Performing Arts

Take a deep breath. Muster up your courage. Your teachers will prepare you well so you are ready to share your story with an audience, whether in song, on the stage or through dance. Every year at PS, students and teachers practice courage by trying new things and learning from taking the risk.

Do you want to try out for a solo? Is the physicality of drama your thing? Do you think you’d rather write the play than play the lead? Identity is rough hewn throughout the Early Childhood and Lower School setting. The performing arts at PS allows you to try on different roles, learning about yourself in the process.

Let your voice ring out: in leading the chapel benediction, in classroom presentations, in standing up for yourself as well as in performance. PS will give you vocal skills and confidence. Your job will be to let your voice, as unique as your fingerprint, be heard.

Footwork. Concentration. Sight Reading. Projection. Listening. Musicality. Endurance. Rehearsal Etiquette. Body Regulation. These foundational skills and more are fortified through preparation and practice, year after year at PS. Students  go with confidence to high school prepared to try out for choir, audition for plays, and join new ensembles like dance team or band.

There is breadth to the human experience, why not share it? Imagine pain, hope, hilarity, joy. Our imagination enhances expressiveness. Imaginative play begins in Early Childhood at PS, but does not end for one’s entire life. The seeds of Lower School's musical programs bloom in the Middle School Musical.

Choral part work begins in Lower School music, and increases in complexity in Middle School choir. Begin guitar in seventh grade and end up accompanying with chordal harmonies in chapel band. Ps creates harmony both literally and figuratively. Research tells us singing makes you happier, and group music making forges social bonds.

Breathe together. Move in concert with one another. Sing a stunning unison. Working as one is the Mount Everest of collaboration. The performing arts builds this skill like no other discipline. Our performing arts introduces students to the pursuit of lofty goals like relinquishing individualism to promote cohesion.

Go big, or go home. If you’re going to make a mistake, make a big one. While this mantra may not always be the advice to heed in life or in the classroom, boldness steals the show and is rewarded in performance and on stage. Assert yourself with your gifts and talents. Let your light shine!

Natural opportunities for leadership such as our Lower School choir officers, a front row of dancers, soloists in the 5th grade musical or standouts in an 8th grade one act play emerge in performing arts ensembles as students are called on to be models of excellence for their peers.  

We will sing the National anthem at your sporting event. We will bring Christmas cheer into your retirement home. We may take the light rail to the medical center and share joy and healing. Performing groups serve as PS Ambassadors in Houston.

Talents are meant to be shared. God blesses each of us with imagination, wisdom and will to build skill and technique, and heart for service. We are fortunate to give our students the opportunity to share their talents every year in a variety of venues on and off campus.

Applause is the audience’s gratitude. Having prepared well, we can receive their kindness confidently with a bend at the waist. When the bow is over, it is wise to inwardly applaud ourselves for being bold enough to take risks out in the spotlight in the name of creative expression.