Thirty-five young singers, dancers and actors gathered at the this month with one mission in mind: to put on a musical. Following an earlier Canton summer production of “Cinderella,” musical theatre instructor Leslie Van Dyk and four other staff members guided the aspiring Broadway babes, ages seven to 14, to a performance of “Peter Pan."
“Cinderella was a huge success,” said Van Dyk about the July production. “A lot of kids from ‘Cinderella’ were in ‘Peter Pan,’ too.”
Casting and preparing a show for performance in a week could be a daunting task, but Van Dyk said she’s very organized in her approach to musical theatre camp.
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“I burn CDs for the children, and they purchase them for $1,” she said. “The songs that will be used for the performance (are on the CD) and they practice singing and dancing at home.”
In addition to the practice CD, each participant receives a script and a packet of song lyrics. Dialogue is memorized for the show, and the bulk of the week is spent in rehearsal after a few preliminaries on Monday.
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“The first day, we play a game to get to know each other,” said Van Dyk. “Just because all the kids are from Canton doesn’t mean they necessarily know each other.”
Following the icebreaker, auditions are held, and every child is assigned a role.
“Nobody is a tree,” Van Dyk laughed. “They all get a chance to do something.”
In addition to rehearsals, the program has an arts and crafts componant. Van Dyk said she prints out the name of the musical in block letters on poster paper, and the campers color and decorate the posters throughout the week. The posters then become prizes for games on the final day.
Despite the short rehearsal time during camp, Van Dyk says the performance is always a success.
“Parents say to us, ‘I can’t believe how much they’ve learned and covered in one week! My daughter or son didn’t do this much in their dance recital,’” she said.
Van Dyk also sees the camp as fulfilling a larger purpose in the kids’ artistic lives.
“It’s children who don’t have experience,” she said, “but it prepares them for the future, for going into Boston to participate in a workshop there – or even for the whole family to go to Boston, or New York, or all over the world, to watch a musical and know what goes into it.”
