{"id":23718,"date":"2019-05-09T16:33:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23718"},"modified":"2019-05-16T17:27:35","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T21:27:35","slug":"youth-actors-find-their-voices-at-theatre-aurora-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/youth-actors-find-their-voices-at-theatre-aurora-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth actors find their voices at Theatre Aurora this week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have entertained and inspired generations with their\ndaring feats and spellbinding stories, but Robin Hood and modern-day\nsuperheroes have something else in common: they are helping youngsters find\ntheir voices through theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Thursday through Sunday, members of Theatre Aurora\u2019s\n\u201cTheatre Kids\u201d and \u201cYoung Company\u201d groups will be showcasing their talents in\n\u201cRobin Hood & The Merry Men?\u201d and \u201cCamp Super.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fun begins this Thursday with Robin Hood & The\nMerry Men?, a gender-bending spin on the traditional tale, which takes the\nstage May 9 \u2013 11 at 8 p.m. The Theatre Kids\u2019 production of Camp Super steps\ninto the spotlight May 11 and 12 with shows at 1 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While both productions offer fresh takes on time-honoured\nstories and concepts, the development of these stories, driven by the young\nactors, has served to help kids and youth find their respective voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCamp Super is a comedy about a group of kids who are\nsuperheroes at this summer camp who have to team up with this villain who wants\nto burn the entire world,\u201d says co-director Joey Ferguson. \u201cIt\u2019s a very campy\nshow, it\u2019s very fun and the kids did everything from creating their characters,\nto their costumes, to writing some of the scenes. It is very much their show\nand they are super-excited about it. The older kids, the Young Company, are\ndoing Robin Hood & The Merry Men?, which is a gender-bent tale. King\nRichard has taken all the men to war and his brother, John has been left in\ncharge and says any man who is left and doesn\u2019t go and fight will be executed,\nso the men decide they don\u2019t want to go and fight and dress up as women.\nMeanwhile, the women in the country, they are told because only men can own\nland all the land now belongs to the king. They decide to dress up as men and\nthat is how Robin Hood is formed, by this group of ladies who are rising up\nagainst the king.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of taking the well-worn story of Robin Hood and\nskewing the genders involved is something Mr. Ferguson says was brought to the\ntable by the youth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theatre is a \u201cvery safe space,\u201d he said, and kids were\nfree to explore these ideas and concepts in this safe setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really worked with the students and they talked to us\nabout the whole idea of gender identity and what it means to identify different\ngenders and how they don\u2019t have to be part of the typical roles,\u201d says Mr.\nFerguson, who has been involved with Theatre Aurora since his own days as a\nmember of the youth group. \u201cLooking back ten years ago, while it wasn\u2019t that\nthese topics didn\u2019t exist, they weren\u2019t as present in our everyday life and for\nmany of these students, they are topics that are present in their lives. For\nthem to be able to come here and have a space to discuss it and use these\nexperiences to create a story, whether they are experiences of their own or\nexperiences of those around them, I think it is a very powerful thing. The idea\nof acceptance is very present in both of our shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all very impressed with what they have been able\nto do. We really enjoy having them around. It is a very unique thing for a\ncommunity theatre to have, not just a Youth Group but a very active Youth\nGroup. We\u2019re hoping our audiences and people around Town support them like they\ndo for all our other shows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on Robin Hood & The Merry Men?\nand Camp Super, including tickets, visit www.theatreaurora.com<\/a>,\nor call 905-727-3669.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir They have entertained and inspired generations with their daring feats and spellbinding stories, but Robin Hood and modern-day superheroes have something else in common: they are helping youngsters find their voices through theatre. This Thursday through Sunday, members of Theatre Aurora\u2019s \u201cTheatre Kids\u201d and \u201cYoung Company\u201d groups will be showcasing their talents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2019-05-09-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6ay","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 14:14:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}