The Art of Doing Good: Theater director Heidi Howard prepares teens for life

In partnership with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ArtsATL has identified members of the Atlanta arts community whose work goes beyond the personal to make a broader impact in their community. We’ll bring you their stories all week.

::

Heidi Howard never planned to have a career in theater.

Though she took drama classes with a friend at their small high school, it “was just the thing that kept me sane and happy,” she says. But after college, life pointed Howard in a surprising direction when she visited Atlanta and learned that 7 Stages Theatre needed a freelance stage designer and assistant stage manager.

“When I drove into Little Five Points, I thought, ‘These are my people!’” she says, laughing.

From that point on, contract projects kept piling up, and Howard worked for several companies in town as a freelance stage manager.

At the same time, 7 Stages founders Del Hamilton and Faye Allen were interested in further developing Youth Creates, the theater’s youth programming. After hearing how Howard’s experience as a teen was transformative, they put their newest contract employee to the task. In 2004, after three years of freelancing, Howard came onboard full-time with 7 Stages, bearing the title of production manager and education director.

To aid in her new role, Howard spent time studying theater companies abroad, learning from their educational programs. The connections she made led to collaborations among teens back home in Atlanta and teens in Europe. Soon, Howard was inviting international teachers and students to the states, noticing how a common artistic goal helped the teens relate.

“If we can create together as humans, we can understand each other,” she says. “Our role as arts leaders is to connect through a creative process. It heals and builds empathy.”

Kids who enroll in Youth Creates might end up doing — and loving — something unexpected. Howard points out that students will often think they want to be actors, then find themselves excelling at things like lighting design. For five weeks, teens in the program are able to explore every avenue of a production through various workshops, from marketing to building sets with power tools. Then they apply their new skills to staging the show.

A few teenagers end up finding a long-term home at 7 Stages. The internship program, which blossomed from Youth Creates, has introduced a few talented young adults to a career in the Atlanta theater community. Ari Shah Conkright started the program as a preteen and is now the facility and production stage manager.

“I feel like it was such second nature, the transition to being here full-time,” Conkright says.

Still, Howard says inspiring kids to choose a career in theater isn’t the goal of Youth Creates — it’s to better equip them for any path.

“Hundreds of kids have gone through the Youth Creates program and are now tattoo artists, teachers, doctors and dancers,” she says. “So it’s not just theater; it’s applying creative skills to any walk of life. It’s the empowerment to design a world they want to live in.”

::

Denise K. James is an ArtsATL senior editor.