TORRINGTON – The tales of heroes and demons from Greek Mythology come alive on the stage as the Goshen Community Theatre Children’s Theater Workshop presents “It’s All Greek to Me” for one night only, Thursday, at the Torrington High School Performing Arts Center Stage here.
The Children’s Theatre Workshop is in its 15th season this year, director and co-founder Lisa Fluckiger said. The workshop was formed shortly after the founding of Goshen Community Theatre as a way to get young people involved in the craft, she said.
“We decided that, every summer, we wanted to have something that we gave back to the community,” Fluckiger said. “We were really interested in doing children’s theater. We thought it would strengthen the middle school and high school theater programs.”
Young people with an interest in the stage and performing receive the scripts for a given year’s production about 10 days before the intensive, week-long workshop begins. The idea is to have their dialog firmly in mind before the first day of rehearsals so they can concentrate on learning the music and choreography for each production.
The workshop operates from a series of six scripts written during the early years, Fluckiger said. Young people range from about eight to 14 in third through eighth grades. The idea was, when third graders start the workshop, they can work through all six scripts during their eligibility.
“We realized, once those third-graders go through the six years of the program, we could start again,” she said. “We decided to rotate.”
The six rotating stories include the Grimm Fairy Tale of Rumpelstiltskin, a western show highlighting Wyoming history, the stories of Dr. Seuss, a pirate show and a production centered on the work of the late poet Shel Silverstein.
This year’s show, “It’s All Greek to Me,” features characters from Greek Mythology, including Daedalus and Icarus, Odysseus and the Cyclops, Perseus and Medusa and the story of Narcissus. The current script was written by workshop participants in fifth through seventh grades in 2005.
“It’s a very elementary child’s point of view on Greek Mythology,” Fluckiger said. “There’s some things they did that are very clever.
“We edit it here and there, we change it a little every year,” she said. “But we try to keep the essence of what those kids wrote 12 years ago.”
In addition to the hard work of learning music and dance moves and coordinating those with dialog, there’s a good bit of fun during the workshops, Fluckiger said. It’s particularly challenging, given the fact the youthful Thespians have just a week to get the show ready for opening night.
“I think they’re motivated because they know they have a show,” she said. “They’ve already put up posters and their family and friends are invited.
“I think that’s exciting for them,” Fluckiger said. “They’re here because they love the theater or they have some kind of interest in it and they want to try it out.”
That’s part of the attraction for 12-year-old participant Summer Heil. It’s her first year participating in the Children’s Summer Theater Workshop.
“I like pretending like I’m different people and having a different mood every time,” she said. “I wanted to do it last year, but I didn’t. My mom asked me if I wanted to do it this year and here I am.”
Students who’ve aged out of the program after eighth grade often come back and work on the technical side of the productions. Bailey Walker, who’ll be a high school junior this year, has been helping out since she graduated from the workshop three years ago.
This year, she’ll be working with the makeup crew, helping build sets and assisting the younger participants as they learn dancing. Walker kept up with theater through middle school and into high school, playing the character of Jo March in “Little Women.”
“I think it’s the way the camp is run,” she said. “They don’t focus on one thing the whole day.
“They do little arts-and-crafts projects that relate to the theater,” Walker said. “It’s fun. I like seeing other kids who are interested in theater having fun with it, like I did.”
