Adderley School Gives Students Early Start in Arts

Performing arts opportunities include acting and singing, and some significant stage presence

By Heather Harkness, Noozhawk Intern | Published on 11.26.2009

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The Adderley School of the Performing Arts has several levels of acting opportunities for youth.

The school, founded in Pacific Palisades and with a studio in Santa Barbara, offers fall and spring productions for younger students up to the age of 12. Then there is the Adderley Repertory, and students have their production in February and March. Just above that on the ladder is Santa Barbara Youth Ensemble Theater, with both junior and senior groups.

SBYET starts in September, along with the other, shorter productions. They are mostly invitation only. If you want your child to join, there is an audition process to get into the group. Upon acceptance, each student learns sides, or scenes from the play, that highlight the character they are interested in playing for auditions for a role. Each student needs two ideas for a role, and must learn the lines in the scenes. Students are then paired up on audition day to read together so that school founder Janet Adderley and other staff members can place them and make two wonderful casts.

If learning sides doesn’t seem like enough, there is one more piece involved in auditions: singing. Everyone can get a feel of what a student’s voice is like and how it would pair opposite someone else’s.

After casting the roles, students learn their lines and where to stand and walk on the stage, and go through long rehearsals. Each show opens for two days (four shows, each cast has two) in early May.

Adderley, a mother of two, started the school 13 years ago in Pacific Palisades. She now has a studio there and in Santa Barbara. Adderley students have gone on to perform on Broadway and on film with celebrities such as David Foster, Dustin Hoffman, Josh Groban and Beyoncé Knowles. Several Santa Barbara students are touring this holiday season with Grammy-nominated Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

— Noozhawk intern Heather Harkness is an eighth-grader at Santa Barbara Middle School.

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