Kids MAT opens next week

The local acting troupe is again holding a decades-old tradition to let young actors participate in the theater, starting next week in Havre.

Montana Actors’ Theatre is holding Kids MAT in Havre next Monday through Thursday, followed by Monday through Thursday runs in Chinook June 19-22, Box Elder June 26-29, Malta July 10-13, back in Havre Aug. 7-10, and then in Hays-Lodge Pole Aug. 14-16.

MAT Artistic Director Jay Pyette said the first day of the camp, the children will come up with their own play. The four interns running the camps will script the play, then the children will rehearse it — and create sets and costumes — and give a performance of the play Thursday night.

“It’s all about the whole thing,” Pyette said. “It’s not just teaching them to be little actors, it’s the whole creative development.”

He said the troupe has been putting on summer children’s acting camps for at least 20 years, but this is the fourth year with hired interns putting on the play and extending the camps throughout the region. He said Box Elder was added for the first time this year.

Some local actors and one intern from Carroll College will be putting on the camps, he said. Those interns are MAT veterans Amanda Viall of Havre, who is attending Montana State University-Northern, Vanessa Lundstrom of Chinook, who is also a Northern student, Havreite Amanda Dolph, who is attending college in Oklahoma, and Carroll College student Savannah Christiansen, who is from Nevada.

Each day of the camps will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the Thursday performances at 7 p.m.

The children are asked to bring a sack lunch, but MAT will provide snacks throughout the day.

Registration is $50 for the first child and $30 for each additional child per family.

Pyette said people can download registration forms at http://www.mtactors.com and mail them with payment to the address provided, or they can register at 9 a.m. on the first day of camp.