By Ella Bronaugh

Intern

Activity levels were high in the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts on Thursday as theater camp students rehearsed for their Friday performances.

Theater Camp is a week-long summer camp designed to help children learn basics of theater. At the end of the week, the campers put on a performance, incorporating all of the skills and techniques they learned over the course of the camp.

Children from the first to sixth grade were organized into three age groups.

“The kids learn about basic theater,” Education Manager Megan Thorne explained. “They learn to write scripts, how to do stage makeup, how to put on a production and prop building.”

The camp is not only fun but also provides an education for those who are going to pursue acting as a career.

“I’d definitely recommend it for kids that are interested in becoming an actor or actress,” Thorne added. “They work on techniques, pronunciation and enunciation of words and how to get over stage fright.”

This is the sixth year the theater camp has run at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts. This year, the theme for the camp was “Suffolk history.” This theme was chosen as an opportunity to teach the children of Suffolk and its neighboring cities about the fascinating history of the city of Suffolk. All of the operations of camp were based around this concept.

“It was in about everything we did,” Thorne explained, “The Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society gave a presentation, the kids did research on stories from Suffolk history, and they all received Andy Damiani’s book.”

Andy Damiani is a former mayor of Suffolk who died on Aug. 5 at age 95.

The performance on Friday was a combination of stories from Suffolk history. The first act, performed by the third- and fourth-graders, was about the Nansemond Indians from when Englishmen settled in the area; the second act, performed by the fifth and sixth graders, was a love story, based on a true story, from during the Revolutionary War; and the third act, performed by the first- and second-graders, was a scene from a local historical train station.

All of the age groups came together to perform the grand finale at the end of the production.

Both the staff and the campers are very excited about the Friday performance.

“I’m super excited,” Thorne said last week. “It’s going to be really, really good. The kids are excited and getting really into it.”

Other camps that will be hosted at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts this summer include the STEAM camp, a back-to-school boot camp, which launches on Aug. 28.