Paper Lantern Theatre Company is pleased to announce the formation of Night Light Childrens Theatre Company at Summit School.
Night Light Childrens Theatre is a professional childrens theatre bringing live childrens theatre to families in Winston-Salem and the Triad area.

“Live theatre offers an experience you can’t obtain with any other art form,” said Amy da Luz, the Artistic Director of Paper Lantern Theatre Company. “We are looking forward to nurturing a passion for live theatre in young audiences by producing quality childrens theatre that will engage and enlighten. Much like Paper Lantern Theatre has been able to do with our adult audiences, Night Light Childrens Theatre will bring a diverse message to a diverse audience, creating a shared experience in search of understanding. That is what theatre can do at its best. In particular with young audiences, that are so open and eager to learn.”
Night Light Childrens Theatre will make the Summit School Black Box its home for the 2013-2014 season.
“We are looking forward to this collaboration with Night Light Childrens Theatre,” said Jeff Turner, Summit’s Director of Auxiliary Programs. “The arts, especially live theatre, has a long tradition at Summit, so this partnership is a natural one for us.”

“The Black Box at Summit School is an incredible space,” said da Luz, “and the Summit community is one that has always been so supportive of the arts. We are fortunate to be able to call Summit home for our first season and we very excited about the possibilities our partnership with Summit will offer us and the Winston Salem community.”
Night Light Childrens Theatre will begin their inaugural season in the Fall of 2013 with the premier of an original adaptation, title to be announced.

Founded in 2008, Paper Lantern Theatre Company has earned a reputation for producing top quality professional theatre that pushes its audiences and artists to grow through creation, collaboration and risk. Collaborating with dozens of professional regional artists, the Company has premiered some of the hottest new works by award winning playwrights for the Triad Area.
Founded in 1933, Summit School is the first independent day school in the Triad, and the only independent coeducational day school in North Carolina designed to serve students in Pre-kindergarten through Grade Nine. Summit is a vibrant, college preparatory learning community offering scholarship at its best to academically high achieving students and featuring a robust curriculum where children learn to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. For more information visit www.summitschool.com.

PRESS RELEASE
DATE: January 5, 2013
CONTACT: Amy da Luz
PAPER LANTERN THEATRE COMPANY
Phone : (336) 926-9167 Phone:
Email: arbdaluz@gmail.com

CONTACT: Mary Horan ,
SUMMIT SCHOOL
(336) 721-0540 x112
Email: mhoran@summitmail.org

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Sarah’s not afraid to sacrifice looking pretty to get a laugh. “I will make ridiculous faces, I don’t care. I just like to get a reaction from people,” she says. The on-field announcer for the Winston-Salem Dash is also an actress and stand-up comedienne. “I’ve been told my comedy is really cerebral – like you have to think about it for awhile and then it hits you,” she says. Her material stems from real-life situations, things that have happened to her or people she knows. “It’s things that people don’t admit to doing that I like to talk about,” she says. “I’m like, ‘I do that.’ And they laugh because they know they do it, too. They just won’t admit it.” When she’s not coming up with new material, you can probably find her playing a part in Paper Lantern Theatre Company’s most recent production. sarahbarnhardt.com.

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I am a Feminist because…

“…I am the mother of three boys. I won’t raise a daughter in this lifetime that will knock down glass ceilings (or walls…do we always have to be climbing up?), but I can raise three men who will seek out, support and celebrate women who do just that. I believe that is the next step in this journey to equality.”

Amy is a founding member of Paper Lantern Theatre Company and the producer of their first show “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” by Sarah Ruhl, opening July 17. This fall, the professional actor will appear in the movie “Main Street” starring Ellen Burstyn, Orlando Bloom and Colin Firth. paperlanterntheatre.com.

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Amy da Luz interrupted Tim Austin’s monologue from the stage play Kimberly Akimbo to offer a suggestion. Da Luz, the play’s director, then asked assistant director Miranda Lowder to step on the stage of the Ring Theater on the campus of Wake Forest University, and sit directly in front of Austin during a stage rehearsal on May 21.

In the scene, Austin’s character, Buddy, is recording a message to his daughter, Kimberly, on a tape recorder. Da Luz instructed Austin and Lowder, who stood in for Kimberly, to hold hands.

“Really find her,” Da Luz instructed Austin. “Find the reason you need to do this and take it from the top.”

Austin then performed the scene while looking directly in Lowder’s eyes. Then, da Luz and Lowder returned to their seats in the audience and da Luz directed Austin to perform the scene again with the same feeling.

“That’s where it needs to go, so bravo for taking it there,” da Luz said after Austin’s interpretation.

Kimberly Akimbo represents the Paper Lantern Theatre Company’s third production in the past year. Da Luz is one of seven founding members of the theatre troupe. Beth Ritson, Miranda Lowder, Star Lee, Miriam Davie, Sheila Duell and Sarah Barnhardt also embarked upon this adventure one year ago with the group’s first production of Dead Man’s Cellphone by playwright Sarah Ruhl.

“We thought it was risky,” she said. “[Ruhl’s] style is very theatrical. In the middle of the play, actors break out into a cellphone dance.

A lot of people walked out of the theater saying they had never seen anything like that. That was our goal — to push people to grow.”

Last fall, Paper Lantern earned the distinction of being only one of two theatre companies in the state to stage a dramatic reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. Paper Lantern joined more than 150 theatre companies around the nation and the globe on Oct. 12 to mark the anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was robbed, tied to a split-rail fence, tortured and left to die.

“Was that risky?” da Luz asked rhetorically. “Yes. Was it worth it? Yes. Would we do it again? In a heartbeat — we wouldn’t even think twice.”

Star Lee said she enjoys pushing the boundaries of local theatre, and the idea of artists creating their own work.

Lee will play the role of Debra in Kimberly Akimbo, which opens June 10 at Theatre Alliance in Winston-Salem and runs through June 20. The story of a 16-year-old girl with a rare disease that causes her to age 4-1/2 times faster than normal people, Kimberly Akimbo was penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire.

The play fits perfectly with Paper Lantern’s mission to tell stories that push people to grow through creation, collaboration and risk, said da Luz.

“You can’t grow without taking risk,” she said. “You either grow stagnant or go backwards. We’re not interested in doing either one of those as a company or as artists.”

Da Luz said the impetus behind Paper Lantern was a simple desire to work more frequently and give other local artists the opportunity to do the same.

“It’s not anything really revolutionary,” she said. When da Luz first proposed the idea, Lowder said she jumped at the chance to work with local artists. With relatively no overhead or financial concerns, Paper Lantern can produce controversial work, Lowder explained. Dead Man’s Cellphone enjoyed sold-out performances, however, which reveals the desire of theatergoers for more non-traditional plays, da Luz said.

Paper Lantern’s future success will rely heavily on the health of its group dynamic. Based on the experiences of the past year, the future looks very bright, Lowder said.

“We’ve never had any conflicts with our group — it’s such a variety of people,” she said. “There are people of all ages from all different backgrounds and we all have a common bond — producing quality theater. That’s helped us to be a unit. We’re like a family.”

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