The show is a retelling of the Grimm's Fairy Tale "The Frog Prince."
There you have it, a "princess" show with parts for 20+ little girls (who all want to be princesses), as well as great comedic parts for a bunch of boys.
Now to finish writing it!
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Here we are already in the month of March 2024. Time to make the announcement official about my Summer Theater Camp for children ages 5-12. This year we will do Camp from June 24-28 and July 1-6 (excluding July 4th). The performance will be July 6th at 10 am in my backyard for families and interested locals (Provo, UT). The show is a retelling of the Grimm's Fairy Tale "The Frog Prince." After reading a very short version of this story online, I realized that it need not include a love story. In fact, because in that version, the Princess had a birthday party, I also realized that many little girls wearing Princess dresses could be invited to that party. This story also can accommodate many Knights doing manly action-hero activities. We will use hand puppets to pull off some of the magical effects. Should be loads of fun!
There you have it, a "princess" show with parts for 20+ little girls (who all want to be princesses), as well as great comedic parts for a bunch of boys. Now to finish writing it!
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Often I am asked: How much time does it take to rehearse and mount a children's theater show?" The answer, of course is: "That depends..." If you know already that you are doing a 2-week summer camp and only see the children 3 hours a day Monday-Friday --- you do the math. 2 weeks x 3 hours of rehearsal per day = 15 rehearsal hours. That's not very long! Those few hours also have to include some breaks and "get-to-know-you" time. So obviously, you won't be choosing to do a long complicated musical! However, with enough helpers (and a few seasoned young actors that you suspect you know their capabilities) you can accomplish amazing things in those 15 hours. Motivated kids will do a lot of practicing on their own --- memorizing lines, songs, and dance moves --- at home when they are not at Camp. Another key to ultimate success is to pick a show that can be divided into smaller sections for rehearsal purposes. You need to look for a show that has parts for many characters who are not needed in every scene. Try to avoid shows that only have a few of lead characters who are integral to ALL of the scenes and dances. It is helpful if the scenes have dances or songs that could be learned separately with a portion of the cast. That way you can "divide and conquer" more easily. For a small Summer Theater Camp of about 25-30 kids, you will still need at least four adult staff members to pull it off. (I often also recruit a few Junior staff helpers, too. Older teen-aged former camp kids are prime candidates.) Assuming you are the Director and will do the blocking and main artistic directing, you really should have at least three assistant directors - someone to teach the songs, another to teach the dances, and another to be the Stage Manager (who also does the odd jobs like fitting costumes, running down-time craft activities, or managing all of the back-stage issues). The four of you will probably also all chip in to create the scenery, props, costumes, and set-up. As the Director, you will be responsible to coordinate all of your assistants and their efforts. You will need to create a schedule, talk through the "look" of the show, make sure all of the songs are learned on time, preview dances, and clue-in the choreographer to staging and blocking issues. Pre-Camp meetings are a must plus a healthy number of on-the-job brush-up meetings! An example of a script that lends itself to the "divide and conquer" plan is "The Tale of Chicken Licken." The cast is divided into barnyard fowl families. They each have a song and carry a scene. Then there is the story-within-the-story group that also can practice separately. Even though most of the cast is on stage throughout the show, they can learn their special scenes separately, then put the whole show together later in the rehearsal period. With enough planning, big successes are assured! Our family enjoys going to hear the Brass Band play in the park during June. We love the whole idea of gathering on a lovely summer's evening to hear fine music with a lot of other people who also enjoy music. It's the feeling of community that is so comfortable. Last evening's performance was the last of the series. What a wonderful gift to the community! Of course, it is also fun to people watch. Besides watching the concert, it's fun to watch families watching their children and grandchildren playing on the swings and slides. My little granddaughter was giving quite a show as she danced to the music. We always enjoy the children's march, as well as looking around seeing family groups sharing snacks and clapping their hands in rhythm to the music. Bring your own chairs. As you can see on the ad for the concert series, at the bottom in small letters it gives the direction to "bring your own chairs." That really says something about the loyalty of an audience when it is understood that they will not only come but bring their own chairs. That assumes that the audience will put in some effort to be there. Looking ahead in a few weeks to my Summer Theater Camp show, I also ask our audience to bring their own chairs. I have some chairs I can set out, but not nearly enough. Our audience is also very good to make such an effort to provide their own seating.
Just love summer in our community! Planning schedules, taking applications and fees, organizing props and sets, going through costumes, and just taking stock. Those are tasks that I need to start getting a handle on and QUICK!
This summer's theater camp will present the Children's Musical "Stone Soup." Just waiting for all of the registrations to come in, but we should have about 25 kids in the cast ages 5-11. This is a smaller, tighter show. This show works best with a small cast. Because of lots of family doings --- a new granddaughter's birth, family reunions, family moves, construction plans, etc. --- our Summer Camp had to be held later in the summer July 25th-August 5th. Though not optimum, it is what it is. (Maybe this will work out better. We have had so much rain this spring, perhaps by August, we will dry out a bit!) That said, I have to get all of the preparations done and in place well before my house is overrun by 40 family members during our Family Reunion in the middle of July. So, I just had the scripts printed, I made arrangements to paint sets next week, I already sorted through my shed for the costumes and props, and I have organized the cast into groups. Now, I need to have prep meetings with my song leader, stage managers, and junior staff to make sure we will be ready when the camp starts. So much to do! Memorial Day 2022 was the coldest I have ever experienced! We went to decorate the graves wearing sweaters and rain jackets. Our mountains got some fresh snow. It was cold. The Memorial Days of my past were marked by getting to finally go to the swimming pool and coming home for a cookout and s'mores. Well, instead, this year we turned on the heater and had a fire in the fire place. My yard loves the cold rainy weather, though. The roses are getting ready to explode. In a couple of days we should see the bright pinks, reds, peaches, and yellows of all of our roses. I am hoping they bloom quickly so we can enjoy them for a couple of weeks before I have to do some serious pruning. The bushes have grown so tall that they will block the view of our patio "stage" if I don't do something drastic. Our Summer Camp show this year "A Successor to the Throne" is all about celebrating the different seasons as the story rolls around a full calendar year. We start out with the song "Spring Is Here" where the girls dance with pink parasols and colorful flower wands. I feel sad that I will have to prune back the roses so dramatically. They would add lovely Spring color to the set. The flowers would look nice for the song "Summer Comes," too. But I guess they just wouldn't fit the orange color scheme of "Autumn Lingers on the Breeze" or the whites and blues of "Wintertime." We also have a stone step walkway that right now is almost blocked with the thorny branches of the roses. When it is cleared, it will become the parade entrance for the Emperor and his entourage. The story revolves around the old Emperor's plan to let the flowers choose his successor. I really should have pruned more energetically in the fall. But alas. I didn't. Hopefully, I won't have to cut back all of the beautiful roses. We really should leave some for the Emperor's Palace Garden. I love how Nature provides the most beautiful set decorating! "I think my 3-year-old granddaughter has a crush on the Fox." That's the kind of comment that is really appreciated in children's theater. I don't like to write scary stuff into my scripts. I don't want to scare the little children. So, this go around of Summer Theater Camp, I wrote an expanded part for the obvious "bad guy" where he actually becomes a sympathetic, and funny guy, and perhaps even a heart throb in the eyes of the audience. (After all, I modeled him after Elvis.) Many years ago now, I was sitting in a darkened theater watching Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" with my 3-year-old sister. She was absolutely terrified by Maleficent and the Dragon. She hid her eyes and covered her ears and buried herself in my lap. I held her as tightly as I could to help her feel safe. To this day, I don't think she likes watching "Sleeping Beauty." Scary stuff, that.
Anyway, I wanted to make "The Tale of Chicken Licken" into a Family-Friendly comedy. So glad I did, and that the 12-year-old actor who played the Fox was so engaging and entertaining. One mom said, "That boy has LEADING MAN written all over him!" Makes me happy to have delighted the audience with this revised show. Soon I will have this version with the new song available on the website. Because of scheduling conflicts and other Pandemic related issues, enrollment was down for my Summer Theater Camp. So, rather than cancel the camp, I decided to switch shows. The show I have decided would work well for the number of kids that have enrolled is "The Tale of Chicken Licken." This little story is particularly good for this time of pandemic. It is all about being careful not to give into foolish FEARS. While visiting with an older lady in the neighborhood several years ago, she related her story as a child of living through the fears associated with World War II. Her story inspired me to write this play. She said that she lived near San Francisco near the Air Force Base. Her house was directly under the flight lanes of the big cargo planes coming and going from the base. She also heard the extremely loud warning sirens a lot. As a little girl, these things gave her great anxieties. Anxieties such as hers were common among the other children in her class at school. She told me that her teacher often read the story of Chicken Licken to the class. The teacher wanted the students to learn that mis-understanding often leads to assumptions that can cause fears. But getting the facts and learning to understand them can help ease fears. Knowledge is power. "The Tale of Chicken Licken" is all about how one foolish fear grew all out of proportion. It even caused the demise of those foolish birds who were caught up in the mania. This show portrays a cautionary "tale within a tale." The hope is to help the barnyard fowl to not fall into the same trap that previous birds did. Despite the message about fears, the songs are upbeat and fun. The costumes are, too. It is a very enjoyable show! Last night I watched the movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Flower Drum Song" (1961) again. After the movie, the commentators really dug into deep subjects. They analyzed how this movie explored the themes of illegal immigration and fighting Asian stereotypes on screen. I had read that Oscar Hammerstein was very interested in dissolving racial bias wherever he could through his writing. These analysts compared the typical roles Asian people, particularly Asian women, played on screen and how those roles portrayed them as cooks, servants, call girls, evil gangsters, or running a Chinese laundry. They never portrayed Asian people as regular folks leading real and interesting lives. At age 8 when I first saw the movie, it never really occurred to me to consider the plight of Asian people trying to survive and assimilate into a new culture. Hearing such deep analysis always makes me feel so shallow. Mostly, I grew up enjoying "The Flower Drum Song" because I liked the music. My mother bought the folio of songs and I had fun playing and singing them as a young teenager. We even went to see a touring production in Houston starring Jack Soo (who was also in the movie). After the show, we met him and got his autograph. Back then, I just accepted the show as an entertaining story about Chinese people in China town. I never even questioned how unique it was to see a live theater performance featuring a cast made up of just Asian actors. When adapting a story or folk tale from another culture for Children's Theater, I have often wondered whether I would cause offense. Knowing that these shows would most likely be performed by kids NOT of the culture represented, I wondered if the meat of the story could carry the show. I ultimately decided that since the actors and the audiences were already prepared to "suspend their disbelief," they could accept kids portraying Persian Princesses, Chinese Emperors, mythical Greek Muses, tiny Insects, or assorted Barnyard Animals whatever they looked like in real life. So, here's to hoping that a cast of many skin tones and hair colors can pull off a convincing production of "A Successor to the Throne" in this summer's Musical Theater Camp.
Our Bailey Family Reunion is coming up in July. We are determined to get some new Family Portraits taken that reflect the changes in our family. Since the last picture we have gained three new members! That needs to be documented! We also plan to do anything fun we can think of that is allowed in this time of Covid-19 Pandemic Social Distancing. I recently pitched the idea of having a Cousins Theater Camp as part of our Bailey Family Reunion in July. I was feeling deprived that I wouldn't be able to have regular Summer Theater Camps either in my backyard or in Pennsylvania for a daughter's Church group. Looks like everyone is on board! This is the perfect year for having the cousins camp for our 8 boys and 16 girls. We have a big core group of children that fall into the right ages between 4-13. We have a few older siblings who have agreed to be helpers and a few younger who, no doubt, will lend some refreshing comic relief with their inventive creative dancing. (The youngest girls are ages 18 months and almost 3) The show is a musical retelling of the Aesop Fable "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse." Not everybody is invested enough to spend a lot of time learning staging and memorizing parts. Some would rather not be on stage at all. But that is not the point! The point is that a few of the 8-12 year old girls had significant rolls in cancelled school shows, and had also been signed up to do a Theater Camp this summer. But due to circumstances beyond their control, they have been denied these opportunities. So, I have simplified this little script so that these girls can do the parts that require more preparation and the others kids can just do the lighter fun parts. We are doing a Theater Camp in a day, or rather 4 hours, start to finish. Most will come with their songs learned and their one-liner parts memorized. We will spend the morning learning some simple staging and movement. The oldest girls are teenagers --- two are theater geeks who will act as Narrator/Prompters, and the other two will be little Kid Wranglers. The older boys will be stage hands and sound techs. Fortunately, these children have mothers who have all had a lot of theatrical experience and will help make this happen. That leaves very few in the audience, just the dads basically, but we don't care! They just better laugh and applaud ---- ON CUE! Someone commented to me the other day that summer plans for kids get busier every year. I am not sure that's exactly true, but it may be. I am sure that depending on how many children are in a family and how old they are might play a big part in how busy the schedules are for that family. Anyway, determining when to hold my Summer Theater Camp has certainly become more challenging over the years. Because I cater mostly to the families in my neighborhood, I learn about all of the plans and scheduling difficulties of these families. My Camp has to compete with Swim Team, Young Women's Camp, Youth Conference, and even 5th Grade Science Camp, not to mention family vacations, Family Reunions and the 4th of July. We all prefer to do the outdoor backyard Camp in June when the weather is somewhat cool (by summer standards in Utah anyway). Later in the summer has many more complications with Utah's Patriotic and Pioneer holidays. August is very short because school starts in the third week. Besides July and August are usually very HOT! As I sent around a questionnaire about possible dates for Theater Camp, nearly everyone said that they preferred June. That left me scratching my head trying to figure this all out. Last year, we held camp over three weeks, but called different ages of children on different days to skirt around everybody's conflicts. Guess that is what we will end up doing this year, too. The good news is that I have picked a show, "A Successor to the Throne." This was actually the second show we produced for a summer theater camp in our backyard in about 2011. My daughter and her friends directed it with a group of the neighborhood children. It was a great success, even though we had some mighty rain storms that threatened to halt the show. At the last minute, the sun broke through and the show could go on. Ah, the joys of outdoor children's theater! * * * * * * * One of my favorite parts of this show is all of the Chinese Dances. The girls get to dance using parasols, ribbon wands, dance fans, puppets, and lots of flowers. They have a fun time and the dances are beautiful! |
AuthorMy name is Betsy Bailey. I have sung, written and taught music all of my life. I enjoy writing and directing Children's Theater shows. This blog will be directed to topics on creating the magic of Children's Theater. I would love to hear your comments! Archives
March 2024
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