Art appreciation

Students attend Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas

From left, Ashleigh Plasters, left, assistant to the Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas Summer Intensive Program junior group, talks to Madison Brown, 12, as Ruthann Curry Brown, director of the program, talks to Kwynn McEntire, 13, and Juliana Breshears, 12. The students were rehearsing a play they will perform for the public at 7 p.m. July 14-15 and 2 p.m. July 16 in the Bridges/Larson Theatre inside the Snow Fine Arts Center at the University of Central Arkansas.
From left, Ashleigh Plasters, left, assistant to the Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas Summer Intensive Program junior group, talks to Madison Brown, 12, as Ruthann Curry Brown, director of the program, talks to Kwynn McEntire, 13, and Juliana Breshears, 12. The students were rehearsing a play they will perform for the public at 7 p.m. July 14-15 and 2 p.m. July 16 in the Bridges/Larson Theatre inside the Snow Fine Arts Center at the University of Central Arkansas.

— Lucas Yarbrough just turned 13, but he’s already a veteran of the Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas in Conway.

“It’s my fourth summer,” he said. “It’s fun, and I also like the feeling of being able to express myself through the character.

Everybody who does theater here is nice, so that’s an added bonus.”

Lucas, a Vilonia Middle School student, is one of the students ages 10 to 18 who have spent six weeks immersed in theater arts and filmmaking during the annual Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas Summer Intensive Program at the University of Central Arkansas. It’s an outreach of UCA’s theater program.

The public is invited to watch the final performances at 7 p.m. July 14-15 and 2 p.m. July 16 in the Bridges/Larson Theatre in the UCA Snow Fine Arts Center. Admission is free.

Ruthann Curry Browne of Conway, director of the Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas, said the 32 theater students and six film students are from all over.

“I have home-school kids; I have Conway kids; I have students from Greenbrier, North Little Rock — I have one from Central [High School] this year — Vilonia, so they come from all over central Arkansas,” she said.

Students ages 10-13 are in the Junior Theatre Intensive; ages 14-18 are in the Senior Theatre Intensive. The Film Intensive, which UCA graduate film student Michael Ferrara runs, is for the older age group.

“This year, we are working on devising theater. It encompasses many, many things,” Browne said. “What I try to do is give them a good solid foundation for what training in the theater arts is like. …. We do acting exercises; we play theater games to build their listening skills, their communication skills. They warm up — they train how to warm up their voices, their minds and bodies. It’s kind of like practicing the piano; you’ve got to learn the scales before you do the piece. During the second part, we rehearse their performance piece.”

This is the junior group’s year to do a comedy, and the students are using a script Browne wrote called The Buffet Games.

“I wrote a parody of The Hunger Games, but I’ve left little pieces of it open for them to improvise … so the ending isn’t finished. We will work on creating an ending on it together,” she said. “We’ll do that through improvisation exercises.

“They’re coming up with a lot of creative ideas helping me with that. We had a great day today; we wrote rap songs about food,” she said, laughing.

The older students have performed a comedy the past two years, so they are creating a serious play with the help of two UCA theater students, Zoe Allison, 19, of Conway and Kayla Williams, 22, of Huntsville, Alabama, a recent graduate.

“I have a really intense senior group this year; they’re very interested in how art in general, but specifically theater, gives people a voice,” Browne said. “They’ve been talking about things and coming up with a theme — empowering community. I love the idea that they chose community as a real strong word to work with.”

Adama McDonald, 14, of Conway will be a ninth-grader at Conway High School. Like Lucas, she hasn’t taken drama in her school, but she has participated in the Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas before.

“I like it because it’s something to do in the summer, and it’s fun,” she said. Adama said the senior group’s play is “almost like a spin-off of Antigone,” a tragedy by Sophocles.

Allison, who is in her second summer helping with the program, said “this year’s a little different, because we’re devising original work. It’s been really great.”

She said it’s a collaborative process. “We all sit down together and build it from the ground up.”

Also, the students go through different exercises. “They’ve really latched onto these ideas of physical theater … not necessarily dance, but how you can tell a story with your body and images,” Allison said.

Williams and she both said the participants have impressed them.

“The kids are extremely intelligent, and they know what’s going on in the world,” Williams said. “They definitely know how to pick apart a script and create a story.”

The film students are creating a short film, which will be shown during the final performances, Browne said.

Liz Parker, retired business and production manager for the UCA Theatre program, coordinated the youth-theater program for many years. She said Bob Willenbrink, former UCA Theatre director, started Youth Theatre of Central Arkansas more than 25 years ago after UCA and Conway Community Arts Association performed the summer musical Gypsy.

“With all these kids, we saw the need for it,” she said.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

Upcoming Events