Arts Engagement Holiday Offerings

GET IN THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT WITH US!
New Holiday Podcast Gather Round!
and Free Special Seasonal Episodes of
The Poet’s Tree, Word Up!, and Reflecting Shakespeare TV
for the Whole Family to Enjoy at Home

The Gather Round! Podcast
Is Available on Apple and Spotify;
All Other Programs Are Available on
www.TheOldGlobe.org, The Old Globe YouTube Channel,
and The Old Globe and The Old Globe Arts Engagement Facebook Pages

PHOTO EDITORS: Program screenshots and logos are available by clicking here.

SAN DIEGO (December 2, 2020)—The Old Globe announced today new holiday-specific online programming to add to our free ongoing online offerings. Our regular online programs will join in the holiday spirit with special season finale episodes featuring amazing guests and holiday cheer.

“Wow, what a year! This was a year like no other! A year none of us will ever forget,” reflected Associate Artistic Director and Director of Arts Engagement Freedome Bradley-Ballentine. “We want to end it with offerings that celebrate our resiliency and bring us together. If you haven’t had an opportunity to join us, now would be a great time to take part in these fun events. We look forward with cheer to saying goodbye to 2020, and we invite old and new friends to our special season-ending programs!”

Gather Round! is a short-form limited podcast series, co-hosted by Artistic Associate Lamar Perry and Arts Engagement Programs Manager Laura Zablit, that celebrates the holiday traditions and rituals of various San Diego communities during the winter season. Told through conversations with community partners who recall their childhoods, favorite recipes, and the rich history of their lives, Gather Round! makes space for partners to share their stories authentically and in their own languages. Audience members are guided through Christmas, Eid, Hanukkah, and many others as Lamar and Laura offer some light and laughs to the San Diego community.

Gather Round! will be available December 2020 through January 2021 every two weeks on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More details coming soon!

The Poet’s Tree will end this fall season on Tuesday, December 15 at 5:30 p.m. PT with a holiday special! Stay tuned to our social media channels and website for more details.

The last episode of Word Up!, on Friday, December 18 at 6:00 p.m. PT, will feature Associate Director of Arts Engagement Katie H., a mystery Santa, and past guests from our entire year of digital programming. For this jolly episode, the audience is invited to collaborate in real time to help Katie complete her holiday-inspired play.

As previously announced, our Sensory-Friendly Holiday AXIS event, held for a second consecutive year, is happening online on Sunday, December 20 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PT and will be hosted by Inclusion Specialist Samantha Ginn and Reid Moriarty from Jungle Poppins. This final AXIS event of the year will feature a musical performance from Jungle Poppins; an interactive Grinch-y craft; and the premiere presentation of an original script written and developed by participants in the Globe’s neurodiverse Community Voices workshop.

The finale of the second season of Reflecting Shakespeare TV will end with a holiday offering on Monday, December 21 at 6:30 p.m. PT featuring Teaching Artists from The Old Globe Arts Engagement Department reflecting on the spirit of the holiday season with the help of the Bard and some very special guests!

Biographies

Lamar Perry (he/him/his) (Artistic Associate, Gather Round! host) is a Queer Black director, producer, and writer originally from Windsor, Connecticut. In addition to working as a freelance director and educator, he currently serves as the Globe’s Artistic Associate, having formerly served as Producing Associate at Classical Theatre of Harlem. His recent projects include the audio plays Punchbowl Spaces and The Family Sound (Blindspot Collective/La Jolla Playhouse). Recently he taught, directed, and conducted a semester-long devised-theatre project at UC San Diego in their graduate acting program with their second-year M.F.A. acting candidates. He is a 2020–2021 Roundabout Theatre Company Directors Group member and a 2020 National Alliance for Musical Theatre Observer. Perry was recently featured in American Theatre magazine’s “Roll Call: People to Watch” and is an alum of Schusterman Family Foundation’s REALITY Storytellers program (2019). He holds a bachelor of science from St. John’s University and is an alum of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Laura Zablit (she/her/hers) (Arts Engagement Programs Manager, Word Up! and Gather Round! host) is a journalist, interactive performer, and arts organizer who currently manages arts engagement programs. Born and raised in San Diego, she has worked within the local queer, refugee, and immigrant communities, developing artistic programs and collaborative storytelling practices onstage and online. She earned a bachelor of fine arts in Drama and completed a bachelor of arts in Journalism at New York University.

The Theodor and Audrey Geisel Fund provides leadership support for The Old Globe’s year-round activities.

HOLIDAY CALENDAR: Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas! On the Radio (12/5, 12/20, 12/24), Gather Round! (December 2020 – January 2021), The Poet’s Tree Holiday Special (12/15), Word Up! Holiday Special (12/18), Sensory-Friendly Holiday AXIS event (12/20) Reflecting Shakespeare TV Season 2 Holiday Special (12/21) .

NOTE: All in-person Globe productions and events have been postponed until further notice; all dates are subject to change. In the meantime, the Globe develops and presents a wide array of free online programs to continue reaching the San Diego community. These currently include a free commissioned short-plays project Play At Home and The Old Globe Coloring Book. Current arts engagement programs include the exploration of modern poetry The Poet’s Tree; Voces de la Comunidad, the Spanish-language version of Community Voices, our popular playwriting program; the collaborative Mad Libs–style program Word Up!; new middle school and high school Globe to Go focused resources, a part of School in the Park, which offers free downloadable K–5 resources for teaching; and season 2 of Reflecting Shakespeare TV, a digital version of the transformative initiative offered at prisons.

Programs and videos archived on our website at www.TheOldGlobe.org and on our YouTube channel, available for viewing at any time from the comfort of your home, including the world premiere of Bill Irwin’s In-Zoom; On Book: The Old Globe’s Shakespeare Reading Group; outreach from familiar Globe artists in Act Breaks and Flashbacks; Soap It Up with students from The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program; and Barry Edelstein’s hit presentation Thinking Shakespeare Live! and his series Thinking Shakespeare Live: Sonnets! Archived arts engagement programs include the Community Voices playwriting workshop; Behind the Curtain and its offshoots, specific Behind the Curtain: Art of Protest, the Spanish-language Detrás del Telón, and Behind the Curtain: Technical Assistance forum; check-in program with Globe-commissioned playwrights Playwrights Unstuck; The Living Room Play Workshop; professional development master classes for youth Creative Youth Studio; and season 1 of Reflecting Shakespeare TV.

Follow us on www.TheOldGlobe.org for schedules and updates!
An updated guide to our free online theatre programs,
as well as videos of those programs, are available here.
You can also watch our videos on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/TheOldGlobe.
Please contact Public Relations Associate Lucía Serrano
for high-res visuals for media usage, or visit https://bit.ly/3eXTZyE.

PHOTO EDITORS: Digital images of The Old Globe’s productions are available at www.theoldglobe.org/press-room.

The Tony Award–winning The Old Globe is one of the country’s leading professional not-for-profit regional theatres. Now in its 85th year, the Globe is San Diego’s flagship performing arts institution, and it serves a vibrant community with theatre as a public good. Under the leadership of Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein and Audrey S. Geisel Managing Director Timothy J. Shields, The Old Globe produces a year-round season of 16 productions of classic, contemporary, and new works on its three Balboa Park stages, including its internationally renowned Shakespeare Festival. More than 250,000 people annually attend Globe productions and participate in the theatre’s artistic and arts engagement programs. Its nationally prominent Arts Engagement Department provides an array of participatory programs that make theatre matter to more people in neighborhoods throughout the region. Humanities programs at the Globe and around the city broaden the community’s understanding of theatre art in all its forms. The Globe also boasts a range of new play development programs with professional and community-based writers, as well as the renowned The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program. Numerous world premieres—such as 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Bright Star, The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,and Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!—have been developed at The Old Globe and have gone on to highly successful runs on Broadway and at regional theatres across the country.

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