Donna Sue de Guzman  Director

 
Donna Sue de Guzman’s career as an artist began at such a young age, leading her friends and family to “basement productions.”  She carried her commitment for the arts through college earning a Bachelor’s degree in the Performing Arts from Syracuse University in 1984.  She successfully pursued an acting, directing, and producing career in Manhattan for eight years having produced a number of off-Broadway productions.

After her stints in Baltimore as a Producer and with Cablevision of CT as a segment producer, she began to impart her experience and knowledge to children in 1992 by providing an arts after-school program to children of the McGivney Community Center.  There she established the foundations of a philosophy and process using arts as an effective and innovative technique to engage young people regardless of age or background.  The McGivney Teen Theater Company was  established.

She was recruited by Cooperative Educational Services to run the Regional   Center for the Arts in 1995.  During her tenure, she developed an inter-district program, largely focused on modern dance and music theory, into a half-day magnet school focused on collaborations between theater, dance, and music through original productions.   As RCA’s Arts Education Coordinator, she led the school to numerous awards such as the American High School Theater Festival representing CT at the  Edinburgh Fringe Festival with an original musical “Peacocks and Peanuts”, and the CT Voices for Children Award in 1998.

While at RCA, she produced original shows such as “Generation X,” “Gotta Lot to Learn,” “Qwik Stop,” “Entertainment 2101″ to name a few.  She also collaborated with the Polka Dot Playhouse Summer Workshop Theater directing and producing three original musicals entitled “Johnny Cinders Goes to Hollywood,” “Art Olympics,” and “A Mid Summer Nights Magic.”

De Guzman followed her experience with high school students with college students.  She taught Playwriting and Performance as Housatonic College’s initial foray into performing arts.  She   helped establish a comprehensive performing arts curriculum for the college in 1998-1999. She led the college to copywriting their first original play, “Colors of The Heart”.

last minute costume fitting

De Guzman co-founded Original Works Inc in 1999 in response to the community’s need for a more integrated after-school program for kids of all ages.  She discovered that Bridgeport has had limited use of the arts in its traditional after-school settings.  She wanted to offer these opportunities to youths by establishing Original Works Inc. and now Youth Art Works, Inc.

As an Artistic Director, she has produced, written, and directed numerous original artistic products for children and young adults.   Most recently, she led the Model After-School Program as funded by the CT Commission on the Arts and the CT Commission on Children, wherein she coordinated with three local schools and community service providers in providing substantive arts experiences to urban youths using youth development model.  The Program was completed with an original production entitled “The Grinches That Stole Bridgeportville” in December 2001.She also reproduced “Marginal Saints” with   Luther Blackwell Jr. into a musical addressing the issues of teen pregnancy and violence in June 2001 as part of Original Works Inc.’s production of a Youth Summit.  The City of Bridgeport awarded her efforts with a grant to reproduce the event and musical in June 2002 at the Downtown Cabaret Theater.  In 2003 “Marginal Saints” won a prestigious spot in the International Fringe Festival in New York. Returning to Bridgeport in the fall of 2003, once more the Bridgeport schools granted Original Works a tour of Marginal Saints throughout their school district. The musical was performed in front of hundreds of raving students. In 2004 the Company decided that the musical was too good not to be filmed.  The Company took on the challenge of producing this film with little to no money with passion being the main ingredient. Throughout the year, the Company held its regular classes with middle school students creating, writing, and directing four new short plays with music and de Guzman and Blackwell produced a new television pilot for middle school kids, “ASK T.V. “

This past year Donna Sue de Guzman has written and directed three new shows, Dying to Live, a youth forum and play on Bullying, Teen Pregnancy, Racism, and What about those baggy pants?, “A Spanish Soap Opera”, a comedy, and “Johnny Cinders Goes to Hollywood”, a modern day fairy tale. Each production was produced through her theater programs with an average of twenty participating students in each program. DeGuzman was awarded a mini-grant from the Perrin Family Foundation to produce a youth fourm/ play. She partnered with the Bridgeport Housing Authority and The McGiveny Community Center where students participating met twice a week. Using the Youth Development Model, students took leadership roles in leading theater exercises, creating improves around their ideas and developing characters in these plays to represent who they are and what they want to say whether it was a dramatic or comedic piece. Deguzman’s process with youth in the performing arts has lead to powerful, funny, sad, dramatic and entertaining productions.