Home > RAPA Announcement

ANDREANO STEPS DOWN AFTER 34 YEARS AT RAPA
RAPA Revives under the Creative and Artistic Direction of
JUDITH RANALETTA

Judi Andreano, Founder of the Rochester Association of Performing Arts, RAPA, formally announces her retirement after her long run in show business. Judi was a visionary in forming RAPA over 30 years ago, and she has had a great influence on young people, many of whom have gone on to successful careers in the performing arts and related fields. The Rochester Theatre community wishes her the very best in her much deserved retirement.

RAPA has a New Vision. With a new board that is currently forming, RAPA will be guided under the inspiration of Judith Ranaletta, who is the new Artistic and Creative Director. Ranaletta brings her unique knowledge, talents, experience and successful programming to young people all over the Rochester region, and intends to provide young people who are interested in the performing arts with a place and programs where they can learn and perform at the highest level.

Ranaletta was the Vocal Music and Drama Director at Greece Athena High School for 29 years prior to her retirement in 2011. She has dozens of students performing on Broadway, in national tours, in opera companies world-wide, on international recording labels, in television and film, in technical theater, and teaching in classrooms throughout the United States. Founder of the Greece Athena Show Choir that won several national championships and has toured world-wide, Ranaletta has been invited to take her new Roc City Singers Show Choir, which will be run out of RAPA, to perform at the 2012 Olympics, and there are several performances already booked locally.

The new RAPA intends to provide high quality acting classes, related master classes, which will include collaborations with many other local theatre groups, as well as numerous Broadway performers, agents and college professors that Ranaletta has relationships with, development of a performance company for younger students, male dance classes, voice lessons, music theatre productions under her direction, like the recent successful productions of Rent, Sweeny Todd, and Chicago, that she did at RAPA, and many other exciting programs that will develop as the New RAPA moves forward.

There have been so many people in the local theatre community that have already expressed an interest in helping Ranaletta develop this new, creative and exciting programming. There is a wider-held vision of a vibrant performing arts center for youth that want to learn and perform at that very high level, even if they don't intend to go on to a career.

Guy Thorne and N" Jelle Gage, two of the Founders of Futurpoint Dance Company, a truly brilliant, exciting, innovative, and ever growing in its creativity and popularity, are currently housed at the RAPA facility and have committed to work with Judith to choreograph for ROC City Singers and provide those much needed male dance classes.

There is a lot of work to do. The physical plant needs to be substantially upgraded, but more importantly the New RAPA will need a lot of moral support, creative ideas and collaborations, a realization by the theatre community and the schools that it does not intend or wish to be their competition, but rather a resource for young people, that can benefit everyone in the theatre, school and greater communities, and acquire donors in these most difficult of economic times.

Please share in welcoming the New RAPA to Rochester.

Media contact: Deborah Blackwell, debragraf@rochester.rr.com