Membership Spotlight – March 2025

I currently serve as a Producing Fellow at P3 Productions, a Broadway production company. With P3, I worked on the Broadway premiere of HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO, a groundbreaking new musical featuring seven autistic young adults. Currently, P3 is producing the musical adaptation of the beloved children’s book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. As part of the producing team, I curated the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Musical Study Guide, designed for teachers, students, and families who will soon experience this incredible production on stage.

Jason Reynolds’ work has me in a chokehold. I strongly believe his books are essential for young readers to explore, discuss, and use as inspiration to create and become theorists of their lived experiences. I have incorporated several of his novels into my curriculum as an Arts Educator and helped facilitate student-led stage and film projects. Recently, I read his newest book, Twenty-Four Seconds from Now, and it immediately sparked the creative side of my brain. I’m already envisioning ways to bring this story from page to stage or screen to ignite meaningful discourse amongst older teenagers.

One of my dream projects is creative producing a musical adaptation of Jacqueline Woodson’s The Year We Learned to Fly. I envision this piece as an immersive theatrical experience for children and families, inspiring them to use their “beautiful minds” to lift themselves beyond their current reality and fly in alignment with their dreams.

I believe theatre has the power to heal and empower generations. Theater for Young Audiences is at the heart of this work, bringing live stories to the stage and creating a space for young audiences to engage, learn, discuss, and spark new ideas. It nurtures the whole child, and gives them the audacity to dream while equipping them with the tools to become productive citizens and changemakers. This civic-minded theatre work, with children at the forefront, will always be an essential part of my artistic journey.

Nicole Cummings is a phenomenal music teacher I had the privilege of working with for a decade while we both taught in the DC Public Charter School system. She embodies music teaching excellence at its finest. Together, we built a strong musical theater curriculum and witnessed firsthand its profound impact not only on our students but on the school’s culture. We also directed and produced numerous shows from the MTI discography from Lion King to Flat Stanley the Musical.

My collaboration with Nicole remains an essential part of my journey as I navigate the commercial producing space. It has shaped me as both an educator and a creative, continually inspiring me to refine and pursue my vision for the future.

Thank you, Nikki Cheyenne! I miss you.

In this season of my life, I am most inspired by the mentorship of Sammy Lopez. Sammy is a powerhouse. Witnessing his commitment to navigating the commercial producing space while championing TYA work has been invaluable. He is actively working to make Broadway producing more equitable for producers of color and fearlessly engaging in the hard conversations necessary to drive industry change. Beyond that, Sammy is also an educator, teaching budding producers through organizations like Theatre Producers of Color and The Business of Broadway. Mentorship means different things to different people, but I believe it is a verb as it is an active commitment to another human being. A true mentor gets to know their mentee, shares insight on success, is honest about challenges, creates opportunities for growth, and leads by example. Sammy embodies all of this and more, and I am grateful that our paths have crossed on my journey.

I would love to connect with everyone. My personal website is www.cldorsey.com. I can also be found on Instagram @soulactorcyn.

I recently published a book entitled “Theatre and Dance with Children as Artistic Partners: Devising Performance for the Very Young” that is currently available in both hardback and e-book formats (with a more accessibly priced paperback version coming in late 2025). It offers a framework for developing research-based Theatre and Dance for the Very Young (TDVY) performances in which artists collaborate with children ages 0-6 and their caregivers and/or educators as creative partners in the process. I am so very proud to share this with the field!

I am inspired by so much performance work that is happening for very young children right now. Forever favorites are “Marmalade” by Claire Parsons Co. and “BB” by Wonderland Collective/Makiko Ito.

I am devising a new dance performance for 12-36 month-olds and their caregivers called “Red” which explores themes of messiness, destruction, joyful chaos, and rough-and-tumble toddler play (e.g., tearing paper, knocking things over, pushing/pulling/falling)! I will be hosting Play Lab research sessions with families in May and premiering the work in November 2025 at the Mesa Arts Center and the Children’s Museum of Phoenix. My artistic collaborators are Olivia Herneddo and Jisun Myung!

So many reasons, but especially because children are a) experts of their own lived experience and b) incredibly dynamic artists, collaborators, spectators, teachers, and activators who deserve access to the arts. TYA also creates a space of opportunity, play, and possibility for the adults who make this work and attend these performances alongside children.

I am forever grateful to Andria Devlin, the current Director of Early Childhood Education, and Linda Reimond, the former Director and program founder, at the Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence, KS. I spent years teaching in their early childhood classrooms and collaborating with them to bring performance for very young children to the Lawrence community.

I am grateful to call Dr. Mary McAvoy my mentor, colleague, and friend!

Visit my website: amandapintore.com or send me an email at amanda.pintore@asu.edu!

I’m directing Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical at PLAY Theatre Co in San Francisco, a new professional TYA company founded by and comprising long-time Bay Area Children’s Theatre artists. Centered on a queer family in Oakland, this production will finish PLAY’s inaugural season at the SF Children’s Creativity Museum.

I recently saw Fantastic Negrito live, and the lyric “only the dreamers survive” keeps echoing in my head.

My original interactive theatre piece When They Ask If We Were Real recently received a generous grant from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation! Workshopped with populations from around the world, the piece addresses the uncertainties of human-made art in the era of AI and facilitates intergenerational inquiries toward our shared future during global unrest. Still in development, When They Ask If We Were Real will enter production later this year in partnership with Alternative Theater Ensemble in Berkeley, California before heading back overseas.

I have worked extensively in theatre for all ages, but there’s something about the immediacy of systemic disruption that can occur in theatre for youth. It is both an investment in cultural shifts and a sudden infusion of possibilities for the self and the collective. Inspiring a child’s catharsis while they still have a lifetime to transform it into something actionable feels like the most effective use of the art form.

YouTuber and multihyphenate arts extraordinaire Bri Reads has been my rock during the industry’s ups and downs. They have filled my last couple of years with thrilling TYA projects that have inspired me to push past imposter syndrome and step into artistic roles I’ve long admired. Our collaboration on Book of Questions at Papermoon Puppet Theatre directly inspired When They Ask If We Were Real, with Bri’s international audience sharing unexpected questions and piercing insight that has kept me wondering, “How can we leverage technology to make theatre truly accessible?”

I continue to learn so much from my little brother Antonio Cervantes, a 21-year-old entering the creative workforce. While I help guide his craft and navigation through the professional world, he constantly surprises me with a young person’s perspective on the industry norms we take for granted and those we have room to shake up. He keeps me grounded in the realities young people have inherited from us and helps me understand how to create work that feels relevant and urgent to the next generation.

Follow my IG @chleah or visit my website leahsanginiti.com.