By Carolyn Brown
For the Valley Advocate
The Valley has several of performance opportunities for adults, but a local festival wants to instead turn the spotlight on young performers.
The Youth Performance Festival (YPF) will return for its seventh year this week with multiple showings at 33 Hawley in Northampton.
The festival, a collaboration between the Northampton Center for the Arts and Play Incubation Collective in partnership with Holyoke Media, is a performance opportunity for young people aged 8 to 18 who create and perform original works in theater, dance, music, spoken word, animation and more. Young artists work with adult mentor artists in cohorts based on their chosen performance type.
Festival Co-Directors Kelly Silliman, who is co-director of the nonprofit Northampton Center for the Arts, and Sarah Marcus, who is co-director of the nonprofit Play Incubation Collective in Northampton, started the festival in 2019.
“When I was a kid, I was that kid who was always making up a show and putting on a dance performance, and I had a lot of adults who said yes to me, and it gave me a sense that I can do anything creatively,” Silliman said. “So in 2019, when Sarah approached me with this idea for the festival that was loosely based on a program that she had participated in in Brooklyn, it was this immediate yes.”
When Marcus was growing up, “I didn’t have people telling me to really believe in the power of my own voice, versus getting to be in a play that somebody else wrote, or be in a chorus that someone else is directing, or be in a dance performance that someone else is choreographing,” she said, “so I think that message that kids are getting — that their creative voice is important, that they are the creative engines, they have that empowerment — I think is so important. Whether or not they continue to be artists in their professional lives, they’re getting the practice of really listening to themselves and learning about the creative process.”
As part of YPF, the youth artists and mentors met over the course of seven weeks in December and January. Part of the mentorship process involves a session in which the mentors and youth artists exchange feedback. The festival encourages feedback about how a work makes an observer feel rather than encouraging comments like “you should do this” or “you should change that part.” “The point of that is that it puts the decision-making power back with the artist, and they can respond. If somebody says, ‘I felt so sad at the end of this dance, when you ended up on the floor,’ and the artist is like, ‘Wow, I didn’t want people to feel sad, I wanted them to feel restful,’ then they can make some changes,” Silliman said, “but if they’re like, ‘Yeah! I really want people to feel that sadness!’ then they know they’re on the right track. But it’s really their choice.” This year’s festival features 48 youth artists and 13 adult mentors, who were split into two groups. One group developed their works at 33 Hawley and the other at Holyoke Media. YPF continues to grow each year. In fact, this is the first year they’ve had to turn people away, and solely because of capacity, though more than half of this year’s cohort are returning performers. Sometimes, those kids will spend a few years in one cohort — theater, for example — and then switch to another — say, music. “It’s a solid mix of those two, of the kids who are like, ‘This is what I do,’ and the kids who are like, ‘I can do anything,” Silliman said, adding that the ethos of the program is “that you can do anything.” Marcus said that young performers often push boundaries, pitching creative acts the festival has never staged before. A few years ago, for example, one youth artist asked about performing stand-up comedy. “We’re like, ‘Oh, we haven’t done that before, sure,’” Marcus said, “and then other kids see that and think, ‘Oh, that’s an option now. I could try that.’” Mentor Kayara Hardnett-Barnes, a writer and multidisciplinary storyteller, said she appreciates the confidence of the young people who participate in YPF. “They came with ideas, they knew what they were doing, they were down to just do it,” Hardnett-Barnes said. As she sees it, the festival is a good way of helping young people grow artistically “before they learn to not be audacious.” “It’s really exciting to be a part of ideally preventing that, or at least helping them have the tools to maintain their artistic integrity as they get older,” she added. “It’s a program I wish I would have had access to when I was a young artist.” Dancer and choreographer Samantha Grossman said in an email, “As a mentor, I so appreciate the reminder that making art doesn’t have to be some difficult, serious or perfect experience — sometimes, it is really just as simple as putting the ideas together and seeing what happens. These kids are fearless and inspiring!” This year’s lineup features a bass clarinet piece involving “many, many sheets of paper,” according to Silliman; an original song about moving and friendship by two New York-born transplants; a solo ballet choreographed by an 8-year-old; a hand-drawn animated film about flightless birds; and an improv team that turns audience suggestions into a reality TV spoof.
Ismael Dahi, 13, and Max Schneider, 12, will be part of the improv team. For Schneider, being part of YPF is “really fun,” he said in an emailed response, and “you get to create something really amazing for the people you love.”
“Acting in front of 40 people is something that not everyone has the ability to do. You may be nervous and can’t think of the line you were supposed to hit at that exact moment,” Dahi said in an email. “But the mentor artists at YPF know how to push that barrier. You learn so much just by being in their presence, so after you leave YPF, you will always get something you may not have had before.”
One young artist, returning for her seventh year with the festival, will be showcasing an original animated piece. This artist, Silliman said, always shares information about her creative process, including how many frames are necessary and the larger story of a work.
“We love that because it sets such a good example for the other young artists that this festival is about process and about learning how to see a project through, but that projects can return and work can continue beyond the scope of the program,” Silliman said.
A parent of a youth artist recently told Marcus that she’d overheard one of the performers saying something like, “These are my people! I’ve found my people; I’ve found my creative home.”
“That, I think, is one of the biggest selling points of really being in this space, of feeling so accepted and so buoyed up by the energy of the room — of everyone being like, ‘Yes, we’re all artists, we’re here to make work together,’ — the camaraderie of that,” Marcus said. “The community aspect of it is huge to us, and we really see it as an antidote to all of the things that are hard in our world.”
“Even if you don’t know kids who are performing, it’s totally worth getting a ticket and coming out, because it’s really incredible what these young people can do,” Silliman said.
The Youth Performance Festival will take place on Saturday, Feb. 7, where Cast A will perform at 2 p.m. and Cast B will perform at 6 p.m. On Sunday, Feb. 8, Cast B will perform at 1 p.m. and Cast A will perform at 4 p.m.
Tickets, not including fees, are $5 to $15 for kids and $10 to $25 for adults, sliding scale, at nohoarts.org/youth-performance-festival.
