After two intensive weeks of a workshop devoted to the art of improvisation, the young players in Oneida Public Library’s Children’s Summer Theater workshop will be ready to perform “Characters in Search of a Play” in the gymnasium of the Durhamville Elementary School, 5462 Main St. in Durhamville, on Friday evening, July 22, at 7:00 p.m.
The free workshop performance will feature 13 children aged 7 to 13 years and three adults in a play within a play, “The Moon of Saturn.” While actors audition for the supposedly fictional roles in the play, the “real life” characters invade the theater and do their best to remake the play according to their own experience. The resulting mayhem is sheer improvisation.
Tom Lemery, who has led the OPL Children’s Summer Theater since 2006, not only has directed the workshop this summer but is also featured as the director of the play within the play. He has been ably assisted in the workshop by Kayli Wilson.
“The children have been having a lot of fun with improvisation,” Lemery said. “They are very inventive, and they have been a pleasure to work with. The audience at the workshop performance should enjoy how well the children work with each other and how imaginative their minds are.”
The OPL Children’s Summer Theater is supported by funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and administered by CNY Arts.
“The OPL Children’s Theater workshop also owes a big debt of gratitude to the Durhamville School’s principal, Peg Visalli,” Tom Murray, the OPL’s assistant director, said. “She has made it possible for our players to perform ‘Characters in Search of a Play’ on a real stage and for their families and friends to enjoy the play to its fullest.”
For more information, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call 315-363-3050.