SPRING 2019 Creative Spark New HSPVA Campus Ignites Dynamic Energy Downtown MassChallenge Accelerator Boosts Tech Startups A FOODIE TRAVELOGUE +NUIT BLANCHE & THE EASTER BUNNY CURTAIN 18 downtownhouston.org UP! Kinder High School for the Performing “There’s an energy to Downtown that’s fun. And on the flip side, we and bring an energy here, too. It’s been exciting to be here. We have Visual Arts partnerships with most of the major arts organizations in the city, and Makes its I think our students will have new opportunities here.” Downtown —R. Scott Allen, Principal Debut CURTAIN By Holly Beretto UP! SPRING 2019 19 att Hune walks into the new Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts’ studio theater looking not unlike his students, dressed in a dark gray hoodie, black pants M and sneakers. He’s carrying a cup of coffee, a net bag filled with tennis balls and a red rubber ball. At his approach, 30 high schoolers, all wearing some variation on black leggings and T-shirts scatter into rows and begin what looks, to the untrained eye, like a yoga class. “I want you to focus on your center of gravity,” Hune tells them from his perch at the corner of the room, at the edge of the seating risers. “Push into the ground with your feet.” One floor below, Pat Bonner, a petite powerhouse who always seems to be in motion, hurries out of the Denney Theatre doors and pigeonholes principal R. Scott Allen in the doorway of the reception office to remind him about his remarks for an upcoming concert in a couple of nights. “I’ve got it down to 45 minutes,” he jokes. “Try to keep it to half an hour,” she deadpans back. On her way back upstairs, she stops into a fourth-floor rehearsal room where a senior named Racquel (Rocky) Leonard is working on Your Daddy’s Son from Ragtime, a piece for an upcoming recital. Meanwhile, on the third floor, in Studio C with its “The anger and pain, the blood and pain. I buried my spongy gray floor and mirror-lined wall, Jadelynn Ko, heart in the ground. In the ground. When I buried you in her dark hair in a neat bun and wearing a black camisole the ground,” she sings, coming from a fervent energy to a and dance leggings, wraps her arms around her slim deep, soul-shaking crash. shoulders, her fingertips peeking over her back as she “OK, on ground,” Bonner advises. “Spin that out forward. listens to visiting choreographer Amy Miller from Gibney You don’t want it to be anticlimactic. The audience knows Dance in New York City. something’s coming. They’ll come with you.” “Check out your partner,” she says. “Think about where Rocky sings it again, Bonner and her accompanist you are, your best day, your worst day. We’ll run through nodding at the change. it again and then you’ll go to lunch or we’ll talk about astrophysics or something. You all are amazing.” 20 downtownhouston.org Some people might call all that activity special. At HSPVA, they call it Thursday. From its new Downtown home in the block surrounded by Rusk, Caroline, Capitol and Austin streets, HISD’s brand-new building is a hive of activity where music literally rings through the halls, and the walls are covered in art. When it opened for classes on Jan. 7 this year, 750 students and 52 teachers moved into their new home. The school’s former building, on Stanford Street in Montrose, was beloved by generations of staff, students and alumni, so there was a tiny question of how the transition to the bright, beautiful space would be. Some people “It’s still a little surreal for me,” said Allen. “But walking through here now, with the kids in the hallways and seeing might call all them in their art areas, it’s magical to see how they’ve just jumped in and gone from what they were used to, to this without missing a beat.” that activity The new school takes up 168,000 square feet, including an 800-seat main theater, 200-seat black box and studio special. theaters, a 150-seat recital hall, a recording studio, nearly a dozen sound-isolation practice rooms, costume and scene shops, a ceramics lab with a kiln, digital labs, a At HSPVA, sculpture creation space, a creative-writing lounge, library, classrooms and plenty of space for open collaboration. they call it It more resembles a hip office environment, with its chalkboard and whiteboard walls for announcements or doodling, cozy corners where students confer over scripts Thursday. or books, and office space for the faculty. Designed by Gensler, HSPVA cleanly integrates the arts and academics. “This is everything we wanted and more,” said Allen. SPRING 2019 21 Mariah Adeeko cuts a serious figure, with her corkscrew and sophomores in the program progress through ancient curls fanning about her face, 1970s-style Gloria Steinhem texts, poetry, fiction, story and lyric structure, and shaded glasses and bright-red lipstick. But when she grins playwriting, as well as acting and photography for writers, as she talks about writing, she looks more like the 15-year- and screenwriting. They then spend their junior and old sophomore she is. senior years in advanced workshops, selecting a different “Writing is a method of communication for me that focus area each semester. They might write fiction, or craft can be translated in so many different ways,” she says a play. Maybe they’ll write poetry or work on a screenplay. reflectively as she sits in the space that serves as part They’ll also take various technology courses that introduce office, part break room for HSPVA’s two creative writing them to ways they can not only publish their work in the teachers. “I’m a very eccentric person,” she offers with a digital age, but learn valuable workplace skills. giggle. “So, sometimes all the things I say don’t come out “A day in creative writing is heading into a room, right. But with writing, I really get the time to think about receiving a lesson and then either doing exercises about “It’s very active what I want people to know about me and what to know that lesson or taking it and creating new work out of it, or about what I write. I want that message to sing for them.” getting a project and building off that,” says Adeeko. “It’s and you have She came to HSPVA after getting serious about writing very active and you have to participate. You can’t just sit in the eighth grade. Her former school was a more back and not listen to the discussion that’s going on or to participate. conservative environment, one where she learned a lot, what other people are saying because all of it concentrates but didn’t necessarily feel totally comfortable expressing back on what you’ll be doing.” her views. A passionate promoter of social justice causes, Like every other program at HSPVA, students enter You can’t just she’s looking, in the future, to use her writing to tackle the creative writing program via audition. They must issues. Her current plan is to double major in journalism submit a portfolio of work, including short stories, poetry sit back and and something else, stepping stones she feels, toward a life and scenes, and during the two-hour audition process of writing and editing. are required to participate in a series of writing exercise. not listen to HSPVA is unique in many ways, and one of them is the Students who pass the audition are invited to callbacks, way it incorporates the craft of writing into its curriculum. which include an interview and another writing exercise. the discussion Many high schools offer electives in creative writing, and Getting into the high school is not a cakewalk. teach writing as part of regular English classes. But at “I tell students at our first assembly to look next to HPSVA it’s one of the school’s six disciplines. Freshmen them,” says Allen. “For every seat filled, there were eight that’s going to 10 students who wanted to be here and aren’t.” on or what other people are saying because all of it concentrates back on what you’ll be doing.” —Mariah Adeeko, Sophomore 22 downtownhouston.org The school divides the day for students into morning and Tyler Henderson sits at a baby grand piano in a fourth- afternoon blocks, where they typically spend three hours floor classroom-cum-rehearsal space, playing Almost in their chosen study area. HSPVA has six arts disciplines: Like Being in Love, the Lerner and Lowe classic from the creative writing, dance, instrumental performance, musical Brigadoon that has morphed over the decades theater, visual arts and vocal performance. After school, “I tell students into one of the most-known pieces of the Great American there are rehearsals and opportunities for students to Songbook. He moves with the rhythm of the notes, further work on projects. Students might spend their at our first closing his eyes from time to time, then concentrating mornings or afternoons in their creative disciplines, then on the keys, on the spin he’s giving a song written half a the rest of the day in traditional high school classes. As assembly to century before his birth. a public school, HSPVA is required to meet all Houston “At the end of the second section,” he plays, singing Independent School District standards.