Published in Interaksyon Lifestyle July 8 2013
Theater stalwart Audie Gemora takes up a new challenge as founder of the Talent School of Academics and Arts (TSAA). Photo courtesy of TSAA
The Talent School of Academics and Arts (TSAA) is not a learning center that confines its curriculum to art subjects. It does not seek to transform aspiring young ingénues into the next Filipina who makes it big in Broadway (although I suspect it will not quibble if one of its graduates does make it to that limelight). Rather, TSAA is a bona fide educational institution, recognized by the Department of Education, where students from pre-school to eventually the K-12 level study familiar courses like math, science, and history.
What sets it apart, however, is that it uses the arts to unleash the students’ potential, tapping into their creative sides, luring them into enjoying their studies while they learn. And perhaps over the next several years, while the TSAA might graduate its fair share of K-12 students who would go into business, IT, and hospitality management, it might also turn out to be the birthing place of future playwrights, film producers, and musical composers.
TSAA aims to raise students who do not just excel in their academics but are also music, theater, and art smart. Photo courtesy of TSAA.
“This is a school that would develop a child’s right brain and left brain,” says TSAA founder and Philippine theater stalwart Audie Gemora, referring to the two sides of that vital organ that houses a human being’s capabilities in the use of creativity and logical analysis respectively. “It is a non-traditional school that would take care of the academics and the intelligence that come with cognitive learning. There would be subjects like math and social studies. But we also open up the other side of learning, the creative intelligence, the right brain. If we open both the right brain and the left brain, they would complement each other.”
TSAA’s platform is arts integration or using the arts to teach the core subjects. Gemora explains some of the more basic methods, “In learning science, the kids would be asked to create paintings of the planets. We unlock the imagination of the child through storytelling, done in a very dramatic way. Our teachers have to be artistas.”
But these are just baby steps. Artistic integration that starts at the pre-school level continues up to the K-12 level as various artistic fields such as music, the visual arts, and theater are seamlessly integrated into the curriculum that has been fashioned by educators from the University of the Philippines. He describes TSAA’s curriculum as a “progressive arts program, different from the summer workshops and the art classes in the traditional schools.”
Detail of a classroom in TSAA. Photo courtesy of TSAA.
Summer theater art workshops usually teach students basic skills in acting, singing, and production management for a short two months, and these activities will culminate in a recital. Afterwards, the students go back to their respective schools during the usual schoolyear. And in their traditional schools, art classes are usually regarded as an elective or an extra-curricular activity, to be squeezed in while students are learning how to do their algebra or write a formal essay.
In contrast, in TSAA’s curriculum, “from pre-school to high school, we plot out the progression of the art form, and the child follows that.”
Gemora gives us a preview of what a student will encounter as he progresses up the higher levels of education: “We will teach the history of theater. He will learn the different kinds of approach to acting, then he will later on take on musical theater and Shakespeare classics. By the time he reaches high school, he will be learning about original plays, then on to the various forms of theater in Broadway.”
The same happens in music. “The student first learns to sing and play instruments in elementary. By high school, he knows how to read musical notes.”
The core subjects are taught in the morning, and the art classes will be held in the afternoon.
This delicate balance was the combination that Gemora did not know he was searching for. After intensive years of producing plays for TRUMPETS and running workshops for Stages as these companies’ head, he took a hiatus in 2005 and became a fulltime dad to his son, Richard, who was then five years old. It was then that he had a first glimpse at a child’s educational system.
Not long after, he and some parents who felt that something was missing in their children’s curriculum tried putting up their own pre-school. The effort failed but the seed was born. Gemora then established a music academy that would teach the arts, or what the summer arts workshop taught every school break, all year-round. Despite their parents’ initial support, the students soon started dropping off. It was a lesson that was painful but taught Gemora the one thing he needed to proceed to the next level, which is TSAA: “This mixture of arts and academics is the missing thing. Parents will never put their child into a purely artistic school because it will never get them into a profession.”
A sampling of the activities at TSAA. Photo courtesy of TSAA.
But students who can manifest and control their creative sides while remaining grounded on more earthbound disciplines like math and science will rule the world. Gemora points out, “This is the era where companies hire creative thinkers, the ones who can visualize. The computer has opened up a whole new world to them.”
Though a Generation-Xer who was born prior to the birth of the personal computer and the explosion of the internet, Gemora early in life had recognized that he had a grasp of both his creative and business sides. “I am a good leader, entrepreneurial, pretty smart. But I was bad in math. I am a lateral thinker, I am a creative person, I am just wired differently.”
He credits his evolution to a teacher’s forcing him to join a musical production as a high school student in the International School. Something clicked during his initial acting stint. Not long after, Gemora joined Repertory Philippines, became one of its emerging stars, and the rest they say is history.
“I was an average perfoming student, but my grades improved when I started doing theater. Had I not joined musical theater, I would have been a miserable haciendero, watching the crops grow,” he muses. “Education and the arts are connected. You find your specific kind of intelligence then you realize you are not so average after all.”
And now this artist-turned-educator, once known as ‘the prince of Philippine musical theater,’ has the opportunity to pay it forward, leading to the development of a new generation of creative and logical prodigies who just might change the world.
TSAA is accepting enrolees for its SY2013-2014, pre-school to grade 2. Call (+632) 511-0463, (+632) 808-8051, and (+632) 511-6060. E-mail registrar@tsaa.com.ph.
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