TOPIC: Lighting a Pathway for Young Artists

SPEAKER: Corey Mitchell, Founder of Theater Gap Initiative

Mitchell will talk about his journey as an arts educator spreading the message of excellence and helping to create a pathway for young artists to have a career and change their trajectory.

The Theatre Gap Initiative (TGI), founded by longtime Charlotte educator Corey Mitchell, is a nonprofit college-prep program for high school grads who aspire to apply for Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) and conservatory programs. TGI’s programming is focused on helping students of color successfully navigate the process of applications, prescreens and auditions.

It was founded on the principle that equity means more than the distribution of wealth. It is access to systems that people of color have been historically excluded from. By collaborating with local, collegiate, and national Arts Institutions, TGI wants to help to dismantle those systems.

Theater Gap Initiative

BIOGRAPHY

Tony Award winner Corey Mitchell is the inaugural recipient for Excellence in Theatre Education. He was selected as a top 50 Finalist for 2017 Global Teacher Prize and was named North Carolina Outstanding Theatre Arts Educator by the North Carolina Theatre Conference. Most recently, he was selected as the first recipient of the Stephen Schwartz Musical Theatre Teacher of the Year Award, presented by the Educational Theatre Association and the ASCAP, and also received The Cato Lifetime Achievement in Teaching Award from the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte. Corey has twenty-five years’ experience in the classroom, including twenty years as Theatre Arts Educator at Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte, NC.

Corey is active as a director, actor, keynote speaker, educational consultant, and workshop presenter in Charlotte and throughout the country. He advocates for arts education through his work on the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Theatre Conference and Brava Theatre Company, and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Foundation for the Carolinas. Corey’s past and present students are performing, writing, and composing for community, university, and regional theatre, as well as theme parks, independent and studio films, the West End, national tours, and Broadway musical-theatre productions.

NOTE: Attend in-person at PUMC, no registration required. Attend via Zoom, please register with the Zoom link above.