Putting kids in the spotlight

Remember how the good godmothers never get to say anything in Sleeping Beauty, while the wicked one had all the good lines? Didn't that make you mad? Kids at the Magic Circle Theater were angry _ and they decided to do something about it.

When the show's assistant director, Andrea DeCataldo, heard that her actors didn't like the play's traditional structure, she helped them re-tool the plot until they were happy with it.

"I would make take their suggestions and rewrite it based on what they were saying," said DeCataldo, who is now a student at the Kennedy School for Arts Education in DC.

This collaboration between students, counselors and directors on Sleeping Beauty, illustrates how directors and counselors listen to the kids at Tufts' Magic Circle Theater program _ and why it's still around.

The 50-year old camp, located in the Balch Arena Theater, is the oldest (and one of the few) theater camps in the New England area that provides a local alternative to sports camps and expensive sleep-away camps.

The program, designed for students ages 11-15, puts on three shows a summer during a six-week period and provided workshops to give some relief to campers during heavy rehearsal workloads.

Students from both Tufts and BC help teach the workshops as well as serve as assistant directors and group leaders, and also participate in the activities themselves _ especially with the younger children.

It's a program that's relatively diverse _ and "cheap" in comparison to sleep-away or sports programs for kids.

"We never turn away children because they can't pay," says Joanne Barnett, the executive director of Magic Circle as well as its affiliate Creative Arts program for kids 7-12.

And they mean it. Artistic Director of Magic Circle, Luke Jorgensen estimates they take about 45% of the kids on scholarship. Because there are only 60 students in the Magic Circle, they quickly become a close group, regardless of their backgrounds. The theater does hold auditions for parts _ but it is mainly to screen for maturity, said Barnett.

"Sometimes during auditions you see kids who are being mean, or who are laughing at the other ones auditioning," she said.

Barnett was particularly excited by this summer's 50th anniversary celebration because it meant that the program must have been doing something right all these years.

About 250 of the program's former directors and alumni came to schmooze it up at a reception and reminisce about their summers with displays in the Aidekman hallway of long-past programs.

In fact, Tufts and NEC alum Phillip White returned from LA to compose music for this past summer's musical production of James and the Giant Peach. Graduates from the program have often gone on to successful theater careers in LA and New York _ and then sent their own children to programs at the Magic Circle Theater.

One of the program's strength is that it fills a niche for theater junkies, as there are few strong theater departments in local middle schools. And according to Barnett, middle-schoolers can really benefit from such an experience _ as can the counselors.

"It's a learning experience for those who work there," says DeCataldo. "Most college age people are trying to figure out what they want to go into _ but for the summer they just want to get a job and make money."

Tufts junior Tali Paransky worked as a group leader with the Creative Arts division, and hopes to use her experience this summer to help her figure out her life. "Maybe I'll use theater and my political science background so that I can work at the National Endowments for the Arts, or other government agencies where there is an interaction of these two worlds," she said.

DeCataldo agreed. She originally wanted to be a professional actor, but after working at the camp for two summers, found that arts education suited her even better," she said.

"Watching how excited the kids get about the process of creating," DeCataldo said, inspired her to follow a similar path to Jorgenson _ her mentor and the mastermind behind many of the plays and musicals put on throughout the six-weeks of camp.

"I wanted to be like Luke, who just lets it roll off his back," she said. "He created an atmosphere where the kids wanted to have fun _ because with that schedule you could easily say instead, 'Let's just put our nose to the grindstone.'"

And probably the greatest measure of success of the program is the bonds kids form with their young counselors. DeCataldo and another counselor, Keegan Kok, both say that students continue to IM and e-mail them on what's happening in their lives as well as to ask the counselors about their lives