Art Happens Here With John Lithgow, which sees the actor study dance, ceramics, silk-screen printing and vocal jazz with students in Los Angeles, debuts on PBS April 26. The one-hour special “is a love letter to the teachers and to the students who bring arts education to life every day,” said Tamara Gould, executive producer, and one that addresses a lack of arts education in schools, according to the producers.
Lithgow and Gould spoke about the special at the TCA’s winter press tour. He credited teachers he had as a teen who encouraged him to pursue the arts.
“I've always appreciated teachers, particularly art teachers,” he said, adding that Art Happens Here aims to capture “that electric moment between great teachers and willing students in the arts.”
Lithgow’s credits include the films Killers of the Flower Moon, The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. His TV work includes The Old Man, Third Rock From the Sun and The Crown, where he played Winston Churchill. He’s also a veteran of Broadway.
Art Happens Here sees him visit Self Help Graphics & Art, the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, the Community Center of La Cañada Flintridge and the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA).
Lithgow shared his fondness for painting at press tour. “I nurse a faraway fantasy of just either retiring or taking a sabbatical from acting to do nothing but painting for a year, but I'm sure I'll never do it,” he said. “They keep wanting me to act for some reason more now than ever. Now that I'm an old man, I have no competition.”
The program is produced for PBS by PBS SoCal, in association with Shore View Entertainment, The Watershed Company, Ninetythree Media and Life & Thyme, Inc. Perry Simon, John Lithgow and Juan Devis are executive producers. Gould, the PBS SoCal chief content officer, is executive in charge of production.
Funding for it was provided by John and Louise Bryson, along with the California Community Foundation.
