Performing Stars of Marin

Executive Director | Interview - Felecia Gaston | Elizabeth Salmon Speech |
Community Integration | Memberships | Support Team

Executive Director - Felecia Gaston

Felecia Gaston is the executive director of Performing Stars of Marin.

Felecia Gaston has always known precisely what she wanted to accomplish with Marin City-based Performing Stars: “I wanted to help transform children’s lives, help them feel better about themselves, with better self-esteem and self confidence.”

And like others with similar dreams, she says her vision goes back to her own childhood. “I was very shy, not wanting to venture out, wishing for something else,” she says.

Performing Stars’ goal is to build pride, character, discipline, and self-esteem through exposure to and participation in the arts.  “What’s so magical about the arts?” asks Gaston. “It’s like a dream world, something you’ve always imagined you want to do. And when you do it, it gives you a good feeling inside.”

For Gaston, taking part in the arts has life-long benefits. “Our kids are learning social skills, good work ethics, manners, grooming. These can open up a new world.”

And greater self-esteem and independence, she explains, can make a major change in the conditions that cause poverty. “Plus,” she reports proudly, “no one who stuck with Performing Stars has been in trouble with the law.”

But for all her passion about the long-term impact of Performing Stars on kids’ lives, she is deeply satisfied by the daily successes she witnesses. “I love seeing the kids’ faces and knowing they are fulfilling their own dream,” she says.

(Exerpt from the Marin Community Foundation’s “Twenty Years: Twenty Visions,” written by Fred Silverman)

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My Interview with Felecia Gaston,
The Founder of Performing Stars of Marin

By Chelsea Walsch
(Written when she was in high school)

The rain was coming down in a cold drizzle and the sky was a deep charcoal gray, but inside the townhouse where Felicia Gaston’s Performing Stars of Marin is based, I was warmed by the sight of costumes, toys, and wall-sized mirrors. In 1990, Felicia founded Performing Stars of Marin in Marin City, which is a program that allows low-income, multi-cultural children to engage in the arts and a wide range of sports that they otherwise have no access to.

Felicia is a friendly, warm-hearted human being. She is always smiling and always active. Her positive energy is not only inspiring, it is electrifying to say the least. I had heard about the not-for-profit program from Felicia for years when she would come see my mother and I at our business. We would copy her brochures and song sheets for her and she would tell us the latest news about what the kids were doing. When Felicia won The Jefferson Award in early 2006, I finally got to see on the news what she had been doing all of these years. Now that I was actually here, it seemed even more remarkable. She began the program to help under-privelaged children realize their dreams—something Felicia found from personal experience to be an indispensable part of growing up.

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Born in 1955 in Marietta, Georgia, Felicia experienced the effects of segregation. At age five, Felicia wanted to do ballet, but because of segregation she could not. Ballet became just an “irrational” dream. When she was put into a white school in the sixth grade, she became shy and withdrawn. Ironically, before integration, Felicia’s self-esteem had no bounds. She was raised in a household where pride and achievement were everything, and she was taught by her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to learn as many skills as possible and to do them to the best of her ability. Growing up, Felicia’s Grandmother—a member of the first gospel group in Marietta named “The Sacred Hearts”—brought gospel music into their home, further instilling in Felicia a sense of pride in African-American culture.

“I never wanted to be white...I grew up in such a rich household and came from such a proud community that the thought just never crossed my mind.”

After changing schools, Felicia seemed to lose her sense of confidence, and as a result, she did not pursue her desires. This is the main reason why Felicia began Performing Stars of Marin. Her humanitarian efforts have touched the lives of hundreds of children who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to explore their interests. The program is not just a venue to learn dancing, singing, and proper etiquette, but it is a place where kids can gain the confidence they need to establish the careers they want. She said of the societal benefits of the program, “Everyone benefits from children growing up to be what they want to be.”

On December 1, 1969, Felicia, her three siblings, her mother, and her mother’s new husband moved to Los Angeles—the night after the Watts race riots had erupted. At the age of fourteen, Felicia faced the challenge of adapting to a bustling city climate, one of violence, racism, and upheaval. Trying her best to keep her children separated from this environment, her mother enrolled them in the Wilshire District’s finest charm school. Felicia learned poise and etiquette at the school, and finally regained her self-confidence. She was finally given the chance to study ballet in her high school, and she also began to become involved in the Baptist Church. Not only was she was finally able to muster the confidence to sing and dance on stage in the church musicals and plays, but the stage was also being set for her success in the future.

“When I think about it, it all has to do with my dream of wanting to take ballet as a young person...it just wasn’t available.” Today, Felicia is encouraging the children in her program, as young as three, to just try. In their early age, the kids are drawn to the program because they get to dance and have fun, but as they grow, they gain an understanding of why their parents—and Felicia—encouraged them to be a part of it. One student, who began with Felicia around the age of three, stayed in the program until she decided to be a volunteer for the program. She is currently studying to be a nurse, but she spends a lot of her time dancing, singing and playing with the kids, just like Felicia did with her. Felicia’s son attends Marin Country Day School, a school characterized by rigorous academics. She pushes him to do his very best in all aspects of his life, passing down the very wisdom of the family members she was raised by. Felicia has an undeniable effect on those who come into contact with her.

Just like with her own son, Felicia serves as a catalyst for low-income children to go out into the community and establish a sense that it is their own. She pushes them to “mix and mingle” and become involved. She is, essentially, handing these children the tools they need in order to shape and build their own futures and identities, and is allowing them to turn a deaf ear to the racism and the stereotypes that aim to stand in their way. She is the support the children need.

“I really feel that if children feel good about themselves early then they can say, you know, ‘I can do this’ and ‘I can do that’...’I can follow a dream,’ but I have to have the proper resources.” Performing Stars of Marin is making sure that the children do not feel comfortable being spectators, and that they only feel comfortable with being a “star” and achieving their goals.

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I chose to interview Felicia Gaston because she has been an inspiration to me for the eight years that I have known her. Even when I first met her when I was nine, I felt encouraged to do just what the kids at Performing Stars were doing: It was almost as if I was in her program. I suddenly felt jealous that, somehwere, kids were doing this cool, fun stuff and I was just going to school and doing homework. I joined the girls basketball team because of Felicia. She is a wonderful human being to be around, and I am very lucky that I know her. If it weren’t for her, there would be many children—including myself—that wouldn’t know that the future is waiting for them. Felicia makes you become conscious of reality. She makes you want to make choices.

From this interview I learned a lot about Felicia’s background, which helped me to interpret my own past experiences. I can now look back and say, “That is why I want to make films,” or, “This is why I feel so strongly about this.” I now feel more passionately about my values because I have determined where they originated, and I feel like my will has been strengthened to sustain those values. I now know that my experiences define me.

This interview could be very helfpul if our group were to make a movie having to do with Black pride. Felicia is a good example of someone who has risen above the negativity hurled at her and has decided to fight it with a logical weapon. At the core of racial issues, underneath all the history and facts, there is the more serious issue of human happiness. If a person of a minority can achieve what they want to achieve then the racism will implode. We must begin at the source, just as Felicia has been doing: provide the opportunities and the support, and let them take it from there.

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