(Green room and studio at Hurrah TV and Film Academy. Photo by Michael Bibbo of Waverleigh Creative.)
By Montague Gammon III
The Hurrah Players unique new Nusbaum Family TV & Film Academy, which starts its first round of classes for ages 12 and up on January 6, is powered by passion (for teaching) and professionalism (as in Emmy winning), with an emphasis on making learning fun.
“If you’re not having fun with what you’re doing, find something else to do,” is a life-long guiding principle for Michael Bibbo, the Regional Emmy winning TV producer whose quarter century plus of professional experience has lead him to become Director of the Academy.
Bibbo said in a phone interview that he “got the bug for teaching” when he was “teaching at ODU for a couple of semesters,” while building his own production company, Waverleigh Creative. (His Regional Emmy was for a project Waverleigh produced for NASA.)
Hurrah Players had its own roots in education, which remains central to its existence; Founder and Artistic Director Hugh Copeland was a local high school teacher before branching out 40 years ago to found Hurrah, with just 12 students in one acting class.
Now Hurrah annually offers over 1000 hours of classes, day camps and workshops in all aspects of live theater. It’s also known for its live shows focusing on young performers and whole-family audiences. Hurrah alumni can be found performing on TV and Broadway, and across the whole spectrum of American theater.
It was “about 2020,” Bibbo related, that “Hurrah gave me a call, saying ‘We are looking to collaborate with some production companies about a project that we are working on…’ “
Copeland and his Hurrah team met with Bibbo and his wife Jennifer, a former 4th Grade teacher who co-owns Waverleigh and serves as voice talent.
“They said ‘We’ve been kicking around having a television studio as part of Hurrah’ and I immediately thought just, ‘Wow, what a great idea,’” Bibbo remembered.
When he asked what kind of classes Hurrah thought of offering, Copeland’s response was “What kind of classes do you want to teach?” A similar exchange happened when he asked about studio space, and he was told that Hurrah was “relying on [his] expertise.”
So he became a consultant on the construction of the studio and classroom building, which rose three stories high, directly across Wilson Avenue from Hurrah’s Hugh Copeland Center in downtown Norfolk’s NEON District.
State of the art was a prerequisite, he had been told.
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Bibbo noted that he had never been asked to build a studio from the ground up, but in another part of our chat he did mention that he had begun college studying architecture before going to film school. He later cited local architect Ed Lazaron for being “a great guy” for his patient work on the Academy building.
“About half way through the project,” Bibbo said Hurrah asked him if he “would like to stick around to teach.”
“I saw that as an extension of what I was doing at ODU, but in a different way,” he said, going on to mention that he thought, “This could be a jewel in the back yard of Norfolk and fantastic for kids in our area to learn the craft that I love so much.”
“I just don’t think there are many spaces around, if you are a middle school or high school student,” Bibbo said, to study TV, film and video. (It is unique in Hampton Roads.)
The first round of classes ranges from “Pixel Perfect Photography 1,” which is about still photography with digital single lens reflex cameras, up through “Broadcast Bootcamp,” a “hands-on, immersive class” that will “equip students with the essential skills for producing two short promotional videos.”
Another class will teach making videos with an iPhone.
There’s a no-experience-needed class in animation, another called “Lights, Camera, Action! 1,” in which students will “learn to write, film, light, edit and direct a short film in groups,” having been first trained in theory and techniques. And in the class simply titled “Spots,” students will work with a “real-world” client to produce a professional 30 second commercial which, the description implies, just might be aired out there in the “real-world!”
(Full descriptions of classes are available on the Hurrah Players website.)
“The magic of film production and television production is that there are so many things to do. The space we built will give kids the opportunity find out what they want to do…editor…camera operator…writer.”
Bibbo further explained, “The bottom line is to tell a story in some capacity, and I thought, what can I do to give students the best possible space to do that. We have a couple of classrooms, we have an editing space, a ‘green room’ [backstage lingo for lounge], a place for producers to rent and do productions on their own, so it’s a shared space for the community. Folks will come in, once or twice a month and tell kids what their passion is, and maybe spark something in them…”
Eventually, Bibbo said, he “wants to introduce students to companies that hire professionals and ultimately get them a job. I hope the Academy would provide a pathway to a lucrative and stable career.”
Well before the Hurrah project arose, Bibbo’s wife asked him what did he want to do late in life, and he had said, “ I really like the connection I had with students, and I guess I would go back to that, but it would be so cool if there were a place where we could get kids who weren’t in college, kids who were just coming up and were in school and had an interest.”
“I love to brag about this,” he said, “All the interns I have had have gone on to be successful, and I wondered, ‘How do I continue that, and then I get this phone call from Hurrah and I thought, ‘This is it!’ This is how I will continue the gifts that I have been given to hand over to a new generation of film makers.”
Influencers and YouTube stars are not doing it on their own, he pointed out. “Maybe this is where I spend the rest of my career, creating communication skills that are valuable” for that new generation of film makers.
“What a gift to have this in our backyard! And we are just getting started, and who knows where it’s going to go!”
“It’s really about having fun and learning a cool craft.”
INTERESTED?
Hurrah Players TV and Film Academy
Registration Currently Open
1st session – 1/6 – 3/14 (10 weeks)
2nd session – 3/24 – 5/30 (10 weeks)
3rd session – 9/8 – 11/14 (10 weeks)
