Center Stage Youth Theatre

Posts Tagged ‘Teenagers’

Center Stage Youth Theatre announces Auditions for Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Saturday October 16 and Sunday October 17 from 2:00 – 5:00 at Glenforest School on Harbor Drive in West Rutland.  There are parts for up to 50 children and teenagers ages 5 – 18, and no preparation or experience is necessary to audition.  Performances will be held in the Glenforest School Auditorium December 9, 10 and 12.  If cast, there is a $35 .00 fee per cast member or a $60.00 fee per family to help cover productions costs such as sets, costumes and script royaties.  For more information call Center Stage director Susan Scaccia at 803-206-4924, or email her at rssb1228@yahoo.com.

I recently finished reading At Play – Teaching Teenagers Theatre by actor, composer, writer and director  Elizabeth Swados.   Ms. Swados’ techniques for guiding young people in creating performance pieces based on their life experiences is inspiring and I hope to utilize many of her exercises and her theories in my work with my Glenforest students.

Ms. Swados has had a wonderfully varied career and has worked all over the world.  Through her travels she has had opportunities to experience many different theatre traditions that helped shape ideas for the new form of theatre she has  created.  She says:

The American landscape is full of diverse, conflicting “tribes”, and when i returned home from my travels, I decided to devote my work to a kind of street theatre, a political storytelling theatre that could speak to the young people in the village of the United States.

The book goes on to describe and explain how she worked with a group of troubled young people and created a performance piece about their lives they called Runaways.  The show was a completely original innovation adapted from the work the kids created in the workshops, and actually went on to run on Broadway.

Imagine!