Improvisation helps girls find their voices
The Recorder, July 18, 2011
“What tends to happen to girls when they hit adolescence is they lose confidence,” Brown-Waite said. In making the film in a collaborative process with other girls, the participants get to “see their contribution as important to the whole.” “The end product would not be the same if they weren’t there,” Brown-Waite said. Seeing the importance of their own contributions helps girls regain their voice that may have faded during their teenage years, she said. “And, of course, it’s fun.
Youth media expert hired to develop curriculum for ACT NOW
The Sentinel, August 27, 2009
Amherst - Diana Coryat, media producer, educator, and former executive director of Global Action Project (G.A.P.) recently started a three-month, grant funded-countract with ACT NOW! Inc. to develop a curricular package on the MOVExperience® method, a technique proven to be over 95 percent effective in raising self esteem in youth at risk.
Film camp teaches girls to believe in themselves
Amherst Bulletin, July 10, 2009
Who do girls have to look up to these days? Is it Paris and Lindsay? Maybe Barbie or Bratz?
Nancy Fletcher, executive director and founder of ACT NOW!, wants to show young girls that they can grow up to be so much more than unthinking sex objects. She's been doing this for the better part of a decade by running MOVIExperience Playshops, improvisational filmmaking for young girls who hail from all over the Pioneer Valley.
Her goal: to keep girls listening to their own, true voices.
ACT NOW! enhances girls' images by Katy Noone
Worcester Telegram and Gazette, June 16, 2003
Worcester-"I'm proud of you." These words, written in soap on a mirror at the end of "A Teen's Life," a movie conceived written and then viewed by a group of Latino girls, encompassed the feelings of the main characters as well as the young actresses themselves. The teenagers laughed and cheered as they watched their movie.
Film projects help lift girls' self-esteem by Scott Merzbach
Daily Hampshire Gazette, July 30, 2002
Not everyone would describe building a fire pit or constructing a staircase of logs and soil as summertime fun. But for Miranda Jacobus and Julia Kurtz, two 12-year-olds from Shutesbury, this work, which involves using shovels and wheelbarrows and doing some heavy-lifting, is a labor of love.
Read more: Film projects help lift girls' self-esteem by Scott Merzbach
Getting what you want
The Women's Times, May 2002
What happens when eleven girls from the Hilltowns get together to write a script and make a movie? "They get invested," says Nancy Fletcher, director of ACT NOW in Belchertown, " and go beyond what they think they can do." She teaches teen and adolescent girls "improvised movie making," a format that allows them to invent their own story and improvise each scene.
How girls learn to take the lead in their own lives by making movies by Christina L. Barber
Daily Hampshire Gazette, March 3-4, 2001
The film's title: "The Haunted Slumber Party." Setting: An old Victorian house in Holyoke. Director: Nancy Fletcher, local entrepreneur, PR pro and one-time comedy-improv-troupe performer. Cast: A dozen hyperactive preteen girls from inner city Holyoke. Time frame: 24 hours. Script: None.
Roots in Chicago
ACT NOW! is an outgrowth of MOVIExperience™, David Shepherd's method of creating improvisational movies. Shepherd, whose role in producing professional improvisational theater in Chicago in the 1950's earned him the nickname "father of improv," is credited with launching the careers of Alan Alda, Elaine May, Mike Nichols and others.
Lights! Camera! Self-Esteem!
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly Profile in the Spring 2001 Issue
Nancy Fletcher '68 hates to see forthright and independent preteen girls gradually retreat into a shell when they hit puberty. As self-esteem plummets, they tend to "tone it down" to be more acceptable. "But how can I tell these spunky ten- and 11-year-old girls that they'll run into the wall in a few years?" she wondered. If she warned them, the girls would scoff. Yet the problem is real.
