Musical theatre camp coming to Neepawa

Details

Published on Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Miranda Leybourne

The Neepawa Press

Children with an interest in singing, dancing and acting can expend some of their summertime energy at a musical theatre camp at Neepawa’s ArtsForward this summer. 

The program, for students from Kindergarten to Grade 8, is being put on by Brandon-based Mecca Productions and runs from July 3 to 7. Lisa Vasconcelos, artistic director with Mecca Productions, says Mecca Productions has been running theatre arts camps for the past 16 summers out of Brandon and for the past three years, has also hosted them in Neepawa."The program that we’ll be running is a bit different than what we’ve done in the past, because we’re offering it to a broader age range,” she says. “This summer we’re bringing four instructors and assistants with us, so every day kids will dance, they’ll sing, they’ll play drama games, they’ll explore theatre and script work, they’ll have a show chorus class and we’ll work on a musical theatre production number.”

Vasconcelos says the children will rotate through classes with each of the four instructors and that the week will end with a show put on for friends and family on the Friday afternoon.Rrain Prior, director of programming at ArtsForward, says she couldn’t imagine Neepawa without a summer arts program, as it’s been such a big part of the community these past few years.“It’s really a tradition in this town to be involved in the theatre arts, even more so than in a lot of places,” she attests. “We really want to foster that and start young…Summertime, I think, is a great time to get kids involved in extracurricular activities of all sorts -- [kids] have time to do it, especially a week-long camp like this -- they really have time to devote to something. We have so many kids in the area who love the theatre arts.”To sign up for the program, parents and caregivers can contact ArtsForward and visit mecca-productions.com for more information.