Kids Do It All

Summer Theatre Program at CSU

4 Sessions for Summer 2012 June 4 - 9, June 11 - 16, June 18 - 23, June 25 - 30
Each Week: Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m., 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.

The second annual Kids Do It All youth theatre program is a week-long collective creation intensive day camp during the month of June 2012. In the 2011 pilot program, CSU theatre faculty and CSU upper classmen guided almost 50 students in different age groups through the entire process of theatre-from playwriting to performance, from design through musical composition-resulting in original plays created and performed by students in three age-groups: 7-9, 10-11, 12-13. Camp participants write, design and compose musical plays entirely of their own devising-experiencing a practical application of all aspects of theatre practice-from acting, movement, voice, props and scene design, and songwriting, in multiple week-long workshops guided by music, theatre, dance and art students and faculty.

To fill-in their plots and characters, camp participants also spend a morning in the University Art Gallery with Linda Frickman and Patrick Fahey, then spend the afternoons composing their own gallery of art that told their stories without words. Participants also work with neutral and character masks, improvisational exercises, design, playwriting, and composition studios, finishing with a fully mounted production of their original work on the sixth day, a Saturday, at which parents, family, and friends attend.

Kids Do It All, one of the most innovative theatre programs in the country, was founded in 1991 at The Children's School in La Jolla, Calif. by Walt Jones, Director of the CSU Division of the Dance and Theatre. As a teacher of acting and directing, he served on the faculty at the Yale School of Drama, and University of California, San Diego. He has directed twice on Broadway, six plays off-Broadway, including the American premiere of Howard Barker's No End of Blame at Manhattan Theatre Club, and over sixty plays in more than twenty regional theatres from Cambridge to Fairbanks, and productions in Soviet Russia and in Tokyo. He directed the world premiere productions of plays by Thomas Babe, Lanford Wilson, Naomi Iizuka, José Rivera, Arthur Kopit, Jim Yoshimura, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Sam Shepard and David Mamet, John Pielmeier, Derek Walcott and Christopher Durang. Among the many actors he has directed are Meryl Streep, Roc Dutton, John Turturro, Tony Shaloub, Nathan Lane, Liev Schreiber, Angie Bassett, Christopher Walken, Jason Alexander, Peter Weller, Frances McDormand, Kate Burton, Michael Gross, Lindsay Crouse, Mariel Hemingway, John Goodman, and Tony Award-winning stage actor, Jefferson Mays. Mr. Jones was a staff director at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference from 1980 until 1990 and directed regularly for the Yale Rep, Arena Stage, and the American Repertory Theatre. He is the author of The 1940s Radio Hour, and A 1940s Radio Christmas Carol, both published by Samuel French, Inc.

For more information please email walt.jones@colostate.edu