PULLMAN A play featuring Warden High School students, who will explore their life experiences through student-written monologues, will be presented Aug. 22, 23, 27 and Sept. 5 and 6 in Moses Lake, Yakima, Warden, Toppenish and Pullman.
“This isn’t going to be a high school production, but a professional theater production,” said John Fraire, vice president for enrollment management at Washington State University, and the driving force behind the project.
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“The goal of the program is to increase the attendance and retention rates of Latino and other underserved high school students and see higher enrollment in college and community colleges in the state,” Fraire said. “A key to the future of Warden is the increase in college attendance and graduation rates. Warden families need their children to be educated and successful.”
WSU pilot program
The play, “The Warden Memoirs/Las Memorias de Warden” is part of a WSU pilot program that will take place at Warden during a three-year period. It includes a writing program in cooperation with WSU’s English Department’s Writing Center, a two-week summer performance internship and public performances. Students participating will also visit with corporate and business leaders in Seattle and Spokane, tour the WSU campuses in Pullman and the Tri-Cities, be eligible for scholarships and work closely with WSU mentors.
Performances will take place at 7 p.m. Aug. 22 at the Wallerstein Theatre in Moses Lake; Aug. 23 at 7 p.m. at the Kendall Theatre in the Yakima Valley Community College; Aug. 27 at 7 p.m. at the Wallerstein Theatre for the students at Warden High School; Sept. 5 at 7 p.m. at Heritage University, Toppenish; and Sept. 6, on the WSU Pullman campus, 12:30 p.m. in the Compton Union Building.
Performances are free and the public is invited to attend. Rehearsals for the play will take place Aug.15-22 at the Wallerstein Theatre in the Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake.
Warden High School already has federally funded programs such as College Bound and Upward Bound, the College Assistance Migrant Program/CAMP, Gear Up and 21st Century.
Developing student confidence
“While the federal programs assist with financial aid and academic support, they do not address the development of the students’ personal qualities, such as determination, pride and community involvement,” Fraire said. “Students such as those from Warden will need that confidence when they face the many challenges and obstacles of their freshman year.
“Warden is a very rural area where the high school population is over 70 percent Latino and over 16 percent come from families where migrant farm-working is the primary job occupation, in contrast to the rest of the state where only 2 percent come from migrant families,” he said.
Fraire, a published playwright and the founder and former executive director of the New Latino Visions Theatre Company in Kalamazoo, Mich., said that the program will also help students develop a sense of identity, train them in public speaking and leadership skills, and give them a head start on the process towards college admission.
“Personal strengths are becoming increasingly important for admission and scholarship decisions at colleges. With their writing exercises, students participating in the program will have already written answers to many of the college admissions and scholarships applications they will complete later,” Fraire said.
