This year on Sunday October 27th the Arthur Miller Foundation Honors celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Arthur Miller Foundation Theater Education Program in partnership with NYC Public Schools, by hosting a special gala honoring 16 time Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys, Tony nominated playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist playwright Kristoffer Diaz and pianist and Keys’ piano teacher Linda Aziza Miller.
The benefit paid tribute to the power of theater education by honoring artists, educators, and advocates who have made significant contributions to the arts and arts education. AMF Theater Education Programs provide theater teachers with certification, training, and critical resources to build and sustain quality in-school theater programs impacting over 60,000 public school students in all 5 boroughs of NYC and in Bridgeport and Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut
Alicia Keys received the AMF Arts & Culture Award, as a former NYC public school student who has remained committed throughout her career to creating opportunities for young artists and puts access to education at the forefront of much of her philanthropic work. AMF honored Kristoffer Diaz, also an alumnus of NYC Public Schools, with the AMF Legacy Award, for carving a meaningful impact in the American theater, and Linda Aziza Miller who was a former teacher at the Performing Arts High School received the AMF Excellence in Arts Education Award for her dedication to public school students and access to quality, comprehensive arts instruction.
Miller who serves as pianist in Keys’ Broadway play Hell’s Kitchen spoke about finding her calling as a pianist. “I fell in love [with it] when I was eight years old. I was fascinated by it and it was something that I knew I wanted to play. It’s like when you meet certain people and certain people stick out more than others. Well when I met the piano it was calling me, it was literally calling me and I answered it and said ‘hey I’m here'”, Miller said. Miller also shared her advice to aspiring pianist saying, “It doesn’t matter how old you are, all that matters is that you are committed and dedicated to putting the work in to get the results that you want.”
Diaz who is the man responsible for writing Hell’s Kitchen, and was a NYC public school student himself spoke about his hopes for the future of theater education saying, “I hope that theater just is in people’s lives. I hope that theater is not only in the lives of people who want to make theater professionally like myself and these incredible performers here, but also just people who are doing other things with their lives, if you work at a bank, if you are a sanitation worker, whatever it is that you do. Certainly, if you are a politician if you are somebody who is making decisions about the future of the world, i hope that theater plays a role in your life. What we try to do is build empathy in people, we try to put characters that they haven’t seen before in front of them and we try to put representation for folks so that they can see themselves on stage. Not everyone that goes through theater education has to become an artist someday. we want you to become just an appreciator of it and we want our art to impact you in some kind of way and change your heart a little bit and make you think differently about the entire world”, Diaz said.
