Along with a series of art camps for young students and teenagers, the Tracy Public Library hosted its first theater camp beginning on Tuesday, July 21. The camp is for students in kindergarten through sixth grade who are taught to explore creativity through storytelling. At the end of the three-day camp, the students will perform a short play for their parents.
The classes are taught by SammyJo Miller, a local artist and author who is teaching a series of elementary and teenage art camps over the summer. With the help of some student inspiration, she will be writing the play herself over the first days of the camp. Students will learn lines and perform on Thursday.
To begin the camp, Miller sat down with the four students in attendance and read a story to them. Miller had written and illustrated the book herself called “I Have a Plan.”
In the book, a girl wants to build a castle out of blocks, and while she has the perfect idea in her head, she wants to have her plan on paper before she begins to build. She tries to draw or paint her blueprint, but it never quite looks the way she wants it to. Instead of getting frustrated or giving up, the girl thinks outside of the box and creates her idea using a bit of an unconventional method — drawing out the shape of each block on individual pieces of paper and taping them up to the wall to create her picture.
The moral of the story is to embrace creativity and imagination, two concepts the theater camp students will practice throughout the week.
After the story, Miller invited the students to come up with their own block creations. She listened carefully and took note of their ideas, prepared to add them to the script she was writing for their Thursday practice and performance.
The students played with blocks until they had created the perfect city: castles, houses, a waterpark, a restaurant, people, cars, and a water tower. They called the city “Together is Better” or “Together U.S.A.” In this perfect town, the people were all named after fruit and there were never any natural disasters — except an occasional earthquake when the table got bumped.
After their city was completed, Miller spoke to the students about their experience working as a team.
“A play or a story usually has some kind of problem, right? What were some problems we had when building?” she asked the children. “We had to work together to decide what to build because we all had different ideas, and sometimes we had to start our buildings over when they didn’t work out.”
Miller then asked the students to return to the table; she passed out paper and markers and invited the children to draw out some ideas for their props and costumes for the play, which they would be making on Wednesday.
The children also had the opportunity to practice their acting with a few easy theater games. Students had to copy each other like a mirror, pass around pretend objects, and act out different emotions. They also played charades to test their abilities. While the camp attendance was a bit lower than Miller had hoped, the sessions were still filled with laughs and lots and creativity.
Upcoming classes at the library include “Art & Wonder Camp” for children ages 4-6 and “Creative Studio: Art and Exploration” for ages 7-11 beginning on July 28. A graphic design workshop for teenagers will begin on Aug. 11.
PAISLEY PULLEY shows off her acting skills during Tuesday’s theater camp. Photo / Gracelynn Struchen
