Elementary School Theater Program

Samuel Morgan Elementary School in Kaysville Utah has some great before-school programs that are offered to their scholars. Karate, Robotics, and Orchestra are all included in that list. I decided to offer a new program that introduced the performing arts. The principle agreed in my volunteered idea and so, my project began. 

We had roughly 12 weeks to plan and produce this show. The school bought the rights to "Frozen Jr" through MTI and I held auditions one day after school in early January. The students were expected to sing 30 seconds of a song of their choice. I took pictures and videos so I could go back to review heights and skill level after the audition process was over. It took me about a week to cast. We got roughly 95 students and they were split between two casts. 

The students would come each morning before school. We had an hour long rehearsal where we would practice 2 of 3 things. The blocking, the singing or the dancing. We followed our rehearsal schedule pretty closely, besides a few days when we had extra time and would learn something extra. These days would turn out to be quite a blessing, because the amount of snow day cancelations were challenging to work around near the end of the rehearsal process. 

When we got to week 5 I started costuming. This was another thing that took place during the morning rehearsals. A lot of costumes were rented from other theaters in the area. I would bring the rented costumes to the theater and have the kids try them on so I could make note of what needed changed, altered, or what worked perfectly. This made the kids really excited and helped keep their energy up over the next couple weeks.

Week 10 brought a whole new challenge. The school assembly was chaotic and exciting. The kids got to run their show in front of their schoolmates. Teachers brought their classes to the gym during school hours and we performed our show for them. This helped the actors practice having an audience to watch them and helped get the rest of the school excited for this project. 

Week 11 was full of afternoon/evening rehearsals as we added costumes and microphones and lights. Since the show was about an hour long, we couldn't hold these rehearsals in the morning. Getting the children dresses and in mics took longer and we still wanted time to run the show. The actors were more then happy to stay after school and practice their show all the way through. I had already run light and sounds systems in other companies so this part of the project wasn't too big of an adjustment.

Week 12 was when the kids got to perform their show for friends and family. With 95 kids between the two casts, we had no trouble at all filling the 300 seats in the audience each night. The kids loved having their cheering crowd supporting them and it was the prefect way to finish off this project. 

Over all, I was able to 

Cast

Direct

Block

Choregraph

Music Direct

Costume

Design Lights/Sound

Run Lights/Sound

Advertise

And be their #1 fan.

I loved this project and look forward to many more opportunities working in children's theater. The theater is a fantastic way for kids to get outside of their comfort zone, meet new people, and find skills in front of a crowd and working as a team.