The Missoula children’s theater is performing The Little Mermaid by Jim Caron and Michael McGill this Saturday at the Salem Community Theater.
This story follows Celia, a little mermaid who loves music. On her sixth birthday she is allowed to go to the surface to learn of its secrets. This new version of the age-old tale has lots of music, plot twists, and humor.
Tickets for the performance are $5 available at the door or online. The show is from 3 to 5:30pm.
This year’s week long Missoula children’s theater has 37 kids in the program. The directors of the show are actresses, dancers, and singers, ShayAnna A. Beatty, a musical theater BFA student from Northwestern State University, Louisiana, and Ella Drake from St. Louis who has been involved in numerous different theater companies’ productions.
Although the adaptation is not based on the Disney rendition, drake explains how heart left and comedic this story is.
“Yes, it’s nothing like the Disney movie at all, we can’t make Disney mad. It’s a different story, it’s more based on the fairy tale rather than the movie that everyone knows and loves. It’s a story about family, dreams, and music. It’s just such a cute fun story that’s fun for the entire family. It’s funny, like we are giggling at parts of the show. So I just feel like this is a show that people of all ages can enjoy, and it’s just a fun time.”
With the camp only being a week long the kids all had to cram a lot of work into just a few days. Drake notes the long audition process everyone went through on the first day.
“Yeah absolutely, it’s a total whirl wind of a week. We meet them on Monday and we have two hours to audition. Sometimes, groups that we’ve talked to, have had up to 100 kids audition and you have to go through all of them and give them all a chance to shine in just two hours. Then place them throughout the show, and there is a spot for most of them if we are lucky. We haven’t had a group of 100 yet, so we haven’t been in that tight of a spot, yet.”
In the time frame of just a week, Beatty explains the different workshops they hold to teach children different aspects about theater.
“Yeah we put on a couple different workshops. There is one for the younger kids that helps them with imagination and stuff like that. Then we do different acting workshops that helps them see the different yes-ands, and working with each other to put on a scene. Similar thing with improv, we do stuff because there is a lot of bouncing around in theater. There is also behind the scenes, which is also pretty cool, we teach them about the stuff that happens off of the stage. The technical side of things, just to give them a better appreciation of what happens. We also do stage makeup”
The Missoula Children’s Theater has another week long camp at the Salem Community Theater the week of July 13th for The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Missoula Children’s Theater. Left to Right: Ella Drake, Children involved in the program, and ShayAnna A. Beatty
