Long Beach theater makes next 3 shows free for high school students

Cultivating young audiences is a big deal for arts organizations, and International City Theatre in Long Beach is responding with a pretty big deal of its own: High school students get free admission to its next three productions.

The offer applies to the two previews ICT runs on Wednesdays and Thursdays for each show, before the official Friday night opening. Normally student admissions to previews cost $24.

First up is Sarah Ruhl’s comedy “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” (June 5-6), followed by “Red” (Aug. 21-22), John Logan’s Tony-winning drama about artist Mark Rothko’s fiery confrontation with the art world’s commercial imperatives, and “Don’t Dress for Dinner” (Oct. 9-10), Robin Hawdon’s adaptation of Marc Camoletti’s French farce about extramarital hanky-panky.

FULL COVERAGE: 2013 Spring arts preview

Any high school student – not just ones from Long Beach – can get in free by making a reservation at (562) 495-4595, then showing up with a student ID on performance night.

Various studies have shown that if people don’t get an introduction when they’re young, the odds grow slim that they’ll attend classical music concerts, plays or dance performances as adults. “We want to help kids learn to connect on a human level – not through texting or emails, but people-to-people through theater,” said ICT’s artistic director, caryn desai (who’s of the ee cummings school of punctuation).

Part of the downtown Long Beach Performing Arts Center, ICT seats about 350 people and is convenient to buses and the Metro Blue Line. What if a bunch of diabolical English, drama and (in the case of the Rothko show) art teachers start hyping the offer to their students, creating a run on the box office?

It’s a problem desai said she’d be glad to have. “We can easily accommodate 150 students per preview performance,” she wrote in an email. “I would relish the day that we had so many students vying for a seat that I had to consider accommodating them at an additional performance!”

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