With COVID-19 still a concern, Tacoma Little Theatre to offer online summer camps this year
The Tacoma Little Theatre, which is currently closed when it customarily would be holding summer camps, is shifting to a virtual series of classes.
Starting June 22, the Theatre will host several weeks of classes for students ranging from first grade to 12th grade.
Managing artistic director Chris Serface discussed why the move was made.
“It seems the smart thing, the safe thing to move forward with at this time,” Serface said.
Schedules are posted on the Tacoma Little Theatre website with more to be added in the future.
“We have programmed the first four weeks. It’s an eight-week camp that we normally do,” Serface said. “They’re weeklong camps with five different classes each day.”
Serface says the programs are meant to be “à la carte,” where students can pick and choose what classes they want to take. The teachers are artists who will be leading the classes from their homes over Zoom followed up by some performances at the end of the class.
“We’re doing two shows called ‘Boxes’ and ‘The Rainbow Fish,’” Serface said. “Both of those will have performances the Friday night of that week instead of at the end where parents and family can dial into YouTube and watch it on YouTube.”
Alisyn Christensen, a youth theater teacher, will lead the kickoff class on “The Rainbow Fish” from June 22-26 and spoke to how the virtual aspect makes it uncertain if they’ll get enough buy-in.
“Fingers crossed we get enough kids signed up,” Christensen said. “Typically in the summer, we have to put kids on wait lists because we get so many sign-ups. Since this summer is totally different, I’m nervous and excited.”
While Christensen didn’t select the story, she will be prepare to teach it.
“It is a classic story,” Christensen said. “I actually just got the materials yesterday, so I’m going to be doing a lot of homework between now and the next few weeks.”
Dylan Twiner, an educator at Charles Wright Academy, has conducted virtual classes because of schools being closed due to the COVID-19 shutdowns.
“As a drama teacher, there are plenty of challenges that come with it,” Twiner said. “Not being there, not being present and in that proximity with them is certainly not ideal. But I’ve done a monologue class, a small scene study class, I’ve been a part of a couple of choir and musical theatre classes as well.”
Twiner will be leading an improv class from June 29 to July 3, a comedy class from July 6-10, and a script-writing class from July 13-17.
“In traditional learning, there are a lot of call-and-response things. We’ll be incorporating some of those,” Twiner said. “As much as possible, I’m encouraging students to have a little bit of space where they can move. We’ve been working on physical and vocal characteristics. By and large, they’re really productive because it means we’re having almost acting theory classes in some cases with kids that are in tune with things and eager to learn more.”
Melanie Gladstone, a teacher and performer, will be leading “The Lion King” and “The Little Mermaid” classes.
“We hope it’ll be very successful virtually, but we don’t know what it will be like,” Gladstone said. “We don’t want to try to overwhelm any of the students due to nobody knowing what the technical issues will be, so we’re looking forward to doing just the best that we can with the tools we can use.”
Rico Lastrapes, an actor, musician, choreographer and teaching artist, will be leading a series of singing classes.
“I find that the hardest thing for performers to do is to get over their nervousness,” Lastrapes said. “My hope is that during this time that people are not able to necessarily perform but are able to work on their craft. That artists take the steps to get the fundamentals in music to have the confidence to really just express themselves.”
Other classes include a Shakespeare study course, a class about Greek plays and “Freaky Friday.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
