About
How We Do it
Summer Theatre Arts Immersion
About 100 of your friends will enroll in our summer theatre immersion experience learning acting, movement, voice, technical theatre, design, an lots more about theatre. Your hard work will create two summer productions, a full-length summer musical and another play.
You will attend auditions and rehearsals and perform for family, friends, and your community. You will get to wok with 6-12 professional artists from a many different fine arts areas including playwrights, directors, musical directors, composers, musicians, visual artists, costumers, choreographers, video, sound, media, promotional, and lighting designers. College students, interns, and older kids are recruited as stage managers, assistant directors, costume, props, and set construction; and sound, lighting, costuming, and stage crew. About 100 parent volunteers work with you and the artistic staff each summer on costuming, set, and props construction; organizing box office, concessions, house management, and backstage assistance; and gathering evaluation data.
Auditions
You will come to an audition where you will first do warm-up and movement activities. Then you will bring a prepared two-minute song and create a short monologue or story matched to the theme of the show, and perform it for the director and other cast members. Don’t worry everyone is pulling for you and will not laugh at you, unless you are telling funny story! If you are older, you can opt for a more professional audition that includes a two-minute scripted monologue.
If you can complete the audition and can agree to our guidelines, and are available for the rehearsal and performance schedule, you will be cast in one of the two summer shows! Even if you have a disability, we will work to make it happen for you also! There is a fee for participation, but generous partial and full scholarships are available.
Rehearsal
You will get instruction in both theatre skills and other related theatre learning based on Ohio’s Fine Arts Academic Content Standards selected from grades 3-12. That link might be something your parents or even your teachers might want to read. But don’t worry! This isn’t summer school! You learn while you do! And you do a LOT! Rehearsals last five to eight weeks starting with after school rehearsals and then moving to daily five-hour sessions after you are out of school.
You will learn things three different ways. Basic theatre knowledge will be taught in fun ways by older youth leaders (DaBigs) through short handouts, discussions, demonstrations, role plays, and interactive activities. Rehearsals are the hands-on doing part. More complex questions and discussions will occur during rehearsal feedback sessions. We might even have a field trip or two! During your experience you will tell us what you are learning, create some things yourself, think about how your experience is part of something bigger, and how the arts might be important to you in the future. We call this evaluation! There are lots of ways we try to make this fun-doing video journals, writing journal entries, talking, and performing! To help us create a better program the Summer Theatre Arts Immersion education components are currently funded by an Ohio Arts Council through an Arts Partnership grant.
Performance
Demonstration of skills includes three to four dress rehearsal sessions and five to eight performances for the public. Feedback, instruction and production adjustments are made to the production during this phase. Youth are required to complete all phases of the performance demonstration including costumes, props, set, dance, song, dialogue delivery, characterization, and clean-up and strike.
And something else you should know!
Our hands-on approach to educational theatre is fancy language for learning while doing. Yeah and we have fun while we are learning! We only do original productions. That means a playwright is probably writing a special story just for you and the other cast members right now, that no one else has ever seen before! They are funny and have a message about something important happening in our world right now. Probably something important to you and other young people your age, but something that anyone at any age can appreciate. You will work hard, we expect alot, and from day one we expect you to be like “theatre professionals”. It isn’t just running around and goofing off. But when you have this really great show that you have worked hard to put together with old and new friends- and are showing off to your friends, family, and community- trust us, you will feel proud and successful! Our other YSKP kids have told us that! All of you have something worthwhile and important to contribute, even if it is your first time! It is an unforgettable and fun experience that will give you memories and skills for a lifetime! It is simply an experience unlike any other theatre experience you have had or will have.