Senior BFA Acting major Hannah Henson, left, and Senior BFA Musical Theatre major Hannah Auci spent the summer in Houston, Texas, as interns for the A.D. Players, the largest Christian regional theatre in the U.S.
Henson and Auci joined college students from around the country running theatre camps for third- through eighth-grade youngsters at various Houston area locations, helping them build confidence in themselves as they learned the basics of creating and staging theatre productions.
“Our first week of camp consisted of training. All of the interns were together for that entire first week. And we got to learn about both the theatre company, the heart behind it and our goals for the camps for the week,” Henson said.
Following training, the interns formed three teams, each with five interns conducting weeklong camps at a different location in the Houston area.
“They were very intern-run camps,” Henson noted.
“We taught them a lot of different theatre games to get their voices engaged, to get them out of their shell, to get them to imagine different circumstances, to interact with their friends,” Auci said, adding that campers created unique scripts for familiar fairy tales such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears or Little Red Riding Hood. “They could make it however they wanted it to be… Of course they had to write content that was clean—nothing too dark.”
Each camp was capped by a performance at A.D. Players’ main auditorium.
“They got to do it with backdrops and we also gave them experiences creating their own costumes and molding their own set,” Auci continued. “On the final day we would rehearse everything, and then we would show it to their parents, we would show them the warm-ups that they learned, we would show them some of the games and we would show them their set designs and their costume designs. Then, they would show their scenes to their parents. It was one of the most rewarding experiences ever.”
During the last week, the interns got together with the head of A.D. Players’ education department to go over the camps and assist in planning for next summer’s camps.
Henson said, “One of the biggest things about our job is giving back to our community and giving back to those who’ve poured into us… Through this experience, I got to see kids find a joy of theatre and art for the first time. It reminded me of when I was a kid, and my parents were looking for something that sparked my interest… It brought me a lot of reminders of why I love to do what I do and how important it is to use the knowledge that I have and the knowledge that I’m learning and in the future to pour into the younger generation to keep things going and keep the genuine love of art alive.”
AU Theatre and Dance
AU Theatre and Dance is part of the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University. The South Carolina School of the Arts trains professional visual, musical, and theatrical artists who are serious about both their art and Christian faith.