ATA. The Academy of Theatre Arts at Fort Lee High School offers an experience like no other, where classmates become partners, become fellow actors, become family… where classroom becomes a theater, becomes a safe space, becomes a home, where pretending becomes playing becomes feeling becomes acting.

The program itself entails a four-year course, including two honors level courses, that allow actors the chance to build relationships with their classmates, who, for the most part, stay together for four years, and with their teacher, who very easily transforms into a school mother figure who truly knows who we are.

We are given the chance to express ourselves in any way we wish, completely free of the fear of judgement that lingers elsewhere in our daily lives. Once we walk through the door of our place, room 166, or our safe space, the auditorium, or our home, the stage, we are instantly the best and truest versions of ourselves.

Determination, work ethic, motivation, inspiration, feeling, memorization, trust, confidence, and love-- this is what we know, this is what we do, this is what people see when they attend our Theatrical events, where we demonstrate and offer a taste of our little world inside the classroom… where our written works, our original jokes, our creative thinking are showcased to the world… where our hearts are poured, where our souls touch, where our minds are in constant movement, where our voices will always be heard.

It is us, the students-- that make up the actors, the lights and sound and props and makeup crews, the student directors, stage managers--we take what we are given and we craft.

This is what theater is all about-- to us, the beauty of theater is our ability to make something out of nothing. We take an empty stage and give it purpose-- the experience gives us meaning.

The ATA is a place that is welcome to all-- we come in to learn and perform and write but we leave doing all of that with new, different ways of seeing the world with confidence to speak up and out in other places, with friends that may always provide support, with passion to do our best in everything we accomplish, with drive to achieve our goals, and memories and life lessons that will last a lifetime.

We are musicians, scholars, athletes, dancers, introverts, social butterflies, leaders, and we may all choose to follow different paths in life, but here we are all family, we are all classmates, we are all voices, we are all actors.

Peri Vakatos

Fort Lee High School Theatre

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