Rehearsals went on this morning at Hope's Hempstead Hall for a play written, directed and produced by Chris Espinosa (in center). The actors work four hours a day all week on the play, presenting it on Friday nights during Star Academy's summer theater camp.
At 9:30 this morning, a group of nine kids from ages five to senior in high school were all at Hempstead either building a set or rehearsing scenes for Friday's production of It Came From Over There! which will start at 6 :00 p.m. that night. It happens under the auspices of the Southwest Arkansas Arts Council and Star Academy.
The play is being produced and directed by Chris Espinosa, an experienced theater and language arts educator who comes to Hope courtesy of a grant. He described himself as a teaching artist and gave a run-down on how the production is going thus far.
"I've told this to Jennifer, there's something in the water here. Because the level of talent that I find for just a summer thing is pretty good. I'm very, very happy."
Espinosa has about four hours a day from Monday to Friday to rehearse the play with his young actors, limits he has had to work with here in the summers of 2019, 2021 and 2022. As Jennifer Block, Southwest Arkansas Arts Council Executive Director told me this morning, it usually comes together well. She was helping about six youngsters construct parts of the show's set Wednesday morning.
She has been impressed with the skills a range of ages of young people have a chance to practice during the week. "This year, we actually have a wide range of ages. So as tricky as that can be, it actually works out. Because everybody finds their spot where they need to be to their skill and ability level. Everybody works on the same skills. So they've worked on staging and keeping their back away from the audience and how to project their voice. So all of those skills get taught from moment one."
This year's production, written by Espinosa, concerns a mad scientist who leads a group of werewolves in a quest for world domination, but a young girl named Aurora Borealis and her sheriff father are in their way.
Espinosa runs his rehearsals so that they end up enriching his writing with what the kids come up with. "I'm not a stickler for the script," he said. "I write it but [we use] whatever works for them. We edit. In fact, I even let them add their own jokes."
