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One local couple with backgrounds in theater and music are doing their best to spread and teach the arts in LaGrange. 

Kelton and Savanna Hunt, a married couple in LaGrange, both teach the arts and are heavily involved with the Lafayette Society of Performing Arts (LSPA) and the community. Kelton serves as the Lecturer of Music at LaGrange College and  Savanna teaches Drama at LaGrange Academy.

Savanna is the lower school theater teacher at LaGrange Academy, which is pre-K through fifth grade. She also serves as the director of the all-school musical for the academy, choreographing the high school theater program along with some show choir performances.

With LSPA, Savanna is a member of the Director Advisory Committee for the Lafayette Theater Company. 

“LSPA is like an umbrella company. It’s got a couple of different companies within it. So the theater company is what I’m a member of. I direct there. I also perform and act, stage manage, or backstage, just kind of all the facets of that theater company,” Savanna said, noting she also sometimes assists with the LSPA Theater Academy for students.

Kelton is the Lecturer of music and the Lecturer of Music Production and Audio Engineering at LaGrange College.

“I teach the majority of those music courses in the program with all the majors,” Kelton said.

Kelton also serves as the music director for the all-school musicals at the LaGrange Academy and the Music Director for LSPA’s musicals, in addition to working as a pianist to support the Callaway strings program and working with Jack Morman at Troup High School for their upcoming musical, School House Rock!

Kelton said music and the arts help him connect with students.

“I’ve got joy in being able to connect and do a form of outreach with students, especially those that are just interested in music performance,” Kelton said,  “I like to be able to share love, music, music knowledge, as much as possible, to be able to just connect with other folks that are doing good for the community and artists too.”

That’s why he loves working with LaGrange Academy and LSPA, he said.

“Working over there is a blessing to share that love over there. I just like to share the love of music with anyone who’s willing to have me,” Kelton said.

For Savanna, the love of the arts began at an early age.

“I started doing theater when I was in the third grade. I went to a fall show in my local community theater in North Georgia. When the show ended. I was like, ‘Mom. I need to do this. How do I be a part of that?’” Savanna said.

From there, Savanna did community theater until she graduated high school, becoming a member of the junior board at her community theater by the time she was a senior. She said she had never considered theater as a career but ended up auditioning for a show at LaGrange  College.

“They were doing Into the Woods. I got to audition that morning and then see the show, which my friend was in. I had always seen the theater. Never saw the main campus. Got accepted, committed, saw the main campus for the first time at orientation, and then just stuck with it all throughout college,” she said.

Savanna was able to get some summer jobs, teaching in summer theater camps in Florida for two years before COVID suspended the camps.

“I always knew that I wanted to teach theater, somehow I had forgotten it while I was in college, but that came back around as I was thinking about what am I going to do in life when I was about to be a senior at LC. I remember that kind of reignited my direction of where I was going,” Savanna said.

Savanna said her career path shows her students that you do not need to be on Broadway to have a fulfilling career in theater.

“That’s one thing I try to tell my students, they say, ‘It’s not feasible. It’s not real,’ and I say, ‘I have a career in theater right now. I’m teaching you.’ Teachers sometimes get a bad rap, but you don’t have those people on Broadway if you don’t have theater teachers. You don’t have these big musicians if you don’t have music teachers. You have to have that foundation and be able to get those skills,” Savanna said.

Kelton said he also helps inspire students to follow their dreams of having a career in music after college.

“I have a class where we talk about the world of music after college,” Kelton said. “I was to show them the techniques that you can use, to be able to use social media to your advantage, to be a source for income and get people to listen to your music.”

As an experiment, Kelton did it himself and created a music centered Instagram page and TikTok page that amassed a following of over 220,000 people and got verified.

“I use that page as a teaching method with a lot of my students at the college to be able to show the techniques that you use on there, to be able to find an audience, talk about your music, be able to connect and build essentially a business off of it, sharing around what you love to do,”  Kelton said.