Couple Brings the Acting Bug to Haddonfield Kids

When Scott and Christa Laska moved to Haddonfield from Queens in March 2010, they were thinking mostly about finding a new, small-town community in which to raise their young son, Jack.

They had fallen in love with the town after taking their honeymoon at the Haddonfield Inn a few years back, and as working show business professionals, Christa Laska says they did not want to be the couple that “schlepped the baby in the backpack on tour.”

After the couple shared a whimsical back-and-forth about opening a theater school, one portentous call to a local Realtor was all it took before they found the Veterans Lane property that is now home to the Haddonfield Theatre Arts Center.

“Everything got streamlined,” says Scott Laska. “Our ‘maybe sometime down the line’ plan became ‘let’s do it right now!’”

The center offers classes in theater, voice, dance and movement for children ages 3 through 17. Sessions are grouped by age range, and meet weekly for 90 minutes in four-week installments.

Enrollment is ongoing, and the Laskas say they have a high retention rate from group to group.

“Coming from a professional background, we think it’s really important for a child to know theater terms,” Christa Laska says. “What a monologue is, what it means to do scene work, what it is to take an acting beat. Most of the kids have experience on stage, but very few have had experience in a class.”

Exercises like “Create-a-Character,” in which kids fashion a character and his or her motivations around a prop chosen at random often prove more than a flight of fancy for fertile young imaginations.

“I just spoke with a parent of one of our students the other day who said that she was noticing a difference in her daughter in class,” says Christa Laska. “Instead of being shy, she was very actively participating. Her mom says acting is helping her to open up.

“Even 3- and 4-year-olds with all their energy can learn how to focus,” she says. “They’re so wild, but you give them lines and a scene and a prop, and they’re learning discipline and listening to their scene partners.”

The Laskas tap their professional connections to bring in Broadway actors like Benjamin Cannon of The Lion King for their master class sessions.

“What was really interesting was that all their questions were about what it’s like to perform onstage,” says Christa Laska. “Now they all ask for feedback. They want to get that positive response.”

Presently, students at the center are rehearsing for their June 18 end-of-year show. The original work was written by the Laskas specifically for their students’ strengths, and will be produced in conjunction with Maestro Studios, which is providing a 16-piece live orchestra for the event.

“We’re not trying to push showbiz kids on anyone,” says Scott Laska, “but we feel that if parents are going to send their children to an institution to learn something that they should be given the proper instruction on what the craft is. Learning about the technical ways of doing things can still be fun, and that’s what we try to do.”

Sign-ups for summer theater camp at the Haddonfield Theatre Arts Center are being accepted now. For more information, visit haddonfieldtheatreartscenter.com.