later our director of education to talk about it but congratulations you've been a phenomenal help to the office this summer so abby tell us a little bit about yourself where you come from what you're studying in school well i was born and raised in maryland and then i decided that i was just going to get away from all that and go up to new hampshire at plymouth state university while that's different very very different and i study musical theater and graphic design i mean my third year and now i'm down in florida so i'm all up and down the east coast there you are and really personal thing for me was abby's grandparents are my neighbors and you know i had met abby a couple of times when i heard she was studying you know graphic arts and musical theater i thought well could there be a better combination so we've been so grateful to have you but you've been what working on brochures and ads and i also took her as flyers stouffer's so when you come and see all of the shows haven't had a man raise all in a little flyer pops out i mean that there you go so anyway we're really great to have you but we also are able to announce today we have some new shows going on sale folks and all the shows all of them are going to go on sale september the twelfth for public sale but before then we have a few of them th early so we have on my heart throbbed from high school college rick springfield is coming the hard rocker and i know you did you did some research on rick springfield what can you tell us i did at first didn't ring a bell but then once i look at some of his songs that over the years also become an actor and he right now is in protective as well as he's in a new movie he's in a new movie with meryl streep working in the flash right and i just heard on the radio that meryl streep's daughter is also going to be in the room that's right that's right so ricky in the flash rick springfield and of course what is he playing a rocker and of course for me it was general hospital you know dr noah drake so anyway rick is here october fifteenth and i'm going to do a special meet and greet with him one of the great perks just kidding you probably won't even talk to me but but you know talking about humor we also have craig ferguson coming and craig ferguson of course had the late late night show and he followed david letterman and he has some crazy antics but one of the things that may be different for our viewers is we are sitting here in what we call our meet and greet room where sometimes you get to meet the stars but since it was dominated by boar's head which is a meat company  greet and the reason we're doing that is because there is all sorts of renovations going on have you seen some of the work i have and unfortunately it has disrupted my afternoon walks and i'm just making friends with all the construction workers but i'm so excited to see what coming up oh my gosh we have all new carpet going in all over the theater the ladies rooms are getting totally renovated we're putting in new restrooms downstairs adding some additional stalls they put new  stones along the the bay front so that our statues and people won't fall into the water that would be a positive thing you know and all sorts of things are going on we're going to be painting the hall and new station they're actually renovating the lift station and we're moving the dumpster corrals so when you walk to the theater you don't have to walk by the garbage anymore which i think is a very good thing though if it were fish oh no there you go so anyway we also have put on sale i salute to vienna ok and is a great show it's i think the fourteenth year and it's fantastically beautiful and i'm going to europe this summer and i'm literally going to be an opera house so i'm going to get to see where these folks come from and that show is on january third and tickets are available now we were watching inside out and very he was you know making his his his debut in it in a children's movie i'm sure that nobody ever expected him to be in there but the ranch is back it's on november thirteenth and i think we have a little lewis black judge for yourself how attractive you think they are here they are and then of course i think this is one of the top two shows for me this year is kristin chenoweth and she is she's about your size she's a little tiny thing and she's she's five feet tall now are you in that  which just amazes me and i'm talking here are just wow ok i'm trying to with this coming so it's one of the shows and that's february twenty seventh and you can get tickets and then another broadway diva is coming our way linda eder did you have a chance to see i wish i did but i've heard so many good things about it and i've heard how amazing she is at home i should say maybe someday when i was one of the lucky people to see or not only on broadway but on tour in the show and she's made a few appearances here and what's special about this time and it's really worth the price of a ticket just to see these two amazing stars back together again and i do that's the they are and so there's a nice way to get tickets you could get tickets from the box office obviously for all the shows and we're going to be talking about later are subscriptions are our broadway in and our dance but you can also go to w w dot van ways little dot org and then you can walk up to the box office know that we're always cautioning people make sure that you were on our site because on the secondary sites they resell the tickets sometimes ten times the ticket price so anyway we will be back in a minute with kelly maldonado our director of education but i'm  grateful that you're all with us here at the van ways anthony is wanted everywhere recently and he went with his parents to find a new place to live but housing discrimination is illegal so anthony's parents filed a complaint and now they have a wonderful place to all i marry ben so your host and i am here with kelly maldonado our education director and welcome back to the show kelly excited to be talking about education and get it isn't this is a whole show based on education and i think you are really proud of the job he's done but it really has helped i think you know and it also to me brightness me up makes me feel like i'm definitely younger and we see the next generation of people that are coming in and really able to do great work in the arts wonderful you are making a and i made kelly give us the name of her doctor in her hospital because i was like oh my goodness what happens if you know it was something happens and you go into early labor but you know she promises you know if that happens on the show it'll be absolutely education but i know we're really happy for you kelly and you know you have a cute little boy so so anyway we have a really great season coming up and i know we've had some grants but first tell me a little bit what school time shows have you picked for because we have what twenty five thousand students that we serve that twenty five thousand students each year and we do that across our nine shows that we have we have great stuff that touches on the language arts like skippy john jones and  had have two sold out shoddy and absolutely loved him so they're thrilled that he's around as a writer because you know i think one of the key things that people need to understand is you tell you have to tie it into their core subjects and all sorts but you also want the kids to be entertained a make sure it's reaching what the teachers need to be teaching but that the students are enjoying it and then it's i'm excited we're doing a project called black violin which we have both an adult evening show and for the kids and i know this was a project you really pushed us to exactly these are two young men they're from florida so this is a real opportunity for students from florida to see what they can do with music and i know that everyone i've spoken to is absolutely thrilled about this program coming yeah so that's that's an exciting show and what else do we have we have chicken dance and i love the chickens in the brochure i got to tell you they're hysterical chicken dance for are you for are looking for a younger audience says we're tied to a book one of our language arts he says and it's going to have some great tied with our new initiatives a little work looking at how movement can connect to theater and language are fantastic and as well as doing them here in the van ways all because one of the things that's very important i'm sure the audience is aware of is we have to bust the kids here the van which will foundation provides us over fifty thousand dollars for the public school students free bussing to come to the shows but with some of them the bussing is really a long ways away so you perform down in where is it that nor in northport at northport performing arts center with their heist and in their high school is a chance for our south county schools to be able to make their performances sometimes even just the distance of traveling from their school to us can pose transportation issues so it's great that they get to see the same quality shows in their own  backyard which is fantastic and i know that has you running all over the place but you've got to and kelly as well as education overseas are grants writer who writes for the main stage shows as well as education but you got two great initiatives one opportunities for teaching artists to model some of these lessons within the classrooms tied to each of our school time shows and that's our n e a program and then with the eighty in tikrit that we received that supporting our work with in the  one thing we laughed about last year you were like a casting agent because so many of the shows wanted to have choirs behind children in the shows and we had students perform where kenny rogers we had student perform and dave cause it was  smith christopher cross and a stickler for live on stage with camelot when the tour going around and there's a big show coming this year that we cannot mean because i haven't nailed it down but if it's calling for a choir so i've got your name marked on there so i then real quickly we've talked about this before you have some some other projects to do with the community with total access can you briefly run down what we do in addition to our school performance as we want to make sure that the arts are something accessible to everyone within our community and that started with our total access programs where families that come from financial situation where they would normally be able to see our shows and we partner with organizations that serve these families line the boys and girls club and laurel civic association  to bring these families into our theater they get to select a season of performances from our main stage and have appreciated dinner with just one and then we have something for seniors and the military there was so successful it grew into our senior act with the arts program where we serve seniors within the same population and military where we serve veterans active military and their families and what that just gives you a small slice of life here at the van ways all in education we spend near near to five hundred thousand dollars a half a million dollars on our education program but i don't think it would have been possible well obviously without you but also the school boards in the area have been fantastic work with we have great partnerships in collaboration with the school districts th hundred seven we've been partners medication with the kennedy center through their partners and education program so we have a long history of using collaboration and partnerships to really have the biggest impact with their education which is fantastic and kelly i just want to thank you for coming on today but what happens when people take action against housing discrimination my coworker was pressured by her landlord to pay her rent but sexual savers my neighbor was told she needs to get better for dog you know he's an assistan discrimination is illegal if you think you've been a victim pointed to hard like me did they all reported discrimination and were able to secure their fair housing rights under the lawn dot com slash fair housing or call the hotline fair housing is you and welcome back to athens and ways of telling the nice person is so cute and adorable and she's going to be such a great she's going to be a great mom but i'm worried about what we're going to do when she's gone you know and learn leaving us to so you know will be short handed but you know the things that go on in the education department it's like they speak a different language you know and it's all over the place between the little tiny children you know they come and you should see them and be they're like little second graders and they're just adorable and then right to the big kids like you rick springfield should be mentioned to go together again i should say in fact i just learned our camera man went out on tour with rick springfield back when he was fourteen years old what i like and duck and i know but anyway we have a lot of shows that are going to go going on sale on september twelfth and i'll be honest with you there are about fifteen shows that won't make it to the on sale because i'll still be negotiating and there are some big exciting shows that will be you know going on sale during the year but if i get them you know i have to work really hard on getting these shows and it just it's a combination of luck talent and thanks mostly yeah big smile big mostly big smiles and locks and then the crazy thing for me is i start going to conferences in september to book the next season so it's like you just finished but anyway but we have a great broadway season coming and our big show is book of mormon oh that's so exciting isn't that exciting have you seen the show once again have not seen a poor college student can't get out to broadway but now the nice thing about the book of mormon though is book of mormon both on broadway and here will be having a lottery where they have special tickets at a really low price so that kids can come in the great seats like in the front but book of mormon is here february this what is the ninth through the fourteen yes eight days eight days and a performances and it's a great show so you don't want to miss getting your tickets right away for that but right now subscriptions are available and you can buy subscriptions where you can get savings from what is it fifteen to twenty percent off on most shows which is a good deal and let's talk about a few of the other shows we have beauty and the let my middle school career there you go ok well i just wish i could have seen that because i've seen abby sing and dance and she's amazing but that is on october the fourteenth and we have an early show at seven thirty and then coming up right after the christmas holidays is the producers and that is be all the stock you know on the actions and of course the big joke is they set out to produce a flop so that they can steal all the money and it becomes a hit scam that doesn't go as planned and now it does not know and that's the day before new year's eve and that's on december the thirtieth and i can tell you with a lot of these shows a lot of the tickets have already been sold so i would suggest getting to the box office right away hurry up hurry up hurry up yes offices don't quite know there you go if you work for the box office before i have not but i will get a chance to work with the box office tomorrow a great example so there you got a the nice thing is abby also got to work with american idol you know you were backstage and working on that  and that is a fun show and then we have another great one of the classics we have forty second street that happy feet i love it i love tap dance and have added just started learning it one of my favorite style of dance apparently though it's a dying art my father makes fun of me for it but i to and you know i've seen some of the great ones savion glover was amazing before he second street of course is that famous broadway show and that is on january twentieth twenty one and we have a little clip of this is well and then you know we have all these you know we have the new shows the book of mormon but then we have all these classics and we have joseph the amazing technicolor dreamcoat back what a beautiful fellow is almost like an operetta because there is very little words or script it's mostly is so well done and i like do you like that number go go joseph yes or no but march three and four and it has one of the best endings of any show you know definitely and we have a little bit that is now this next show i never thought would be the huge seller that it is we have had to add a second performance so get your disco ball and your white suit and come down to the van ways all because saturday night fever is coming back if you ever see the movie night fever of course has all those amazing b g songs and then a new show bullets over broadway written by woody allen yes what ality alan and i that's a show i actually have not seen so i'm looking forward to seeing that and that's here on march twenty first and here's a little b and then we have million dollar quartet that's coming back and we had it before and it sold out so fast that we decided to bring it back and there were two shows of that on march twenty sixth and then mamma mia i mean who could not love mama mia that's what you know the poster i think says you know you're going to love it you know you're going to love it because it's one of the zaniest shows and it's a lot of fun and that's coming back april nineteenth and twenty and you know if we wouldn't like it band abbey and i would sing part of the score for you please but i think you'd do what i thought you would attack that and then we have a special guy in the community miral berg is a broadway producer in fact he has a new show out called i think it's called the twenty but excuse me the twelve i had my numbers wrong well about about the twelve apostles and but anyway with us he does a show called one hundred now this hundred seven years from broadway because we started with one hundred years of broadway ok and so now we're up to one hundred seven years i mean pretty soon we'll be up in the hundred thirty years of broadway who has a long ways away yeah but neil's parents lived in sara live in sarasota his mom still does and we have two shows of that on february the seventeenth and then stomp is coming i love deal i don't remember in school seeing videos of stomp and being like wow i can't believe you can make music from these items i know and i was so i get creative and i've been around the kitchen and and is that there are there is a young child is a very young cellist hill i looked her up a little bit and she is a fun nominal player isn't she and iran today is going to be one of the highlights of our music is her as her and then we have disney's fantasia with the czech national orchestra and i've never seen that done where they have the orchestra behind the you know with the movie in the living i think i've seen a production of that once it was brilliant i loved it and it's sort of like opening up your horizons isn't it yes yes and then we were supposed to have the philadelphia orchestra and sadly they had a change in their schedule so they won't be with us this year but they will be coming back next year and then for dance we have a lot of dance coming however we've only been able to announce two of them so those of you are dance dance on september twelfth lots more of dance coming up but we'll have cinderella with the moscow festival ballet on february twenty fourth and that's a that's beautiful scorches absolutely gorgeous and then one of my favorite national ballet companies is the draw for eight and they are here on march the tenth and if you get our whole dance program which right now is only to get a discount of fifteen percent off again we've talked about our phone numbers nine five three three three six eight and then real briefly we are going to miss you during friday fest because now he was running around you were the biggest help during friday fest which is our free concert series on the bay and we still have to coming up and you're going to miss yesterday's which is everybody's favorite group that's here on august twenty first and then our last one is a new group we have not had before and it is the try to say the same reverend barry lynn and his funk tast dick soul featuring i know through your grandparents i'm going to continue to hear about you but you have to see what wonderful things that happen not only with the shows but with with young little tiny students and with with you know adults here  so anyway abby we wish you luck in school and we thank kellie for everything she does for our education program so come out and see us at the end ways