Cutting Class Is OK at This School : Performing arts: The institution serves as an educational halfway house for actors, athletes, models and musicians, ages 8 to 18.
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NEW YORK — It was a typical backstage scene on Broadway: a half-dozen youngsters shooting dice and cursing up a storm. The year was 1914, and the kids were in the cast of “Daddy Long-Legs.”
Two church women who happened upon the group were shocked and dismayed. One asked the youngsters why they weren’t in school.
“On a matinee day?” replied one boy, incredulously.
From this chance encounter evolved the Professional Children’s School, an educational halfway house for actors, athletes, models and musicians aged 8 to 18 in grades four through 12. Auditions and algebra get co-billing at the school, where the curriculum mixes comfortably with the student’s career.
Class assignments are often sent by fax or express mail from Manhattan to Rome or Paris. The school’s most important audio-visual tool is the telephone. Classes give way to curtain calls with students making up schoolwork as they chase an often elusive dream.
Danny Gerard, a star on television’s “Brooklyn Bridge,” enrolled in the school for the fall semester 1991. It’s now the second semester, and he’s never been inside the building. The phone and the postal service have kept him current with his studies and scripts.
“It is very hard to do this. It takes tremendous flexibility on the part of the teachers,” said PCS headmaster Jeffrey Lawrence, a former Broadway performer turned educator.
“At this school, you have to face one fact of life: You may have half or three-quarters of the class absent, depending on the day or the season,” Lawrence continued. “We have to say, ‘This is the way life works at PCS.’ ”
It’s worked that way for the past 78 years. The illustrious PCS alumni roster spans the decades: comedian Milton Berle, ‘40s film star Eddie Bracken, director Sidney Lumet, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, dancer Gelsey Kirkland, Oscar-winning actress Lesley Anne Warren, “Cosby” kids Tempestt Bledsoe and Malcolm-Jamal Warner.
“We are, in this small school, training in all likelihood some of the major artists of the next generation. That’s exciting,” said Lawrence, sitting in his sixth-floor corner office above 60th Street in Manhattan.
“We’re dealing with a very, very unique group of young people.”
And some very, very unique circumstances. Kids here might miss school because of the flu, but most of their excuses go far beyond the viral.
* Teen violin prodigy Mila Georgieva had to take last January off to headline a concert tour in Japan.
* High schooler Mary Rodas, 16, frequently leaves in midday to take a limousine out to her job in New Jersey, where she is vice president for a multimillion-dollar toy company. Mary designs toys.
* Twelve-year-old Lance Robinson attends classes for half a day each Wednesday, then heads over to the Palace Theater for his matinee appearance in “The Will Rogers Follies.”
“I take my whole book bag to the theater, and I do all my work there,” said Robinson, a 4 1/2-foot bundle of energy who’s now in his third Broadway show over the past two years.
His schedule is typical of the rigors a PSC youngster faces.
The native of Seaford, Del., is at school by 9 a.m. He attends the usual array of classes--math, English, physical education, science--until school’s out at 2:40 p.m. Lance heads home, changes clothes and is off to auditions for other shows. He’s due at the theater at 7 p.m. every night, where he works until 10 p.m.
He does eight shows a week, including Saturdays and Sundays, playing Will’s son James Rogers. Lance has performed for Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. On most occasions, his notebooks are backstage while he’s in the spotlight.
“It’s actually kind of easy,” he said of the daunting schedule. “You do your part all the time, so you don’t have to get into the role. I can take my mind off school to focus on the show, and then get back into schoolwork.”
It’s not just the students that are different at PCS. Step inside the front door, and it’s quickly apparent this is not P.S. 111. Framed 8-by-10 glossies of the student body hang in the front hallway. A bulletin board, marked “Casting Calls,” holds potential jobs for the students.
Another bulletin board is strictly for messages to the students. The most typical: “Call agent.” Walk down the hallway off the lobby and you’ll find a tattered telegram from George M. Cohan, one of the school’s early benefactors, promising financial aid.
There’s no basketball team, no debate society, no cheerleaders, no pep band, no glee club. Most of the students are simply too busy, said Janice Aubrey of the PCS admissions office.
“The after-school activities are minimal,” said Aubrey. “Our students need to be free to pursue their careers.”
The ever-changing work schedules also ensure there’s no crush of students in the hallways of the six-story building. On a recent morning, just four high school students were stopping by their lockers--a model, a dancer, a writer and a painter.
Such freedom and flexibility doesn’t come cheap. Annual tuition is $10,000. The school’s current enrollment of 199 includes 60 musicians, 60 dancers, 53 actors and an assortment of models, Olympic hopefuls and fine arts students.
The school is also international. The spring semester’s group features students from Australia, Bulgaria, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Lithuania.
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