On Mar. 18, The Missoula Children’s Theatre (MCT) arrived at Boulder Elementary School to spearhead a week long drama workshop for more than 50 students, culminating in an hour-long performance this past Friday in the school gymnasium. MCT, a traveling youth theater troupe based in Missoula, helped Boulder Elementary’s K-8 students stage “Hercules”, a musical set in ancient Greece that playfully incorporates the titular character’s mythology in a light-hearted children’s story.
“In a week, [the students] become little professionals,” said Boulder Elementary Business Manager Britton Mann, who coordinated the theater engagement. “Arts programs are especially rare in low-income, high-poverty communities, so programs like this are essential to getting kids exposure to things they might not otherwise get to do.”
MCT Directors Cuinlan Pedretti, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Logan Chance, an experienced actor and recent graduate of Alabama’s Jacksonville State University, led Boulder Elementary students through over 18 hours of preparation and training prior to their performance. Students auditioned the first Monday for various roles in the show, and, once placed, immediately began learning their parts.
“We’ve been able to cast every kid that’s wanted to participate so far,” said Chance. “I grew up in a place without great access to arts programs. Speaking as someone from Alabama, I wish I’d have had something like this when I was their age.” While all 54 Boulder Elementary students who auditioned were given a role, Chance says MCT averages roughly 40 students a workshop.
“We don’t work specific scenes so much as to prepare them, in other, less obvious ways, to stage a play,” said Pedretti. “I think of this as an extremely informative week-long lesson in respect and self-control. We throw a lot at them, but at the core of our work is this idea of theater as community building.”
Pedretti and Chance are deployed by MCT for five months at a time, bringing drama curricula to underserved communities across the American West. MCT has, at any given moment, as many as 30 director teams traveling across the country. While it costs roughly $3,000 for a school to host an MCT workshop, proceeds from the finished show’s ticket sales are retained by the school and are often used to supplement the cost of bringing MCT back the following year.
“We’ve been doing this for at least 15 years,” said Mann. “And hopefully 15 more!”
