Inside the Lyndall Finley Wortham Theater, live productions are fueling the creative fires of young imaginations and cultivating a new generation of theatergoers.
The 2008 Children’s Theatre Festival began its 30th season Wednesday with a lush production of Sleeping Beauty. The play is adapted and directed by Kate Pogue and surpasses expectations viewers may have of the classic tale. The lavish medieval costumes, a picture-perfect fairy-tale set, a dashing hero and a villainous, evil antagonist all grace the stage.
This children’s production – the first of two this summer – is a continuation of what Sidney Berger, festival co-founder and former director of the UH School of Theatre and Dance, worked to create in 1978. Berger produces the Children’s Theatre Festival, which uses a mix of actors from across the country as well as UH students who audition. Berger also produces the Houston Shakespeare Festival.
In the children’s theater realm, Berger’s vision has remained steadfast in enlisting top-drawer theater professionals, many of which have extensive Broadway credentials, to adapt existing stories or pen new children’s theater pieces without watering down the practical life lessons contained within the plays and musicals. Sometimes good characters die and the road to good conquering evil isn’t always an easy path.
"A lot of plays will talk down to kids with a saccharine sweetness," Berger said. "If you go through these fairy tales, they’re pretty heavy stuff. So many times they’re sugared up but these are shows that have some really significant impact on kids…. I want to keep very close to the authentic stories, so I make writers adhere to that."
Berger also said the past several decades of American theater have been rapt in realism, except for musical theater and children’s pieces, two genres in which fantasy and imagination remain thriving. It’s through the loose reality of some stories that Berger hopes the lives and experiences of young audiences are shaped and impacted for the better.
"Theater has been mired for decades in realism," Berger said. "(Musicals and children’s productions) allow reality to be elasticized so we can engage our imaginations. If children don’t engage their imaginations when they’re smaller, they’re not going to be particularly imaginative adults."
That message resonated with Katy resident Emilie Miesner. Her mother, Kathy Miesner, took her to her first Children’s Theatre Festival production in the early 1990s. As a college sophomore, Emilie has made a habit of returning to new children’s productions with her mom – and with a couple of children she babysits.
"I remember this being a really good experience," Emilie Miesner said. "It helped give me culture and, I think, helped me to be a well-rounded person and helped my imagination develop, too."
New theatergoers who will pack the Wortham’s space this summer continue to inspire and give hope to Berger as the festival launches its fourth decade.
"We’re creating audiences for the next century," Berger said. "I believe we have to prepare these children to be the next generation of theatergoers, or we may not even have theater…. I take that very seriously."
Sleeping Beauty continues through June 20. The Emperor’s New Clothes, with book and lyrics by Berger and music by Rob Landes, runs July 8 through 18. For more information, visit www.theatredance.uh.edu.
