Basin Theatre Works begins the first of two summer camps

Jun. 20—Director Seneca Mick has been involved with Basin Theatre Works ever since she was a child.

She now gets the chance to help the young children at the summer camp fall in love with local theater the same way she did.

This week, Basin Theatre Works began its Summer Theatre Camp for children in grades K-5 as they work on the production of "Jack and the Beanstalk" at Permian Playhouse.

This summer camp is one of two that Basin Theatre Works is doing.

The other summer camp will be for grades 6-12 and take place from July 10-30 at Permian Playhouse.

"I've been performing here since I was little," Mick said. "I was involved in the summer camps here. When I finally grew up and was trying to decide what I wanted to do, I found this camp and saw that they needed a director and wanted to be a part of it. This is my show that I've directed here but it's been amazing."

This week's camp began on Monday with the casting for the show.

On Tuesday, the children began working on different parts of the show, both on and off the stage.

The camp takes place all day from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and will wrap up with next week's production of "Jack and the Beanstalk" on Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. at Permian Playhouse.

"Throughout the day, we're working on the scenes and we're working on the show," Camp Director Emily Hatch said. "Monday, we had auditions and Tuesday, we began working on the show. We're rotating around. They're either learning music or doing crafts or doing theater activities and learning our lines."

Hatch said they have about 30 kids that signed up for the K-5 camp.

"There's a wide-range of kids but it's good," Hatch said. "We split them up into different groups. We have new volunteers helping out that have been so excited to be here. The kids are having so much fun. They're having a blast. It's an all day camp. It's really busy and really fast-paced as it usually is with kids. But it's been going well. With some of these kids, it's their first time doing a camp in general. It's their first time ever doing a show but they're picking it up pretty quickly."

While everyone is familiar with the fairy tale of "Jack and the Beanstalk," Hatch says this production has a little bit of a "Texas Spin" on it.

"We didn't want to do the traditional fairy tale," Hatch said. "We wanted to do it West Texas style. We're going to do a Texan tale of 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' We thought it would be fun and easier for the audiences to relate as well as the kids since they live here in West Texas."

The 6-12 summer camp will feature the production of "Finding Nemo Jr."

"We picked 'Finding Nemo Jr.' because the rights just got released not too long ago so it's very new," Hatch said. "We wanted to grab that really quickly. We wanted the kids to experience a show that they've never experienced before. The set and the music work so well together. It's really big. We want to do some puppetry and we wanted to take that challenge."

Throughout the camp, the children will be rotating to different stations from working on rafts for the show to working on stage blocking to even working on character development.

"It's wonderful for the children because we have short attention spans," Hatch said. "We love to go around and go into different activities, different things. We have different crafts that we work on every day. We're learning about the story and learning about character development and how to build a character. Everything we do either has to do with the show or has to do with theater. We're going to move around in those groups pretty often so that they're not getting bored. There's always high energy."

For Hatch, the summer camps are a good way to get the children interested in local theater.

"With these summer camps, we're hoping to grow our theater school and our Kaleidoscope company," Hatch said. "Some of these kids have never been to this theater before so introducing them to other things that we have outside of camp has been great. Hopefully, with this camp, the kids will have a great opportunity and say 'I want to come and be a part of this theater school.'"

Mick said it's a great outlet for theater children in West Texas.

"There's not a lot of fun things to do but we can put on a fun theater camp for the kids," Mick said. "It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside because it's something for the kids to do. It's giving them the outlet they need."

For more information on the Basin Theatre Works Summer Theatre Camps, go to basintheatreworks.org.