Egyptian YouTheatre Summer 2020
The Egyptian YouTheatre offers a varied menu of 2020 summer camps for ages 5-18. These camps will be held 'live and in person' in the newly built YouTheatre space.
After so much isolation this spring local kids (and their parents) are hungry for this type of interaction. Will it be exciting or scary to harness that enthusiasm and energy? “Both, to be honest,” says YouTheatre Artistic and Managing Director, Jamie Wilcox. “I find that, like myself, many people are actually more creative within boundaries. We’re taking it on as a fun challenge. It won’t be the same as what we or our students are used to, but we feel the experiences we offer are important to the physical, social, and mental well-being of our students. This is true all the time, but even more so now. There will still be much-needed social interaction, self-expression, and activities that work the mind and body. We are excited and ready to rise to the challenge.”
This year instead of offering their popular Theatre Bugs Camp for 5-7 year olds, they went a similar but new direction by replacing those with our Adventure Camps. “The reason being,” explains Wilcox, “is that Theatre Bugs is very successful in the model it runs on, and we didn’t want to force a camp that works really well to fit into a different model to adhere to the guidelines required by the unprecedented situation we all now find ourselves in with COVID-19. Also, a New Play Workshop has been offered for the last few summers, but this is the first year we'll be workshopping a brand new play designed from its inception to be rehearsed and performed virtually. That feels very exciting.”
YouTheatre summer camps have always kept the student/instructor ratio small and now they'll take the extra steps of separating into classrooms to limit the mixing and social-distancing throughout the day. “A full list of our summer camps and extra COVID-19 Protocols and Responsibilities of Families can be found by following a link at the top of our registration page- www.parkcityshows.com then click the YouTheatre tab,” explains Wilcox.
The end-of-camp Friday showcase is a highlight of these performance-based camps for both students and their friends and family. This summer, the showcase will happen but family and friends will be unable to attend. “Our incredible tech team is working very hard to make sure our recordings of the performances are more dynamic than ever. We will record all showcases and email a link to parents as we usually do. This year, though, we highly encourage families to watch the recordings “with” their performer and experience the excitement of that moment together.”
Wilcox confirms, “The safety and well-being of our students and staff is the most important thing to us. We are all very passionate about what we do, and are as committed as ever to providing the high-quality Summer Camp experience our families have come to expect from us, albeit with necessary changes.”