The theater company will host their annual Little Badger Theatre Camp the first week of summer for incoming first through sixth graders.
“This year the campers are doing the show James and the Giant Peach,” sophomore theater officer Elaina Hepting said. “I think James and the Giant Peach is a good show because it’s known but it’s not like past shows we’ve done like The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland where everyone knows exactly what is going to happen next. It’s nice to see something different.”
The camp is May 20 – May 24 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Campers put together and rehearse the show Monday through Thursday and have a final public performance Friday at 1 p.m. Each day students will do a rotation of high school student-led stations in the morning and spend the afternoon with theatre director Greta Peterson.
“Theatre camp is fun and the kids learn so much,” Peterson said. “It’s always amazing to me how the kids can put everything together in just four days!”
Admission for the camp cost $100 and t-shirts and snacks are included. To sign up for the camp parents can contact Peterson at [email protected].
“The camp introduces the kids to theatre at a young age,” sophomore theatre officer Samantha Sturgeon said. “It allows them to see if theatre is something they enjoy or not, and hopefully if it is, they will continue in our theatre program till they are in high school.”
High school theater production students run and put together the whole camp with the help of Peterson. Students have been preparing for the camp since the beginning of April. Prep includes writing and creating physical scripts, putting together large set pieces, creating costumes, buying props and assigning high schoolers jobs.
“The high school students run the whole camp,” Peterson said. “ A script had to be specifically written for the camp, t-shirts had to be designed in addition to advertising, forms sent out, paperwork processed, etc. It’s a large project that the high school advanced production students are more than willing to take on!”
The high school students are assigned to run one of the three stations or be a runner. There is an acting station, choreography station and tech station.
In the acting station, students help campers with line memorization and play theatre games with them. In the choreography station, students create dances for all the songs in the musical and teach them to the campers. Students running the tech station do crafts with the campers and build the set. Runners are assigned a small group of campers and are incharge of moving their groups through the stations.
“This year I am running the acting station with a partner,” Hepting said. “The acting station is my favorite part. It’s fun teaching our warm-ups and playing games like atoms and statues with the kids.”
Peterson ran one of the first young theatre camps in South Texas 25 years ago and continues to put on the camp in Central Texas. Many of the kids who attend the theatre camp are invited to act as ensemble in the theatre company’s musical in the fall.
“We have always had littles in our musicals and I figured it would be the best way to teach them technique early so we could move faster during rehearsals with the advanced high school kids,” Peterson said. “Some of our kids that came to Lampasas’ first theatre camp are now our top actors/actresses!”
Hepting said the camp is a good way for kids to learn new things and also provides parents with a good week-long babysitter.
“Kids will learn valuable skills like how to be a team player, talk in front of an audience and how to build and paint things,” Hepting said. “It builds their confidence and it’s just a lot of fun. Our theatre camp provides a safe environment in the good hands of our very responsible high schoolers!”
