Cast members rehearse Thursday for the upcoming production of Alice in Wonderland at The Roxy theater in Morton.
The OnStage Children’s Theatre Education Program is performing “Alice in Wonderland” at the Roxy Theater in Morton on May 4 and 11 at 7 p.m. and May 5 and 12 at 2 p.m.
Vanessa Nixon Klein, artistic director of the OnStage Children’s Theatre Education Program, said kids involved in the production assist in all aspects — backstage, props, costumes and set building.
“The kids are so imaginative,” Klein said. “It’s so wonderful to be able to bring them into theater arts.”
Klein said a lot of the production focuses on teaching the kids life skills, such as team-building activities, leadership training and getting them engaged in collaboration.
“Our mission in this program is to facilitate the learning of life skills through the theater arts,” Klein said. “We don’t just focus on putting on a great production, we focus on skills that will benefit the kids for life.”
There are more than 40 kids in the production, and Klein said coordinating costumes has been particularly interesting.
“It’s fun,” Klein said. “It’s also challenging, especially with this many kids. As you know, they are all going to be very whimsical and creative. We have a couple of kids in our cast who have experience with costume making and making their own clothes. They offered to be lead designers on costumes and that’s worked really well.”
Klein believes some of the audience’s favorite costumes will be the ones worn by the youngest cast members.
“As far as audience perception, it’s going to be really fun to see the cards,” Klein said. “We have card gardeners and card soldiers. A lot of the really little kids are wearing those costumes.”
A few of Klein’s other favorites include a fish footman costume, a dodo bird costume and a duck costume.
“It’s going to be very, very colorful and creative,” Klein said.
The cast of children, ranging in ages 5 to 18, already performed a few of their numbers at the Roxy Theater’s 7th Annual Rain Festival on April 14. Klein said the performances helped get people excited for the upcoming production.
“One of the things that I really loved, and I was so impressed with the kids, was the Roxy Theater held the Rain Festival and we had a couple of our kids perform their numbers from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in that festival to promote the show,” Klein said. “One of them was a little girl, fourth grader Katie Johnston. She was the Mock Turtle. She performed and did an incredible job.”
Klein said the other performance was from Tweedledee and Tweedledum, performed by Kirsten Scogin and Fabienne Randig. Randig is a foreign exchange student from Germany, who is staying with Klein and her family. Klein has two high school-aged daughters who are also in the production.
“She (Randig) is having a lot of fun and doing a really fantastic job,” Klein said.
Klein said this adaption of “Alice in Wonderland,” by Mike Carter, is more interactive than the audience may expect.
“This particular adaptation is a little bit unique because it has a bit of audience participation, which most not only ‘Alice in Wonderland’ productions don’t have, but most children’s productions don’t have,” Klein said.
In certain songs during the show, the cast invites audience members to chant back parts of the song. In addition, one lucky (or not-so-lucky) audience member comes onstage to participate.
“One of the cast members gets to choose an audience member to come up and participate in Caucus-Race,” Klein said.
Tickets are available at mortonroxy.org and the BCJ Gallery in Morton.
Tickets for adults are $9 in advance online or $10 at the door. Children’s tickets are $5.
