Raue Center For The Arts in historic downtown Crystal Lake warmly welcomes new staff member Robin Irwin as Director of Education & Cultural Partnerships.
“I am beyond excited to be returning to Crystal Lake-the place where my life-long love affair with the performing arts began,” said Irwin. “The understanding that the arts are essential to the life of a community has been baked into the DNA of the Raue Center for the Arts since its founding. I look forward to joining the exceptional staff of The Raue in furthering that goal, and to helping guide the next generation of artist-citizens to find that theater and arts skills are life skills.”
Robin Irwin appeared in the original Broadway cast of the Tony award-winning TITANIC on Broadway, as well as its subsequent National tour. Other credits include the Broadway productions of GREASE! and DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES, Off-Broadway, and at regional theaters around the nation, as well numerous voice-overs for everything from baby products to chainsaws. She has been a featured soloist with symphonies from Berlin to Barbados. She’s an award-winning director and has been an instructor at NYU Tisch School for the Arts, the New York Film Academy, and Montclair State University, as well as curriculum consultant and corporate educator for arts programs nationally. She has degrees from Northwestern University and Roosevelt University, as well as graduating from prestigious programs at NYU and The Commercial Theater Institute.
As director of education at Luna-Stage, she built in-school residencies and developed cross-sector partnerships across the state and as a NJ State Arts Evaluator. She served as producing artistic director of Montclair State University’s professional development programming and for the Foxy Awards for six years, both resulting in streamlined arts education experience for over 5,000 students and educators. For the past several years, Robin was founding Executive Director of The Appalachian Center for the Arts, a full-service arts center in Eastern Kentucky where she revolutionized all the arts, both performing and visual. She’s served on several boards, but most recently the Kentuckians for the Arts.
“Building partnerships is a point of personal pride for me. The arts get so often talked about as something that is the exclusive province of the elite or privileged, but I’ve devoted my work life to amplifying the arts as a tool of healing hearts, opening minds, and as a medium that should pave the pathways to fun and joy.”
For more information regarding Raue Center and Raue Center School For The Arts or to purchase tickets for upcoming shows, please visit our website at www.rauecenter.org or call the Box Office at (815) 356-9212.
