Muse Machine conquered New York City at our annual Advanced Teacher Training Seminar (ATTS) June 18-21, 2009. ATTS provides immersive educational experiences for Muse Club Advisors that get their creative energy flowing. They return with their arts batteries fully charged for the coming school year, armed with lesson plan ideas and exciting new experiences to recount to their students. Lifelong friendships have emerged from ATTS, too, for nothing brings you closer to your fellow Club Advisors – both literally and figuratively – than being crammed onto airplanes, buses, and subway cars together for four days.   

New York provides such a dazzling array of performances to choose from that it was difficult to pick. The guiding principal as the itinerary was assembled was to never offer just a performance; every performance was accompanied by a VIP, backstage, behind-the-scenes experience that our intrepid Dayton crew could not have obtained unless they were traveling with the Muse. We attended performances, including the New York Philharmonic, the musicals 9 to 5 and In the Heights, and the plays Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe and Waiting for Godot. We took a three-hour writing/performing workshop called “Die Vampire, Die!” with Muse alum Susan Blackwell. We learned improv comedy techniques that can be implemented in the classroom from a Chicago City Limits actor. We talked one-on-one with performers, from the principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic to Allison Janney to André De Shields. We even took a ferry ride to Ellis Island and a bus tour of the Lower East Side.

Throughout the school year Club Advisors can earn scholarship money to offset the cost of the trip. This is one way we reward those advisors who work hard each year to further the mission of the Muse. Scholarship dollars are calculated based on the number of student members they recruit and the number of tickets sold to performances by our Dayton arts partners.

All current Muse advisors, as well as retired advisors and current and emeritus board, are invited to travel with us to Boston in June of 2010. Tentative plans include theatre, art and music from Beantown’s finest, historical tours of Boston and Cambridge, and excursions by bus to the stunning Berkshires and high-speed ferry to Provincetown. Join us!