The Milwaukee Youth Arts Center (MYAC) is a first of its kind Arts-in-education Facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is a contemporary, cutting edge performing arts education and rehearsal facility for the young people of southeastern Wisconsin, and gives children the opportunity to express themselves through the arts in a fun, creative, multicultural environment in a setting that offers well-designed, educationally appropriate rehearsal halls, classrooms and other training spaces, as well as a theater resource center, music library, costume shop and administrative offices.
The Milwaukee Youth Arts Center and its associated programs are dedicated to fostering talent, developing character and building the audiences of tomorrow.
The center is a collaboration between First Stage Children's Theater and Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra. It opened in early 2005.
The Milwaukee Youth Arts Center is home to First Stage Children's Theater, Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, Danceworks, Festival City Symphony, Milwaukee Children's Choir, and African American Children's Theater, along with other groups who rent the facility for individual events.
The building includes more than 55,000 sq ft (5,100 m2) of program space. There are five large rehearsal halls with industry-standard acoustic configurations. The nine additional classrooms and two small rehearsal/practice rooms provide optimal soundproofing in order to accommodate a large number of programs at one time. The largest rehearsal hall, the Youth Arts Hall, is 3,800 sq ft (350 m2). and serves as a performance venue for MYSO groups and student productions of the First Stage Theater Academy. In the center of the building is the 3,200 sq ft (300 m2) "Commons" area, which provides an area for parents and students to relax while in the building.
The nine smaller classrooms and two rehearsal/practice rooms are named after familiar figures in theatre and music: Duke Ellington, Lorraine Hansberry, Gustav Mahler, Martha Graham, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare, Dmitri Shostakovich, Stephen Sondheim, Konstantin Stanislavski, Arthur Miller, and "B3," which stands for Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven.