Decatur High School Performing Arts Association

CHORUS: Decatur High School has 130 chorus students. DHS consistently ranks in the top number of chorus students at All State Chorus and All State Reading Chorus of any public high school in Georgia. Beacon Hill Middle School Chorus has over 200 students in the program. BHMS Chorus had one of the highest number of middle schoolers attending All State Chorus. Both choruses perform their own fall, winter and spring concerts as well as participate in special events for combined choruses and chorus with orchestra. The DHS & BHMS Combined Women's Chorus had the honor of being a featured performance for the opening of the Georgia ACDA Conference.

ACTING: In the fall, Decatur Performs produced the "Shakespearean" play Book of Will, written by DHS alum Lauren Gunderson, with 50 performers and crew members. In the Spring, we produced the play Puffs featuring a cast and crew of 60 students and a special outdoor mystery dinner theatre in collaboration with DHS' Culinary Department. In addition, Decatur Performs produced the middle school play Alice in Wonderland with 60 student performers. These 18 shows played to a total audience of 2600. Over 60 high school acting students were members of the DHS International Thespian Troupe #5905 with more than half attending the ThesCon conference in Columbus, GA in February.

ORCHESTRA: Decatur Performs supports both the Decatur High School Orchestra and the Beacon Middle School Orchestra. The DHS Symphonic Orchestra and the DHS Chamber Orchestra have a combined 50 instrumentalists and the BHMS Orchestras (6th Grade Beginning, 6th Grade Intermediate, 7th Grade and 8th Grade Orchestras) have nearly 100 combined performers. Each school's orchestra performs at least three concerts throughout the school year and participate in All State and Large Group Performance Evaluations (LGPE).

CLASSROOM SUPPORT: Our high school chorus is 130 voices strong, musical theatre classes serve 65 students, acting-70 students, technical theatre -nearly 120 students and orchestra 100 students (and that's just high school classes). All total, our programs support over 700 students. We support their teachers in the classroom by providing wish list items like wireless mic sets, seated risers for the chorus classroom, instrument racks for orchestra, a new grand piano and a dedicated MAC laptop for technical theatre. We also make possible bringing in special instructors such as a stunt coordinator for a tech theatre workshop and guest violin and bass teachers to hold pre-performance clinics.

TEACHER STIPENDS: We provide money to help compensate teachers for the valuable time they put into the performing arts program outside the classroom including concert rehearsals, tech weeks spent after school before shows, weekends creating sets, and, of course, the many performances themselves.