant from the Rogers Foundation. Along with theater instruction, the Summer Stage program provided structure and a decent lunch for young people whose summers might otherwise not include either.
“When I first started teaching at Sawyer it was a very affluent school, and now were are a Title 1 school; we have a very high poverty level,” said drama teacher Amy Roberge, who has taught at Sawyer for 20 years.
“When you have a school that is at a poverty level, vacations are not something that kids look forward to,” Roberge said. “For many of them vacation means they are not going to get fed, that they don’t have anyone around.”
The Rogers Foundation also supports Nevada Public Radio.
TICKET INFORMATION:
“War At Home” will be put on four times this month, on Aug. 18, 19, 25, and 26.
The Aug. 18 performance is a 4 p.m. matinee and the following night’s show will be presented dinner theater style beginning at 4:30 p.m. Both shows will be held at Sawyer Middle School, 5450 Redwood St. in Las Vegas.
For more information or reservations, call (702) 799-5980.
The Aug. 25 and 26 shows will be held at the Clark County Library theater at 1401 E. Flamingo Road, with the curtain going up at 6 p.m. The theater seats 400, so reservations are not required.
There is no admission charge, but patrons will be asked to make a contribution to Paws and Stripes, a nonprofit that provides service dogs to veterans coping with PTSD.
Amy Roberge, Grant Sawyer Middle School Teacher; Michelle Sanders, Rogers Foundation grant and scholarship director; Jocelyn Davis, Alexia Wooten, and Santiago Olivares, Sawyer Middle School students