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S'Park Theatre was created out of the desire to expand opportunities for students outside the traditional school year. Both current students and gradutes of SPHS came together to develop new shows and polish older ones for presentation during the summer months- notably, productions for the Atlanta and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals.
The first S'Park Theatre offering was a new production of Amelia the Brave. In June of 2014, the cast and crew presented the show at the Atlanta Fringe Festival- at that time, they were the youngest performers to participate. S'Park Theatre quickly proved that they could create shows to rival more experienced companies.
Amelia the Brave told the story of a young girl who, confronting the sudden illness of a beloved family member, was created using the principles of devised theatre; all animation, shadow puppetry, and music were created by the students. The kicker? The story is told without a single word being uttered.
Many of us that worked on the show would agree: it remains one of the most beautiful, powerful pieces that we've been part of.
S'Park Theatre's next venture was Sweet Tea and Gollywhopper Eggs, a collection of short stories from the American South. Presented in the style of story theatre, in which performers are both narrators and characters, and physical performance is emphasized, Sweet Tea took folk and ghost stories from the south and set them around a campfire where strangers come together.
The play debuted in July of 2014; the next week, the cast and crew took off to present the play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Written to offer families an opportunity to bring children to a Fringe show, Sweet Tea was performed five times as part of the American High School Theatre Festival.
Top: Listing in the official Fringe program; Above: a scene from Sweet Tea.
Top: S'Park actors perform scenes on the Royal Mile. Above: Students performed at the Church Hill Theatre in Morningside, a perfect location for family-oriented fare.
In June of 2016, S'Park Theatre began preparing to take another show to the Atlanta Fringe; this time, the original World War I piece, PALS.
Before leaving for Atlanta, the company presented the show in Birmingham; the Broadway World review called attention to the fact that "it is June and that school has been out for a while. Yet here are all of these kids (18 in the cast, 3 in the band and a crew of many) still at the school working at their craft." This was precisely why the company was founded- to provide students the opportunity to continue creating amazing theatre not limited by the school day- work that was on their own time and by their own choice.
PALS went on to win the Producer's Choice Award at the ATL Fringe.
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