ArtsPath, one of the 14 Arts-in-Education partners in the state of Pennsylvania, is pleased to welcome an extraordinary new theater artist, Leigh Hendrix, to its list of talented professional artists who provide artist residencies to schools and communities throughout the ArtsPath region of Armstrong, Butler, Clarion, Indiana, and Jefferson counties.
Leigh Hendrix has been making and teaching theater for 15 years, and holds a master's degree in theater education from Emerson College in Boston and training in ensemble theater making and acting techniques with the SITI Company Conservatory in New York City. Leigh is a founding company member with the Syndicate, an ensemble theater company that creates and produces new theater projects and community gatherings primarily in New York and Chicago.
"Telling stories is one of the things that makes us human," Leigh says. "We tell and listen to stories in an attempt to understand the world, and we do it in a lot of different ways: with words in books, music, visual art, television and movies.
"The unequaled power of theater-making," they continued, "lies in what happens between peoplebetween performers in rehearsal and onstage, between the performers and the audience, and between the members of the audience.
"One of the primary reason I continue to make and tell stories in live performance is because being in relationship to one another is also what it means to be human, and theater-making requires us to engage with one another in the present moment in ways that other art forms and modes of communication do not."
Leigh completed the rigorous panel-reviewed application process shortly before the quarantine period for COVID-19, so is just now able to finish the required observation.
"Leigh is the first theater artist we've had on the ArtsPath roster of Teaching Artists for a number of years," said Director Jeff Wacker, "and we're looking forward to being able to place such a terrific artist in a variety of residency settings where the unique power of theater can impact the lives of the participants."
For more information on ArtsPath and hosting Leigh or any artist in a residency experience, contact Jeff Wacker at 724-357-4565 or at jwacker@iup.edu.
ArtsPath Arts-in-Education programming is supported by the College of Fine Arts at Indiana University of Pennsylvania; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.