Roundabout Youth Ensemble (RYE) is Roundabout’s free after school program for New York City public school students. For young people considering a career in theatre, participation might be a great first step!
The Summer 2023 Roundabout Youth Ensemble during a production meeting.
Photo by Joey C. Correa, Student Marketing Director for RYE Summer 2023.Roundabout Youth Ensemble is a pathway to a bright future in the theatrical world. Theatre professionals teach young ambitious New York City students about working in the professional arts. “It’s a joy working with students so enthusiastic about the arts,” said Amanda Ryan, Roundabout Youth Ensemble Summer Assistant.
Roundabout Youth Ensemble—or RYE (unlike the grain!)—takes pride in connecting theatre and education. During the fall semester of RYE, Roundabout teaching artists lead workshops on the different theatrical disciplines. “It’s a wide variety of topics that are taught. You get a little of everything,” said one participant. During the spring semester of RYE, workshops become more focused as students choose to concentrate on one of three broad fields of theatre: technical theatre, performance, or playwriting. At the end of the spring semester, students present and perform all they’ve learned from their professional mentors; they perform scenes written by peers and share design presentations. For the summer, one student's play is chosen to be fully produced in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Black Box Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, the same space in which you’ll be experiencing Covenant!
The RYE summer production is staffed entirely by NYC public high school students, who take on roles from acting to production management to marketing to sound design. “It’s an overwhelmingly cool experience having a little idea from your mind turn into something so extraordinarily big,” said Christain Rosa Robles, playwright of Grooves, the summer 2023 production. Students get hands-on professional experience. Different disciplines like acting, playwriting, and directing, as well as scenic, sound, and lighting design, are explored as students create a creative production in just seven weeks.
Roundabout Youth Ensemble sets students up on a career path to the world of theatre. It's a program like no other, and gives NYC public high school students an opportunity to experience the professional aspects of the theatre industry. “I got real-life professional experience on what it’s like to write a play, at only seventeen years old. I would never get this opportunity anywhere else,” Rosa Robles explained.