After five days of learning, memorizing, and practicing, about 50 kids from Humboldt and area put on two shows of the musical/comedy Aladdin on Sept. 19 as part of Missoula Children’s Theatre.
“They did wonderful. Every year they amaze us,” said Tanya Schuler, president of Arts Humboldt, which brings the Missoula Children’s Theatre International Tour to Humboldt every year.
Two tour actor/directors bring the props and sets and teach the kids the show. Auditions were held Sept. 14, after which the show was cast and practices began. The kids would go to school all day and then attend practices for four hours each day until Saturday, when they got into costume and had dress rehearsal. The whole week then culminated in two performances on Saturday.
“It’s a challenge. I did it when I was younger too, when I was in grade school, so I remember. It’s tough,” said tour actor/director Carlysle Garland. “But considering they had school all day long and then had energy enough to come to rehearsal, they did pretty well.”
She also said there were some hiccups in the production with kids getting sick and some parts having to be switched around, but overall the shows went smoothly. Garland expected the second show to go even better.
“Now their nerves are out so the second show will be even more fun for them,” Garland said. “Now that they’ve seen the audience and the reactions now and they’ve had that feedback. Before they were just looking at chairs and they didn’t have anything to go off of, but now they have that confidence, that courage to continue on and do even better that next show.”
While the directors hope the kids have fun participating, they also learn skills they can use in other aspects of their lives.
“We hope that they leave with a better understanding and grasp on life skills they can use – leadership, participation, cooperation, listening, following directions. All those more basic things as well, but also getting a sense of team and working as a team, collaboration, to come up with this entire show for an audience,” Garland said. “They also build up their own confidence, they can make friends, build up relationships with other people. Just being able to come out here and do their lines that they’ve memorized … it takes a lot of determination and focus and commitment. Commitment’s the biggest thing that they learn by being here every day and then performing.”
Garland said the kids are always pretty enthusiastic, but their excitement builds over the course of the week as they see more and more what the show will look like.
“Once we start talking about the costumes, they get really excited, which is really cool, just to see their faces light up and they even focus a little bit more,” she said. “It’s really cool to see their reactions when they learn about everything else they’re going to be doing, and the set goes up, and the props are incorporated, they get really excited. It just keeps building each day.”
This is the fourth year for Missoula Children’s Theatre in Humboldt, and Arts Humboldt keeps bringing it back because they believe it’s important to offer things like this to kids in the community.
“I had one mother say her daughter came in on top of the world all week because she just had so much fun, learning the lines and singing and moving,” Schuler said.
Arts Humboldt plans to keep bringing the Children’s Theatre back to Humboldt as long as there is sufficient interest.
