Before anyone else believed a low-income elementary school in the Nashville suburb of Madison could become a place where kids stood proudly under stage lights, voices steady, lines memorized, costumes aglow, Austyn Taylor did.
Taylor, an integrated studies major with a focus in technical theatre and lighting at Middle Tennessee State University, wasn’t a teacher. He wasn’t even out of high school.
He was just 16 when he began this bold endeavor, and he continues his work as a college student.
And yet, over the next three years, this teenager from Madison would quietly cofound a theatre program inside a school where students regularly missed class for lack of transportation, where English was seldom the first language spoken at home.
Today, the Metro Nashville Public School is no longer just Amqui Elementary. It is Amqui Global Communications Magnet, a growing K-8 hub of culture, creativity, and global storytelling. The theatre program Taylor helped birth is now part of the school’s identity. And a lifeline for many of its kids.