Program offered by the Whitefish Theater Company allows children in kindergarten through eighth grade to tap their inner spirits

"Advice"

By Shel Silverstein

William Tell, William Tell.

Take your arrow, grip it well.

There's the apple - aim for the middle.

Oh, well … you just missed by a little.

You're between 8 and 11 years old. Your instructor gives three of you a book of Shel Silverstein poems. They're funny, subversive.

You've got 15 minutes to pick a poem and turn it into a skit. Write it. Rehearse it. Tweak it. Do it.

Two other trios of youths get the same assignment.

Juliana Pesavento, 11, Maya Gordon, 10, and Ben Hirsch, 8, look at this poem and that, and then another. Stumped. One's too long. Another doesn't make sense. That one - just don't like it.

Tick-tock, tick-tock - time's running out.

"Advice" is funny. Sort of cool too. And short.

Juliana will read the poem out loud. Ben will be William Tell. Maya will take an arrow to the forehead - " just missed by a little."

Now to punch it up, to flesh it out. All with imaginary props.

Ben will take three practice shots and yell "Bingo!" before Juliana puts an apple on Maya's head. Juliana will pause dramatically after the second and third lines, will put the apple on Maya's head with the third line, and will put a nonchalant "oops" spin on the last line.

Ben wants to shoot a flaming arrow at Maya. No way, say Maya and Juliana.

Maya can't move after being hit. "Once you hit their brain, they're brain damaged," Juliana notes.

Juliana and Ben practice pulling a dead Maya off the stage. "Pull the same way. Don't pull her apart," instructor Abigail MacLaren advises after watching one attempt.

Show time.

One threesome features a girl falling off end of the Earth in "The Edge Of The World."

Another trio combines "The Man In The Pail Mask" with "Who Ordered The Broiled Face?" into an existential epic that begins with a beheading and continues with the executed girl carrying her head around while telling the audience to ignore her body.

Juliana, Ben and Maya pull off "Advice" without a hitch.

Critique time: The nine youths sit and tell what went right and what went wrong with each skit.

"Before I shot the arrow into Maya's head, I lighted it on fire," Ben triumphantly announces to the class.

The Whitefish Theater Company's latest offering of its child actors program for kindergartners through eighth-graders at the O'Shaughnessy Center will run through mid-February.

For several weeks at a time, the program offers three to four classes to youths in different age groups, with fees from $80 to $140.

"The company was looking for ways to involve the kids more," said MacLaren, a 2004 Colorado College theater graduate who concentrated her studies on acting and youth theater.

The Whitefish Theater Company hired her in September to run the fledgling program, which is currently in its third round of classes.

"I really like working with kids. It renews my energy. It renews my creativity," MacLaren said.

The classes are designed for the youths to tap into their imaginations, shed their natural shyness, learn to create in small groups, and practice speaking loud enough so audiences can hear them.

"It's not as hard as people make it out to be. Acting is playing. Kids do that very well. … The younger they are, they don't have a lot of worldly experience, but they can create some bizarre ideas," MacLaren said.

One course for kindergartners and first-graders consists of theatrical games to learn each others' names, tell short stories, or do drills such as showing they are elephants without being able to talk.

They learn to work with other to contort and position their bodies as groups into sculpturelike ensembles.

Second- through fourth-graders do more advanced theater games and learn how to create stories as a group.

Fifth- through eighth-graders learn to use props - not the actual objects, but usually cardboard boxes which force them to use their imaginations.

And there is the performance class for second- through eighth-graders that takes stories and poems by Dr. Seuss and Silverstein, and teaches the children how to write and act out their own interpretations of those works.

"The Fourth"

By Shel Silverstein

oh

CRASH!

my

BASH!

it's

BANG!

the

ZANG!

Fourth

WHOOSH!

of

BAROOM!

July

WHEW!

Nine youths. Three trios. Different threesomes than the other exercise.

Maya teams up with Halle Reading, 8 1/2, and Waylon Roberts, 11.

They brainstorm -raucously, chaotically, borderline anarchistically.

Show time.

Halle reads: "Oh."

Maya lights a make-believe fireworks rocket in front of Waylon. It explodes in his face.

Halle reads: "My."

Maya lights another rocket. Waylon grabs his face again in pain.

Halle reads: "It's."

Another lit rocket. "My eyes," Waylon cries. Halle reads: "The."

Another rocket. "My hair," Waylon grabs up there.

Halle reads: "Fourth."

Lit rocket again. Waylon's agony doesn't end.

Halle reads: "Of July."

Final rocket. Waylon flops on the stage floor. Maya and Halle drag him toward the door.

"One month later," Maya announces.

Maya knocks on a door. Halle answers.

Maya says: "Your medical bill."

Halle turns to Waylon: "You're paying for this," and then she faints.

Two more skits, and its critique time.

"When [Halle] dropped dead, she should've done it more dramatically," says Samantha Ricci, 10.