East-West Drama Star: Ms.Hartong

Ms. Hartong with her backstage crew during play rehearsal

Ms. Hartong, a former actress, playwright, and director is a new Drama teacher at East-West! She is responsible for organizing our first school play and is contributing greatly to the growth of our school. Ms. Hartong is also a Theater professor at Brooklyn College.

She was born in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1968 and graduated from Smith College at the age of 22. Ms. Hartong started her own theater company in Massachusetts, where she also studied Shakespeare at Shakespeare and Company.

Before beginning her career as a teacher, she was involved in many aspects of professional drama. In 1994, Ms. Hartong even became a stand-up comic in Amsterdam, Netherlands! She began an international tour as a one woman show and continued to direct plays. This journey allowed her to gain knowledge about different forms of acting and enhanced her acting.

Thanks to these experiences, she won a Jerome Grant award for playwrighting. She participated in the Best of the Fringe Festival in Montreal, Canada and is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab in NYC.

After being satisfied with her acting career, she decided to settle down and realized she wanted to teach youth about acting and its significance. To fulfill this goal, she participated in the International Theatre and Literacy Project in Tanzania, as an arts educator to teach the students there how to express themselves through acting.

Ms. Hartong applied this teaching experience when she returned to the U.S. and officially began teaching around 2004. In the beginning, she taught elementary school students and then branched out into higher grades. This is when she became part of the staff at East-West.

-       May 3, 2011

During our conversation, her immediate responses were so expressive and insightful, it seemed like she had prepared them beforehand! What I was most curious about was why Ms. Hartong chose to become a teacher at East-West instead of any other high school. “East West, to me, seemed like a school that was very unique.” She really wanted to teach high school drama and she appreciated the diversity within our school as well as our community. Ms. Hartong believes that the best qualities of the East-West students are respect and the desire to learn. “Something is always happening at East-West. It’s never boring.” She hopes that someday her students can have their own drama studio to allow them to focus only on acting.

Ms. Hartong believes that Drama class is as important to students as academic classes because it can help them enhance their personalities. The class emphasizes public voice and speaking up about your beliefs. This can help students build self-confidence, even in front of a large crowd of people. Even from her own experience, Ms. Hartong has gained this boost in confidence because of drama training. She believes it allows people to “think on their feet.” It even helps her teaching skills because standing in front of a class of students is similar to acting in front of an audience.

Drama class also helps students learn about the world since we are often taught about drama history. Most importantly, Drama class is a “release from the academics.”

Tanzanian students performing

After her muster presentation about teaching drama and theater in Tanzania, I became more curious about her experience there as compared to East-West. She believes there are significant differences between the students. She explained that the students in Tanzania are used to being limited because of the lack of large funds towards their education. It’s a privilege for them to gain as much knowledge as they can from school. “Students in Tanzania are never late for school and they always do their homework.” However, students in East-West do share the same enthusiasm and dedication to their work as the ones in Tanzania.

Ms. Hartong

We moved on to speaking about the first East-West school play, The 25th. Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. “I’m really honored to be the first.” Ms. Hartong is facing a mix of emotions about this event, from excitement to nervousness. But, most importantly she feels really proud of her cast for their dedication to this play. She’s confident that they will meet her expectations and “rise to the occasion”!

Play rehearsal

I wanted to finish off our interview with a quick piece of advice Ms. Hartong may have to offer to our students. She thinks that students shouldn’t take their education and all the privileges they have for granted. Ms. Hartong believes that “East-West is a high caliber school” and students shouldn’t just let the time pass them by. They should appreciate what this school has to offer and sincerely enjoy their years at East-West.

Thank you Ms. Hartong for your time and sharing all the interesting information about yourself as well as drama and acting! Good luck with the school play!

The 25th. Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee

Wednesday, May 25th. and Thursday, May 26th.

7 p.m. in the Auditorium

Tickets will be available this week during Lunch Periods 3 and 7!

Students: $3 and Adults $5