There’s a moment I return to often when I think about why I do this work.
It was late at night. I was sitting in a diner after a performance — this was years before I came back to Connecticut, when I was still performing professionally in New York. The show had gone well. By every measure it was a successful night. And I found myself thinking: I don’t want to be doing this for myself at sixty or seventy.
I took out a pad of paper right there at that table at 12:30 in the morning. And I wrote down one sentence. I wanted to create a program that would affirm, validate, and call forth creativity in others.
That sentence became Performing Arts Programs. And everything that followed — including nearly a decade of productions at The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford — grew from that one moment in a diner.
What The Bushnell Represented
The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts is one of Connecticut’s most celebrated venues. Getting a program for young people onto that stage wasn’t something that happened by accident. It happened because of the work we did in communities across Hartford County for years before it. East Granby, Simsbury, Canton, Wethersfield, South Windsor, Granby and more. Town by town, class by class, child by child.
Scott Galbraith, Vice President of Programming at The Bushnell, wrote to us after our collaboration on Whistle Down the Wind: “From the casting process through to the conductor’s final cut-off you and your team were there, going above and beyond the call. You are an asset to the Greater Hartford Arts community and to The Bushnell.”
The Performing Arts Youth Collective
The Youth Collective was the flagship of everything we built. It brought together the most serious and developed young performers from across our programs. We ran productions at Hartford Stage and Connecticut Opera. We brought in Broadway professionals to work alongside our students.
Students from the Youth Collective went on to Broadway, national touring companies, national television, and some of the most competitive college conservatory programs in the country. The Hartford Courant covered our story. The Greater Hartford Arts Council endorsed our work.
What This Means for Hartford County Families Today
The Performing Arts Youth Collective chapter is complete. But the mission that built it is very much alive.
At Performing Arts Programs we continue to run group classes across Hartford County communities. And through Lamb Studios Online the intensive one-on-one coaching that developed Youth Collective students is available to any young performer in the region from their own home. Online via Zoom. With me personally.
The trial lesson is $65, 45 minutes with me personally. If your child continues within 30 days that $65 goes toward the first month.
Book a Trial Lesson →
That Sentence on the Pad of Paper
I still believe every word of what I wrote in that diner at 12:30 in the morning in 1997. To affirm, to validate, and to call forth creativity in others. That’s what The Bushnell years were about. That’s what every private lesson I teach is about today.
If you have a child in Hartford County who is ready to find their stage, I’d love to be part of their story.
— Michael Lamb, Founder
Performing Arts Programs, Est. 1997