Henniker Youth Theater hosts eighth summer camp

Onstage tension builds as Joey Gillett and Rob McArdell face off: (Beth Therriault photo)As school ends, and the long summer looms ahead, parents often wonder how they can keep their children productive, happy and involved until September. If you have a child who loves to perform, consider the Henniker Youth Theatre (HYT) summer camp program. For their 8th year, HYT is offering weeklong theatre workshops and productions, providing a creative, productive and entertaining summer for your children.

Henniker Youth Theatre is a project of The Alchemists’ Workshop, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing theatre opportunities to NH residents.

“I’ve been running theatres since I was 20 years old in Minnesota, NYC, D.C., Ohio and various other locales. My primary areas of expertise are new works, youth theatre and musicals,” explained Artistic Director Tom Dunn.

For the past eight years, Dunn has been running HYT out of Henniker, offering summer camps, the occasional holiday show, and a variety of theatrical programs throughout the year with participants from all of the surrounding towns.

Currently HYT finds local facilities in which to stage their summer programs from area schools or organizations. This year’s camps, like last summer’s, will be held at the John Stark High School, which offers a comfortable facility complete with a stage, rest rooms, and plenty of space in which to work.

Henniker Youth Ttheater has worked in conjunction with Henniker Community School, at the Henniker Community Center and even touring to places like the Wellspring Gallery in Hillsborough, NHTI in Concord, NCC in Nashua, the bookstore in Warner, the YWCA in Manchester, and other places. But without a place to rehearse, do classes, store and build sets and costumes and perform they are limited as to what we can do

“A long term goal of Henniker Youth Theatre is to become a year-round community theatre offering classes, workshops and full productions involving young people as well as adults,” Dunn said. “We have identified a building and worked out with the town of Henniker converting it into a theatre now we are negotiating the price so we can start fund-raising to realize our dream. Our hope is within two years that dream will become a reality.”

To this end, as well as to enable scholarships to students who would like to attend HYT camps but cannot financially afford to, HYT is conducting a variety of fundraisers. On Friday, June 27th, HYT is hosting a dance at the Weare Middle School for students entering grades 6-8. Tickets are $5.00 a piece and can be purchased at the door. This summer, HYT will be sponsoring a cake table at Henniker’s Old Home Days, and is hopeful to conduct a variety of additional fund raising events.

Children between the ages of 6 and 18 from all towns are welcome to participate in HYT’s summer programs, which offer a complete theatre experience from auditioning, to designing and decorating stage sets, to learning choreography, lines and songs, as well as writing and filming short films, and participating in improvisational workshops. Past productions have included “Beauty and Beast,” “Annie,” “High School Musical” and “101 Dalmatians.”

“My favorite performance was 101 Dalmatians because I played Cruella DeVille and it was a lot of fun to be mean,” recalled Lea Tindal-Stevenson of Henniker.

“HYT is a place where kids that like to act can come to hang out and to act, of course. There you can just be yourself and everybody is really nice,” said Joey Gillett of Hillsborough.

“I like the Henniker Youth Theater Summer camps because it is good acting experience and I have made lots of friends,” Tindal-Stevenson agreed.

The HYT summer program is well staffed and has a six to one counselor to camper ratio. Counselors include former participants such as Aly Deslefs, who many may remember as the delightful pachyderm “Horton” in last year’s Hillcat Summer Theatre production of “Seussical.”

Throughout the week, Tom Dunn, who has written and directed more than 200 plays in a wide variety of theatres, oversees all aspects of the program. With over twenty years experience conducting summer theatre camps, Tom’s formidable list of alumni includes Ben Stiller, Laura Linney, Mark Moses (of Desperate Housewives fame) and Ron Pearlman (Hellboy). In 1999 Tom was name one of the 100 most influential theatre professionals of the 20th century by the American Theatre Educator’s Association for his work with playwrights such as August Wilson, John Patrick Shanley, Lee Blessing, Mark Frost, Emily Mann and Eric Overmyer.

This year, HYT will be offering 4 weeklong theatre camps at the John Stark High School starting on July 7th. It will start with a new stage adaptation of “Oliver,” The classic Charles Dickens play, followed by two weeks of Mulan, Jr. One week will be for campers ages 12 and older, and one week in which younger performers join the cast. The final program of the season is a workshop series in which campers write, direct and produce short films and strengthen their improvisational skills. For more information, please Henniker Youth Theatre call 428-3544 or e-mail: dunn.t@comcast.net.