Showtime in Somers

  Somers High School staff and students are justly proud of teaching and learning well beyond the standard curriculum, including fund-raising for local nonprofits. So it was only a small step into new territory for the school’s Orchestra Director, Anne Harris, to propose putting on a show on April 8 to benefit Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), a Katonah-based nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of men and women behind bars.        Fittingly, the theme for the evening will be “The Transformative Power of the Arts.”  RTA, says Harris, “is a magnificent organization that brings the fine and performing arts into maximum security prisons and rehabilitates and heals using music, dance, drama and art. It is a breathtaking endeavor and the science has proven time and again the effectiveness of the arts on the success of the rehabilitated prisoners in the long term.”        Besides star turns by the school orchestra, the school choir, and the school band, there will be a dance group of RTA alumni; a video, “Inside Prison Walls,” showing the effect of RTA’s program on one very talented prisoner, and highlight performances of Broadway show tunes. The show will begin at 7 p.m. at The Joanne Marien Performing Arts Center, at Somers Middle School, 250 Route 202. Tickets are available online at rta-arts.org. Admission is $25 of which $20 is tax-deductible.        RTA began as a small theatre troupe in Sing Sing in 1996. Today its founder and executive director, Katherine Vockins, oversees some 30 dedicated volunteer facilitators who are professionals in their fields. They teach, direct and lead productions and workshops as varied as Shakespeare studies, creative writing, poetry, dance, visual art, public speaking, music and, especially, theater, in five New York State prisons in Westchester, Dutchess and Sullivan counties. Vockins manages it all with a modest budget from private, corporate and government grants, individual donors and faith-based groups.