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By Roxy Ekberg
Republican Staff
Little Red Hen Theatre’s annual summer drama camp comes to a close with a community performance on Saturday, June 17th.
The theater has hosted the camp for the past five years, changing each year to make it better for the students and serve the community. This year was the biggest change yet, with extending classes to two and a half hours each day. The time increase creates a more immersive experience, more opportunities to learn new skills, and apply them through play and performance, said managing director, Adam Goos.
In addition to managing The Little Red Hen Theatre, Goos is a Nebraska Arts Council Teaching Artist and specializes in creating arts education experiences for young students. Classes were taught by Goos, Scott Mead, a full-time theater teacher at Omaha Public Schools, and teaching assistants Sharon Boeckenhauer, Sawyer Burdigam, Olivia Dekok, and Nate Johnson.
A total of 40 students grades K-8 attended camp. Throughout the week, students learned how to use their bodies, voices, and minds to tell and recreate stories. They applied what they learned to create their own performance of the children’s book “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.” Instead of focusing on a finalized production, as in past drama camps, Goos maintains that learning the skills is more important than putting on a show. Goos prefers to call the drama camp performance a “sharing,” in which students demonstrated the skills learned throughout the week.
“The goal of drama camp is to provie4 a quality arts education program for our local community that is accessible for families and encourages the exploration of creativity. Overall-we think participation in the arts at any age or level helps make us better individuals and consequently of better service to our community,” said Goos.
The Little Red Hen Theatre is also working on its next production, Pippin, to be held July 13-16.