Anchorage Daily News

A roar begins at the entrance to Atwood Concert Hall and radiates throughout the building as kids giggle, juggle and walk on stilts over the infamous "yellow poppy" carpet of the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts.

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Jon Minton

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Backpacks and lunch boxes litter the floor along the railings. On one floor, children belt out the sound effects of jungle life and machinery, while on another, the cast of "The Magic Flute" rehearses.

Welcome to the 22nd year of Alaska Theatre of Youth's summer conservatory, a multiweek theater camp serving 140 children and culminating next week with a four-day Festival of Plays that features everything from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" to a melding of dance and circus art in "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Now moving into its 25th season of stage business, ATY sticks to its core mission of finding joy and community through theater.

"It's a blessing, really," said Christian

Heppinstall, executive director of ATY. "I sit in this rehearsal for 'The Magic Flute,' based on a Judy Garland and Andy Rooney film, and the kids are so funny. They try so hard and make mistakes and constantly wiggle. We could have made a set out of cardboard and paper bag costumes and they would be fine."

Instead, they get to perform on the city's grandest stages as ATY offers them theater experiences ranging from singing, acting and directing to technical work, dance and more. Heppinstall even introduced an "Alaskan Idol" component so singers can perform for a panel of judges and get feedback before doing their next tune.

Jon Minton, a local actor and director who runs the conservatory box office, is amazed at how the summer conservatory reaches even reluctant participants.

"I've done this four years now, and some of the kids I thought would never come back come back," he said.

Others get into the thick of it from the get-go, like Alexandra Korshin, who has been involved in the conservatory since the age of 8. Now she works as a summer intern while on break from studying singing and theater at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. This year, she is directing kids in a couple of one-act plays for children by David Mamet.

Korshin said her experience as a conservatory regular gave her knowledge about the rules and routines as well as "faith in the kids."

She remembers how at least one director would lose his or her voice every year she participated.

"Now I know why," she said while monitoring lunch and yelling, "Clean up your trash!"

LET THEM EAT CAKE

A few months ago, Heppinstall wrote a scathing e-mail to the Daily News arts staff about how newspapers write copious stories about student athletes and next to nothing about young artists.

He feels the same frustration over corporations and other donors who find it easy to fund new turf for a sport field even as they neglect the arts. His kids notice the same thing, he said. So in "The Magic Flute," he includes an act at intermission that poses young actors as downtrodden and perplexed by the lack of support from their community.

Throughout the scene, they get cake instead of money or attention.

"A lot of grants eliminate the arts right off the bat," he said. "Why are theater and the arts considered so un-valuable to corporations? Isn't theater or symphony an expression of successful group dynamics?"

For him, an ATY success is "when a kid comes to conservatory and works in a group," he said. "There's collaboration, cooperation and give and take."

Not to mention the potential for growth. Heppinstall makes it a credo to give young people responsibility when they're ready, he said.

This year's conservatory includes four college interns, four high school interns and 15 staff members including emerging artists like Minton, 21, who will direct "Merry Wives of Windsor" for the main stage this season.

Enlisting young directors alters the energy of the conservatory, Heppinstall said.

"It feels so much more joyful and happy this year," he said, "and I think it's because we have more youth under the roof."

Like West High School student Kyle Horne, 16, who started doing theater with ATY in 1998 and now does everything from Shakespearean leads to online commercials for ATY on MySpace and YouTube.

"In truth," Horne said, "ATY has shaped me as a person and taught me valuable lessons that have helped me to mature and see the world in a new light."

He used to go to auditions in hopes of getting into the chorus, but now he feels confident about getting significant parts and raising the standards of each production, he said. He believes his experiences with ATY also prepare him for job interviews and major life events, like his August trip to Malawi as a volunteer teaching English, theater, math and other subjects.

"ATY offers you the ability to really come outside the box and present yourself as an actor and human being," he said.

STEPPING UP

Next week's Festival of Plays dominates ATY activities this month, but another batch of main-stage and touring productions goes into high gear starting in August.

ATY will do most of the production work for an upcoming staging of "Evita," for example. The show is really a collaborative effort between ATY and Theatre Artists United, an adult group co-founded by Heppinstall and known for its rousing productions of musical theater including "Cabaret," "Hair," "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Rocky Horror Show."

Compared with the adults auditioning for "Evita," the "ATY people were prepared with monologues, prepared to dance and had their music ready," Heppinstall said.

All seven ATY actors who auditioned got parts.

In a similar vein, the senior high school interns from the cast of "Macbeth" conducted workshops at Healy High School when their touring production headed north last season.

"It was peer to peer, my kids teaching and their kids responding enthusiastically," Heppinstall said. "The staff came up to me and said, 'Wow, your kids are really dynamic.' "

ATY will take "Twelfth Night" to Healy this fall as well as to Anchorage schools that show interest. Youth involvement in Shakespeare has grown since ATY did "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar" last year, noted Heppinstall, with conservatory enrollment tripling to 22 kids in that time.

"I could hire more and better teachers, have more and better classes, more frequent and better touring productions to broaden outreach, and I bet every other youth theater group would say the same," Heppinstall said. "The lack of funding really holds you back."

The community does take notice, however. The city gave ATY its Mayor's Youth Arts Organization Award for 2008, and loads of kids show up every year to act, direct and learn the ropes. The 25th season looks as inspiring as ever, with workshops, intensives, a touring production of Shakespeare and a 25th-anniversary gala on Oct. 4 with main-stage debuts of both "Bunnicula" and "Evita."

Heppinstall grew up in Anchorage in the 1970s, when only schools did youth theater. Reaching 25 years is a watershed moment for any organization, he said.

"It's also a wonderful legacy that so many people who went through ATY come back to give back."

Find Dawnell Smith online at adn.com/contact/dsmith or call 257-4587.

Festival of Plays schedule

Plays will be presented by Alaska Theatre of Youth Thursday through July 27 at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts (www.alaskapac.org). Tickets cost $10 for adults and $8 for children per play, cash or check, available at the door or ahead of time at the ATY booth on the Fifth Avenue side of the arts center, open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. starting Monday. Performance times:

• The Magic Flute: 6 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. Saturday, noon Sunday.

• Twelfth Night: 2 p.m. Thursday, 4 p.m. Friday, 6 p.m. Saturday, 8 p.m. Sunday.

• Willy Wonka Jr.: 4 p.m. Thursday, 6 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. Sunday.

• One-act plays by David Mamet, 10 a.m. Thursday, noon Friday-Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday.

• Bohemian Rhapsody: noon Thursday, 2 p.m. Friday, 4 p.m. Saturday, 6 p.m. Sunday.

• Fairy Tale Theatre: 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.

For more information:

www.alaskatheatreofyouth.org

myspace.com/theatreofyouth

youtube.com/watch?v=JPFhptBZYZY

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