OCPAC names a new VP

The Orange County Performing Arts Center named Talena Mara, a veteran educator and administrator who has worked at the Juilliard School and elsewhere, as its vice president of education Thursday.

Mara, who is scheduled to start her job Nov. 3, has served since 1995 on the faculty of the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program in New York, where she teaches chorus and performance workshops.

Previously, she was the director of education and audience development for New York City Opera and director of educational outreach at Manhattan School of Music.

She applied for the newly created position at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, she said, because she believed the center took an innovative approach to merging art with the education community.

“When you work in the education field in the arts, you can see on paper when something is different, and this job is different,” Mara said. “It is very much a futuristic job from my end of things, where the education department is thought of as a department that plays a significant role in an arts organization.”

Mara’s appointment represents another expansion for the center as a part of the educational community.

In the last two years, the center — which had already run a number of educational programs for years, including the “Summer at the Center” workshop for at-risk teens and the ArtsTeach series that puts artists in schools — has founded a new educational lab and studio theater and announced plans to reach nearly 1 million students annually.

Center President Terrence Dwyer said Mara had been chosen from an extensive list of candidates in a nationwide search. In addition to overseeing the center’s long-running educational programs, he said, Mara would work with the staff to expand its outreach into the community through the Internet, newsletters and other media.

“We’re hoping that our audiences will find many additional levels at which to value the center, more than just how much they liked the last production,” he said.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].