Lincoln Park Center returns to student-centered concept

Mark Elder                                     Ken Gargaro                  Justin Fortunato               Todd Goodman

(From Midland Today, Beaver County Times section insert, July 24, 2015)
By Fred Miller

MIDLAND, Pa. – The result of recent leadership changes at the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center can be stated in one sentence: Quality of productions will remain high, and students at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School will be more involved.
“My big goal is get Lincoln Park back to its mission to support the school and the community,” said Interim Executive Director Mark Elder. “Patrons are going to see the same high quality productions that they have been accustomed to seeing.”
Elder replaced Sal Aloe at the helm of the center, a nonprofit corporation that is separate and distinct from Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School, a Pennsylvania public charter school. The center supplies facilities and resident artists to teach arts at the school
After the center’s board dismissed Aloe it brought in Elder, a former director of National Network of Digital Schools, for his arts and nonprofit background.
Elder sought out Ken Gargaro, founder and head of Pittsburgh Musical Theater for 25 years and a highly respected person in the Pittsburgh theater community, as a consultant. Gargaro’s tasks: first, plan the new season of shows, and second, reorganize the center’s artistic leadership.
“I needed to bring in someone who knew the Pittsburgh area and that had been through the process of building an arts organization. His name was at the top of the list. He was able to develop PMT to what it is, a professional education theater,” said Elder.
Elder said when he contacted Gargaro, “He said jokingly, ‘what took you so long?'”

Gargaro recommended splitting the responsibilities formerly exercised by Gavan Pamer, whose tenure as artistic director stretching back to the center’s founding befor his termination.
For the production side, Gargaro tapped Justin Fortunato, a young producer-director-actor with experience and connections throughout the Pittsburgh theater community. For the education side, he chose Lincoln Park resident composer Todd Goodman, who has taught and conducted music at Lincoln Park since its opening and has won prestigious composing honors including the 2014 American Prize for his score to the “Night of the Living Dead” opera.
“It’s Lennon and McCartney,” Gargaro said. “The creative juices will go both ways, with one primarily in the production side and the other advocating for students and resident artists.”
Fortunato said, “I come in with a completely clean set of eyes. I don’t know how things were run before, I haven’t been involved. I have an unbiased view of how theater should work.”
His first exposure to Lincoln Park was directing “A Grand Night for Singing” this spring.
“The resources at Lincoln Park are out of this world. I was literally blown away,” he said. “Lincoln Park has a great core of people, a really well-oiled machine. They do what they do incredibly well.”

About the upcoming season of subscription shows, increased from nine to 10, Fortunato said, ” On paper it is crazy, the number of show they have: The Little Mermaid, The Crucible, West Side Story, The Nuctracker and the ballet Cinderella, A Lyrical Christmas, an Oscar Wilde piece (An Ideal Husband) – a huge variety of shows happening, a really well rounded season of theater.”
Goodman said, “Justin is in charge of making sure all the ships run on time and under budget. Theater production is what he does and does well. That’s his strength. My experience is interdisciplinary stuff, creativity. I think we complement each other very well.
“My job is to bring in more of an educational element to all that we do, so that everything we do be student-centered. Even if it’s a professional production, we can have students shadowing and performing,” said Goodman. “I want to see more student-written plays, student-produced films . . . Not just students unleashed, but resident artists unleashed and faculty unleashed, artists allowed to be artists.
“We came up with a term for it: channeling creative chaos. When you’re young, you want to get your hands wet in everything, you want to try everything, and this is the perfect place for that to happen. Everybody working together, everybody being creative together.”
Goodman was hired at Lincoln Park in July 2006, before the center and school opened. “What drew me here was that here was the fresh canvas, a place where artists would get together with no preconceptions of anything, and start creating from scratch. And that’s exactly what it was for the first four years, five years. I’m excited to get back to that, to get back to artists working together to create something that’s bigger than themselves.”
Goodman said that Mark Elder is a good person at the helm of an arts organization. “He’s an actor and a stand-up comedian. He has a deep-rooted appreciation and passion for the arts.”
Gargaro will continue as a consultant to the center, and will even direct a joint production of “West Side Story” featuring students from Robert Morris University and Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]