The VORTEX has a great free summer youth theater program in the summer. All rehearsals take place in the evening and they believe in teaching their young artists to be great adult actors.
Get out and audition as many times and at as many places as you can.
When: May 24-June 3, 2008 by application and appointment
Where: The VORTEX, 2307 Manor Road
(1/2 mile East of I-35, between Chestnut and Maple)
Austin, TX 78722 On bus route #20
VORTEX is seeking students ages 13-17 to participate in Summer Youth Theatre 2008. Now in it’s 17th Year, the award-winning SYT program rehearses evenings and weekends in June and July and is tuition-free. SYT encourages diversity. Students of any ethnicity or heritage, or students with any disabilities or economic challenges, are welcome. Experience is not required.
SYT 2008 provides students with experiences in all aspects of theatre including acting, technical theatre, and publicity. Rehearsals and workshops are Free to all participants. The rehearsals culminate in a full production of a play presented to the public over two weekends.
Prior to the audition/interview, students must fill out a short application. For the audition, students should prepare a memorized, one-minute piece of text from a play, poem, or song. A parent or guardian is also required to attend the interview.
For 2008, SYT will present School for Scandal, the 18th-century English comedy of manners by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, directed by award-winning VORTEX veteran. Betsy McCann.
School for Scandal is a Comedy of Manners written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. First performed in London at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1777, this stylized comedy is one of English literature’s 18th-century classics. The characters have names like Surface, Teazle, Snake, Crabtree, Backbite, and Sneerwell and provide amazing acting opportunities. An updated twist places the production in the first half of the 20th century. School for Scandal illuminates themes of the deceptive nature of appearances, the fickleness of reputation. Summer Youth Theatre’s production provides students unique opportunities with great literature, challenging language, and delightful characters.
Betsy McCann directs School for Scandal. She has been a member of VORTEX Repertory Company since 2002 and has received B. Iden Payne Awards for her outstanding performances in VORTEX’s Vampyress, Wake for the Dark Poet, and Medea, as well as Pollyanna Theatre’s A Dragon’s Happy Day, Tangled Trickster’s part one, and Tangled Trickster’s part two. She has performed as an adult guest artist in SYT’s productions of Vitriol and Violets and The Good Woman of Setzuan. McCann holds a B.F.A. in Theatre Performance from Baylor University. She has performed in more than 15 shows in Austin, including work with Arts on Real, Zach Scott’s Project Interact, and Theatre at the J. She is excited to work with the Summer Youth Theatre again.
SYT is funded in part by VORTEX Repertory Company, the City of Austin under the auspices of the Austin Arts Commission, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
To download an application, VORTEX.
To receive an application by mail or to set up audition/interview time, please call Bonnie Cullum at 512-478-LAVA (5282).