E a s t Los Angeles C o l l e g e Farley Herzek
Iiitiriiii President
1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez /;
Monterey Park, California 91754
6 "tJ
323 265 8650
To: Frank Mancuso Chairman of the Board
Geffen Playhouse 10886 Le Conte Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90024 July 25,2013
Dear Mr. Mancuso:
I must start by expressing the profound gratitude we at East Los Angeles College feel for the opportunity that the Geffen Playhouse has afforded our students. It is a sad fact that many of the young people in our area have never been further out of our neighborhood than to Dodger Stadium. In fact, we have students who have never seen the Pacific Ocean! Some students are
very nervous when we are organizing carpooling to get them to the Geffen, fearing that something will happen and they won't know how to get back. The opportunity to see productions at the Geffen Playhouse has been, for many of them, a once in a lifetime experience. It has expanded the world for them and allowed them to feel a part of the greater world beyond their insular neighborhoods.
Many of our students are really only interested in movies, that is until they experience what theatre can be through attending productions at the Geffen Playhouse. During our postshow discussions students have commented over and over again about how much they now want to see more plays and attend a wider range of theatres. Something they had never considered before. As a truer believer in the power of theatre to change lives, witnessing this transformation in my own students has been extremely gratifying for me as a teacher.
Our student population is a diverse one. We have many students from foreign countries (China, Russia, South and Central Asia, South and Central America) as well as local students from the Monterey Park, Montebello and the Boyle Heights area. Many of our exchange students have poor English skills and are in this country to improve their English. Many of our local students are bi-lingual but with limited reading or writing skills in their second language. Below are a few of the moving and inspirational comments I have received from some of the beneficiaries of the Lights Up program. I have left their grammar and spelling intact and have highlighted a few key phrases.
"I was never the person to attend live theatre. I grew up with people around me saying theatre was boring and that it was nothing but tights and Shakespeare; if I told them I wanted to be an actress they would say you are not pretty enough or you are too skinny, obviously I hung around the wrong people. However, I always had my own thoughts about theatre as an art form. I had dreams of becoming an actress since I was 7, but I was too embarrassed to admit it because