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<\/p>\nST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – For 32 years, the Bill Edwards Foundation for the Arts exposes thousands of students to live performing arts for free.<\/p>\n
“The number one goal is that the students get a chance to see live performing arts and they get a change to not only focus on what they’re doing in the classroom with our curriculum guides, but they then get to bring that into the theater and connect that with real art,” Class Acts Vice President of Arts Education & Entertainment Katrina Young explained.<\/p>\n
By the numbers:<\/p>\n
This school season, students will be attending 11 shows at the Mahaffey Theater. There were five shows during the fall, with six scheduled for the spring.<\/p>\n
Between 15,000-30,000 students attend shows at Mahaffey Theater each school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s always exciting for the students to maybe mention something that they’ve seen live in the show that they can connect to their real life and take an opportunity to think this is something that I also could be good at as an adult,” Campell Park Elementary School teacher Denise Baker said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Many performers cherish the opportunity to connect with a young, excited audience.<\/p>\n
What they’re saying:<\/p>\n
“The theater is magic, and I think feeling that in the space is palpable,” Stephanie Vasquez Fonseca shared.<\/p>\n
The actor and puppeteer performed for the bilingual show “La Maleta de Maebelle or Maebelle’s Suitcase”, which was adapted from a Reading Rainbow picture book. The show comes courtesy of Glass Half Full Theatre, based in Austin.<\/p>\n
RELATED: Hundreds of students learn about different jobs at BAM! Fest Career Day<\/a><\/p>\n “I hope that as kids are watching this performance, they feel inspired, they feel creative themselves,” Vasquez Fonseca stated. “To say I wish I could do that, or that puppet is so cool, I want to build a puppet. Kids who already are puppeteering at home with found objects or their toys, they can go, oh, I can make stories, I could tell this tale. The inspiration out of anything, I think, is what is most exciting about this process.”<\/p>\n Dig deeper:<\/p>\n The show is about a hatmaker from Colombia who lives in a treehouse. Maebelle meets a bird named Binkle, who is having difficulty migrating to Colombia.<\/p>\n “She’s teaching him some lessons about the things that we keep with us and the things that we sometimes have to leave behind,” Vasquez Fonseca said.<\/p>\n The actor is only one of two on stage. Between the pair, they puppeteer six characters.<\/p>\n “It’s so close that they can touch it. It’s not just the movie theater. It’s not just the radio,” Young said. “To feel the sounds, to feel the vibrations live, it’s life-changing.”<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n The Source: The information in this article comes from interviews conducted by FOX 13 Photojournalist Barry Wong.\u00a0<\/p>\n St. Petersburg<\/a>Education<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – For 32 years, the Bill Edwards Foundation for the Arts exposes thousands of students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[113,47,115,1157,202,204,203,199,201,200,628],"class_list":["post-68516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-education","tag-fl","tag-news","tag-pinellas","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/vlcsnap-2025-12-02-14h43m54s825.jpg\")
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