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Young actors at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts
Let’s Get Engaged!
The new JCC Academies offer everyone a
chance to learn, engage and have fun.
Elizabeth Applebaum | Special to the Jewish News
H
ave you ever had a dream?
Edna Turnblad dreamed
that one day she’d have her
very own coin-operated laundromat.
Alas, it didn’t happen, and Edna —
one of the central characters in Hairspray
— had no choice but to come “down
from that cloud real quickly.”
But sometimes, a dream can come
true.
All it takes is a little help — from the
JCC.
This November, the Jewish
Community Center of Metropolitan
Detroit will introduce the Academies for
Education and Engagement, which will
offer dynamic learning opportunities
in sports, art and theater (including an
opportunity to appear — perhaps even
as Edna Turnblad herself — in Hairspray
at the Berman Center for the Performing
Arts.)
The Academies will take a single hour
for seven weeks and fill it with all the
fun, excitement and adventure of a sum-
mer of camp, said Brian D. Siegel, CEO
of the JCC. Along the way, participants
will have the opportunity to learn new
skills from leading professionals.
These Academies “offer educational
engagements in a class platform, express-
ing the breadth of experiences that exist
at the JCC,” Siegel said.
There will be classes for all ages, from
children to seniors, with a few well-
established favorites (like sports) and
programs completely new to the JCC,
like “How To Audition.”
The Academies are not about competi-
tion, Siegel said, so they provide the per-
fect opportunity for the girl who always
wanted to play basketball but wasn’t
ready for a team, the young man who
has yet to appear on stage but hopes to
be the next Nathan Lane or Ben Vereen,
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the grandmother who rarely cooked but
suddenly has visions of preparing Kesar
Kulfi (sweetened condensed milk with
cashews, almonds, pistachios and saf-
fron, mixed with semolina noodles).
Courses also are progressive, Siegel
noted, which means that a student could
begin in a class called “Intro to Lacrosse,”
then the next season join a league and
finally participate in a tournament.
In addition to lacrosse, Sports
Academy classes include basketball, golf,
gym and swim, hockey, kindersports,
skating, soccer, tumbling and volleyball.
Fine Arts Academies are ceramics, draw-
ing and painting. In the near future,
Siegel said, the Academies will expand
to include weight training, nutrition and
culinary arts.
At the Berman, staff are preparing for
classes like “Acting Basics” and founding
its first community theater troupe, the
PAIJ (Performing Arts Academy in the
JCC) Players, set to star in the Berman’s
first completely self-produced show,
Hairspray, in February 2017.
Classes will be taught by “one of
Michigan’s finest acting teachers, Lisa
Melinn,” said Berman Director Elaine
(Hendriks) Smith. “If you have kids
interested in learning acting, this is the
class for them. They will love working
with Lisa, whose positive attitude and
love of the arts are infectious, and they
will learn basics that will serve them well
on stage and off.
“We are very excited to be offering this
amazing programming, which has been
a dream for us since the Berman was
built,” Smith said. “Now that it’s becom-
ing a reality, we couldn’t be happier.”
*
For information, visit jccdet.org/academies.
Elizabeth Applebaum is manager of marketing
and communications at the JCC.