This fall, The Green Room Community Theatre in Newton is offering a more powerful Creative Works series than ever before. “As a child, theatre changed my life,” says Caleb Sigmon, the newly appointed Director of Education at The Green Room. “It provided an opportunity to connect with people that shared the same interests that I had. I made friends, I found my voice, and I discovered my lifelong passion. It changed my life.” This fall, a student you may know in grades K-12 may experience that same life-changing event.
Creative Works is The Green Room’s after-school program, which focuses on improving and refining students’ creative talents in the dramatic arts. This 10-week intensive offered to students in grades K-12 has a Fall Semester and a Spring Semester. Students gain the ability to express themselves, build confidence, explore their imagination and develop basic social skills while learning theatre concepts and terminology. New materials are explored every session and change each year to create an engaging experience as children progress through the program. Classes meet once a week for approximately 10 weeks; each class is an hour and a half long. At the end of the semester, each class puts on a full fledge production in front of a live audience.
This year, the program is bigger and better than ever before, offering a wider variety of classes and workshops. From general acting for those in elementary school to more focused and advanced topics for middle and high school students, classes are open to children in grades K-9th. Some of the new classes being offered include Story and Imagination Theatre, Advanced Acting, Puppetry and Masks, the Actor’s Toolbox, and Special Effects Makeup for Stage and Screen. Sigmon says, “Students will be getting hands-on experience in all different aspects of theatre.”
New this year is The Green Room Performance Ensemble, open to 8th – 12th graders by audition only and running for the entire school year. This is a more intensive class for dedicated students that really wish to hone their craft. The majority of the cost of the first year of the Performance Ensemble is made possible by a grant from the United Arts Council of Catawba County through the North Carolina Arts Council, with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Classes start September 1st and are already filling quickly so interested students and their families are encouraged to check out all the information online and sign up as soon as possible. For more detailed class and registration information, please visit www.thegreenroomtheatre.org or call The Green Room office at (828) 464-6583.
