(With Photos) Cromaine District Library Theater Camp Trains Young Thespians

Ten kids sat in a circle in the Community Room at the main branch of the learning to put feeling into their acting.

“And what did the camel say?” volunteer Dylan Kert, 16, asked the group.

“Hump,” the kids roared in unison, as Kert continued to read from Rudyard Kipling’s How The Camel Got His Hump.

This exercise was one of several to help teach the kids to project their voices and to show them how to inject feeling into their roles.

Carolyn McCullough, teen services intern librarian, said the importance of perfecting these skills as the kids prepare for their roles for the performances that will be held during the library outdoor concert series that takes place on Wednesdays in July.

“When we’re outside, we are going to have to be very loud,” McCullough said.

Together with volunteers Dylan Kert and Sarah Watts, both 16, of Hartland, McCullough worked with the kids on their parts by having them read out loud.

The first group performed Three Little Pigs James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps this week before a steem drum band entertained a crowd of about 200.

According to Watts, the other three short plays are: Hershele Gets A Meal, a Jewish folktale about Hershele Ostropoler, The Skipping Pot, a Danish folktale and the folktale The Emperor’s Prized Possession.