Roosevelt High School has the only full time drama program in the Seattle School District, offering eight periods of drama per day including acting, directing, technical theatre, production, design, and a full musical theatre program with four private voice teachers, a vocal director and a choreographer for the yearly musical.
Their annual production calendar includes:
- the annual drama festival of student directed one-act plays
- an original work developed by intermediate/advanced theatre students through a professional theatre company residency
- a playwright residency with the Seattle Repertory Theatre - student written/acted and directed by staff from the Rep.
- the winter production (usually two plays) of a straight play.
- participation in the annual state high school theatre festival through WA State Thespians.
- one or two musical reviews
- spring production of a big Broadway musical
Along with the annual theatre program work, special opportunities are created for the students to broaden their experiences. The theatre program performed at the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, travelled to Hawaii Preparatory Academy to lead workshops in theatre sports and musical theatre and also performed a musical review. They have travelled to New York City to take workshops taught by broadway actors/directors/agents through Broadway Classroom and have also participated in the International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Named one of the top ten high school theatre programs in America in 1996, Roosevelt Theatre has created a world class, internationally recognized model for theatre education. The students of Roosevelt High School receive outstanding training and many have gone on to further training at such prestigious institutions as New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Carnegie Mellon and Yale University. Alumni of this program have performed on Broadway in Never Gonna Dance, Chicago, Into the Woods, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Oklahoma, Life With Albertine, A Chorus Line, Good Vibrations and the upcoming production of Lennon, the new John Lennon musical. They have also been in national tours of Fosse, Chicago, Sunset Boulevard, Evita, Swing and Civil War. Alumns have also found careers in television with roles in Friends, Felicity, The Practice and Spin City, and they have performed on the Tony Awards and many television commercials. International productions in London's West End and Europe have seen grads in The King and I, Miss Saigon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, West Side Story and Cats to name a few.
Thespian Points
