By By Adam Prestridge
The Leadership Atmore Class of 2006 is sticking to their word.
Prior to graduating the character building, community awareness course in May, class members agreed to focus in on cleaning up Atmore as their class project.
Since, the class held an Atmore's Picking Up day prior to Mayfest and, as part of their campaign, developed a sponsorship program and an educational program to present to area schools.
The group will host Steve Trash, an eco-entertainer, illusionist and comedian the first week of October as they introduce his anti-litter program to students across Atmore.
"We learned about Steve Trash from Shirley West of Turtle Point and she said he is an excellent entertainer and that he may have a program that would tie in with our picking up project, which he did," Leadership Class of 2006 classmate and education program committee member Lisa Reynolds said. "We developed a plan to have him go into the Atmore schools to promote anti-litter awareness."
Reynolds said the class' intentions for the educational program are to teach the future of Atmore early about littering, so the pride of having a clean community is instilled within them.
"We hope that by making it fun to learn about not littering the children will take that message home and it will stick with them all their life," she said. "We hope it helps them understand the benefits of a clean community."
Steve Trash will first visit Rachel Patterson Elementary School at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 2 and will wrap up the day at Atmore Christian School at 1 p.m. On Oct. 3, the program will first be held at 8: 30 a.m. at Escambia Academy followed by a show at 1 p.m. at A.C. Moore Elementary School. Steve Trash will complete his tour of Atmore schools on Oct. 4 where he will perform at Escambia County Middle School at 8:30 a.m. followed by his finale at Huxford Elementary School, which begins at 1 p.m.
"We've had very positive reaction from the schools," Reynolds said. "We are all looking forward to Steve coming to town and are confident that he will do an outstanding job."
More About Steve Trash
Steve Trash, world-class eco-entertainer, has appeared on "CBS This Morning", ESPN'S "Outdoors" and CNBC's "AMERICA'S TALKING". He's been featured in the "New York Times", the "Los Angeles Times", "CBS Marketwatch", "Film Threat", "Movie Maker Magazine", "Boxing News" and he's even been featured on the cover the kids magazine "The Weekly Reader".
Over the years, Steve Trash has entertained more than 10 million children with live ecological illusions, magic tricks and family friendly funny stuff appearing in live venues all over the world including Japan, Australia, Canada and he once even performed his magic tricks above the Artic Circle.
Steve has been interested in both magic tricks and trash since he was 7 years old. Early one beautiful Alabama Christmas morning in 1969, the Trash family looked up from their open gifts and wondered where little Stevie was. After an exhaustive search, they found him on the kitchen floor digging through the compost garbage and happily doing magic tricks with the coffee grounds, egg shells and potato peels. From this glamorous entertainment business start, he spent a very happy childhood recovering other people's cast offs and creating art, magic tricks or plain old funny stuff with the things he'd found.
The career of this recycling magician was inspired early and nurtured early by his Mom's habit of buying magic books to remediate his severe dyslexia. Over the years, Steve grew into an accomplished magician. By the time he reached college age the career track as an eco-entertainer was set.
Graduating with a degree in Theater from the University of North Alabama in 1984, he spent the next eight years working as a "busker" or street performer in New York, L.A., Miami and Tokyo. Steve would gather his trash tricks, head for the local park and perform for the locals and the tourists. This was excellent experience because simultaneously, his act got better, funnier and most important of all, he made the money needed to pay his rent.
In 1990 Steve wrote, produced, and starred in a theatrical show called simply "Trash". The concept was to integrate his magic tricks with a scripted live play. It worked and the show ran for eight weeks in Hollywood at Theater/Theatre and was called "The best of the weekend" by the Los Angeles Times.
In the 1990s Steve continued to tour nationally and internationally and even starred in his own kids TV show simply called "The Steve Trash TV Show". It aired on Comcast Cable Network and was haled as the "coolest eco show on TV". More recently he's produced an even cooler kid's TV show called "Trash TV" which is now being produced for video podcast beamed up via Satellite from his TV studio in beautiful Frog Pond, Alabama.
Steve's TV studio is built into his earth-birmed home (that means it's partially buried in the earth, which allows the natural isolative abilities of dirt to warm and cool it) in Frog Pond population 76 – when Steve's not at home. An instant/on demand gas water heater heats all the water in Frog Pond Manor. This means the hot water is never wastefully stored in a tank while waiting to be used. Of course, he and his wife have a room dedicated to collecting recyclables and out back there's a recycled bin for compostable kitchen scraps. He also has a huge pile of junk that he assures his wife, "I'm gonna use that someday… I promise".
Steve Trash is a creative dynamo, constantly developing tricks, live one man shows, scripts for movies, ideas stop motion animation, artwork with trash, concepts for podcasts, and whatever else his engaged mind feels with be fruitful.
Steve's live shows are a wonder to behold. He enjoys performing both really amazing close-up sleight of hand magic tricks like changing pieces of newspaper into money, and big illusions like balancing a woman on a wooden crutch four feet off the stage.
Steve Trash loves to entertain kids and families with his World Class Environmental Entertainment.