{"id":195,"date":"2015-11-13T21:02:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T21:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/?page_id=195"},"modified":"2025-07-31T03:35:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T10:35:39","slug":"nova-performing-arts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/nova-performing-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Nova Performing Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Nova Performing Arts<\/h2>

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\"me-hs\"

Allen came to the Nova faculty directly from school (College Conservatory of Music,
Cincinnati) in 1968.<\/span>
<\/span>
Nova was on ‘long’ years at that time so he graduated in May and began teaching in June. Allen’s\u00a0first year of teaching was in his words “something akin to Hell.” As the ‘new kid on the block’\u00a0or ‘low man on the totem pole’ or however you want to say it, his main assignment was hundreds\u00a0of 7th and 8th graders in a required class called Experiences in Music. He completed that year\u00a0through sheer determination and an intense desire to ‘not be a quitter or a failure in the eyes\u00a0of his parents who had worked very hard to pay for his conservatory education.’ At the end of
that year a very disillusioned young (21 year old) man went to the front office to resign. This\u00a0came as a total surprise to the administration who made the broad statement “reaction to your\u00a0teaching has been excellent, what can we do to keep you? What do you want?”<\/p><\/div>

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\"joyce3\"
Things were slow to change but change they did. The first bone\u00a0thrown to our restless conservatory graduate in 1969 was an after hours music group called\u00a0AITUVUS (pronounced 8 of us). Singing, dancing (movement) costumes, and accompanied by guitars,\u00a0bass and piano, the group was a hit very fast.\u00a0 But, of course a little is never enough, so\u00a0Allen wanted to do a musical. Everyone said “you need to go talk to Joyce Hall” so he did, and I\u00a0guess you could say they never stopped talking.Joyce was a little reluctant to jump into this new venture due to
some less than pleasant experiences before Allen arrived. But it didn’t take long. Still
teaching full\u00a0schedules, music for Allen and English for Joyce, they ‘co-directed’ the next show. In 1971, The\u00a0Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd took over the East LL and really turned it into\u00a0a theatre.<\/div>

\"joyce1\"
Unveiled within the next year or so was the architectural wonder,
the Nova Cafetorium. About a 6 foot proscenium, a highly lacquered stage floor of light wood, a
beige cyclorama, and enough power to run 3 or 4 stage lights. However when you have nothing and\u00a0you get something,\u00a0you take it.<\/p>

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\"tom1\"In addition to the luck of Joyce, Allen and eventually the master band director Tom Williams\u00a0landing\u00a0in the same place, it just happened that Nova was in one of its more creative phases where
inter-curricular course development was encouraged. It didn’t take Joyce and Allen long to come\u00a0up\u00a0with the first English, History, Music combination curriculum.By this time the program had been given the east LL or lecture hall which, with the help of some\u00a0parents, wood, power saws and a lot of pipe and chain, was turned into Theatre Nova. This\u00a0astounding\u00a0curriculum was put into play using every multimedia devise available at the time. Film and\u00a0slides\u00a0from the booth, music from the great sound system and a chronological correlation of the arts\u00a0with\u00a0history and literature. In the early days of development, the classes were relatively contained,
with occasional voluntary help from other Nova staff. Miss Thornburg (Miss T) helped with\u00a0choreography in the early years. When the development led to the ‘school within a school’\u00a0concept,\u00a0Joyce, Allen and Tom were joined by Alma Anthony, Pearl Schriber and Peggy Barber.<\/p>

Click Here for some pictures of the NOVA STAGE BAND<\/a><\/p><\/div>

<\/p>

\"me-suit\"At about this time and certainly worthy of reminiscence, is the Westinghouse Science Award\u00a0given\u00a0to Jim Azar and sponsored by Joyce Hall. This is of particular interest because of the
circumstance. Jim had been refused sponsorship from the Nova science department (and not\u00a0allowed\u00a0in the
department, I think, for questionable behavior) but Jim being a loyal and highly regarded PA\u00a0member and techie, Joyce said she would be glad to sponsor him. Well – he won, Joyce got\u00a0recognized
publicly for sponsoring a Westinghouse Science Winner and a few others were not so happy.<\/p>

At the same time as all of this curriculum development, and\u00a0reaching the limits of the ‘cafetorium’ at Nova, the ‘tenacious two’ came up with the idea
of\u00a0taking a show to Parker Playhouse. The first experiment with Parker Playhouse, the ‘real’\u00a0theatre, was ‘A Contemporary Revue’. This was a musical revue so the expenses were\u00a0relatively
low for costumes and sets. It was still quite a learning experience for everything from box\u00a0office to lighting and stage managing. Once we did it (performed at Parker) we simply\u00a0couldn’t\u00a0settle for less in the future. Of course that would take money which was not readily\u00a0available.<\/p>

The PA school would\u00a0not ask the general administration for money for a show anyway. So, Joyce and Allen did a\u00a0budget\u00a0projection and marched into the President’s office at Landmark Bank and made a proposal: “We\u00a0would like you to open an account for Nova Performing Arts and put $5000.00 in it. With this
money we will produce our first musical at Parker Playhouse and with the proceeds pay you\u00a0back.\u00a0If we fail to make enough to pay you back, we want you to write off the loss and close the\u00a0account.” You know what? He said OK. The result was our first full musical on the Parker\u00a0stage\u00a0for 5 nights, Mame. About this time the program was attracting a lot of attention and the\u00a0Nova\u00a0‘Special’ years were under fire from every direction (special has a way of not being\u00a0acceptable
in public schools). There was a real threat to the existence of the program so the parents\u00a0rallied and formed the Nova Theatre Arts Parents Association, Inc. This was the first time\u00a0in\u00a0Broward County history that a parents association had incorporated. Normal parents\u00a0associations\u00a0were under the complete control of the school administration and in this case that was the\u00a0enemy\u00a0so incorporation was the way to go. The long fought compromise was ‘move the program to
Dillard\u00a0as a magnet school making it available to students from the entire county.’ This move came\u00a0with\u00a0the promise of a new PA building (of our design) and a new theatre.<\/p>

  1. The\u00a0Fantasticks<\/a><\/li>
  2. Greasepaint\u00a0–
    Edmiston<\/a><\/li>
  3. All Star\u00a0Review<\/a><\/li>
  4. The Music Man
    – MacDuff<\/a><\/li>
  5. Funny Girl\u00a0– Dara<\/a><\/li>
  6. Contemporary
    Revue<\/a><\/li>
  7. Mame<\/a><\/li>
  8. Funny\u00a0Girl – Paige<\/a><\/li>
  9. YES<\/a><\/li>
  10. 10. Nova Performing Arts, fall \u201974<\/a><\/li>
  11. Dames At\u00a0Sea<\/a><\/li>
  12. Strike\u00a0Up The Band<\/a><\/li>
  13. Greasepaint\u00a0–
    McDyer<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
    Return to Home<\/a><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Nova Performing Arts Allen came to the Nova faculty directly from school (College Conservatory of Music,Cincinnati) in 1968. Nova was on ‘long’ years at that time so he graduated in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-blank-1.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-195","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":92,"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5412,"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/195\/revisions\/5412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hallhillpa.org\/hhpa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}