The students and the staff would like to give great thanks for allowing us to participate in the “Artist in the Schools Program.” I am a student at Flex and was a participant working with Martin Zeller on improvisational theater. I learned many of his methods and was excited to be experiencing new things. Martty taught our improvisational theatre class how to better express ourselves and come out of our bubble, so to speak. Over the past few weeks Martty was with us, we learned different methods of theatre and games. It was a treat to perform what we learned in front of friends, family and the Flex staff. 

Some of our other students also enjoyed coming up with new ideas and using imagination to create different characters. There were many different types of scenes and characters. My favorite, the conjoined octuplets, involved eight students joining at their elbows and speaking in unison. The director, Martty, asked the future of some of the audience members, and the octuplets told it in unison. It was funny, due to the fact that none of us knew what the rest would say. 

We would like to give thanks to our legislators Paul Seaton and Gary Stevens for funding the Alaska State Council on the Arts (ASCA), to ASCA for supporting the Artist in the Schools Program (AIS), the Rasmuson Foundation, and finally to the Bunnell Street Arts Center for their local administration of the AIS program. 

On behalf of Homer Flex, my name is Desirae Tangman, and the rest of my fellow classmates and staff would like to thank you again for supporting the Artist in the Schools Program and letting it happen. We enjoyed learning from Martty’s perspective how to do things a different way, to make it easier for some people. 

Desirae Tangman, Flex student 

on behalf of Homer Flex staff and students