Would you like to help? We count on our generous patrons to help provide this vital support to schoolchildren throughout the area. Click on the link below to donate to MTW's Youth Cultural Enrichment Program.
Students (above) getting autographs from the cast following a YCEP matinee performance of The Wizard of Oz.
"Study Buddies" are given out to all youth who participate in YCEP. These workbooks provide fun activities and facts about the production (pictured above and below).
Musical Theatre West is proud to sponsor both the performances and the buses to YCEP events. Due to drastic cutbacks within our schools, for many students this will be their only field trip of the year.
Since 1991 Musical Theatre West's Youth Cultural Enrichment Program (YCEP) has reached over 100,000 youth and in the last year we have served over 10,000 youth from local elementary, middle and high schools, exposing them to the magic of musical theatre through a range of shows like Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Pirates of Penzance, Altar Boyz, The History of Musical Theatre in Forty-Two Minutes and Twenty-Eight Seconds and From Page to the Stage. Since October 2007, thousands of students from over 45 LBUSD schools have attended matinees of The Pajama Game, Christmas Time is Here, All Shook Up, The Andrews Brothers and The Wizard of Oz.
Support materials for each production have included a standards-based study guide about the production, history and additional musical theatre terminology and facts to deepen students’ understanding before, during and after the experience. Additionally, a special “Study Buddy” is created and provided at the theatre for students featuring a condensed version of the study guide and including fun facts and activities for students to do in the classroom and at home.
And, as a further extension of the YCEP program, during last season’s production of the WWII themed Andrews Brothers matinee, we invited schools across LBUSD to participate in a letter-writing campaign to support our current troops serving overseas. Students and teachers were invited to write letters, draw pictures, or create poetry for servicemen and women, which was gathered at the April 24th and May 1st matinees and delivered to Operation Gratitude, a Van Nuys-based organization that sends care packages and letters to troops stationed across the globe. This activity was a first for the YCEP program and was intended to draw a contemporary connection between the world of the musical and the world in which the students currently live.
YCEP has consistently underwritten the cost of transportation for all participating schools in keeping with its mission of exposing this American art form to the youth of Long Beach and surrounding areas. This year due to drastic budgetary cutbacks affecting all California school districts, YCEP will be covering the cost of over 44 buses to transport LBUSD students to our special matinees, which includes 14 buses for Signal Hill Elementary who was scheduled to attend the entire season of productions before losing all of their funding to the budget cuts. As a result, nearly 1000 Signal Hill students will be experiencing the transformative experience of live musical theatre.
