Boxtales 3-week Summer Camps are an opportunity to go deeper into our unique method. We work for 6 hours a day Monday through Thursday and 3 hours on Friday, and while having a ton of fun, the work tends to be focused. and disciplined. The camp includes training in much more than the typical American theatre skills found in other theatre camps offered for youth. The camp staff teach skills found in various multicultural performance traditions. We collaborate with the kids to create a completely original play, based in a myth or folktale and all this happens either at the Lobero or Marjorie Luke theatre, in Santa Barbara, offering kids a rare and powerful experience working in the professional environment of these beautiful theatres.
Mission: To help students develop their voices, bodies and imaginations by teaching performance skills which help them to grow both as artists and as citizens.
Vision: To create an environment where kids can learn discipline, take risks, master new skills and overcome their fears. To create an environment where kids develop self-esteem, confidence, and optimism. To create a supportive, collaborative environment children learn compassion, tolerance and how to work creatively with others to solve problems.
Check Summer Camps 2024 for information on our current Summer Camps.
Benefits of the Program
All acting training, in a sense, is based on the simple practice of imagining what is like to be someone or something besides one’s self, thus creating understanding, empathy and awareness of others.
Some of our trust exercises, like “I’m Falling”, where participants catch each other when one of the group yells out “I’m Falling” and trustingly just begins to fall, or being blindfolded and lead through an environment, or having a group lift one participant up, over their heads and safely back to the ground, build trust in the group but also in oneself, and at the same time helps to build an expanded awareness and empathy for others.
Our updated version of the game “Red light, green light” teaches self-control, non-verbal communication, collaboration, and the importance of strategy.
Our “Mirroring” exercises force participants to look more carefully and try to do what others do. This increases attention ability as well as creating more awareness of the world around them.
“Zip Zap Zop” hones sequencing skills, memory and basic attention.
We use many bamboo stick exercises, from the Philippines, that require intensity of focus, respect for others and advanced self-control.
Many of our exercises promote theme and symbol identification, pattern recognition and stimulate abstract thinking.
We have collected many improvisation technics. “Improv” is about getting out of our head and engaged with your partners, building playful, confident and responsive communication, spontaneity, and confidence on stage or in a leadership role. One of the central principles of improv is ‘yes, and’ – the idea of accepting what your partner offers you and building on it. We bypass a fear based, territorial, guarded mode which shuts us down as communicators and instead create an internal state of generosity, connection, and self-assurance.
Our storytelling training helps us shape a message in the most compelling way for our audience. We work on the arc of the narrative, identify and hone the core or “essence” of the message, and how to make it clear and vivid. Clarifying why your audience should care, and share your excitement, make it matter, make it fascinating, make it meaningful, and make it fun. We believe that to be successful at anything in life, storytelling is essential!
Generally we see that young people learn a great deal about themselves through these programs. The fun, artistic atmosphere allows us to challenge them more than they are used to, and in that challenge they find how far their resolve goes, how they perform under pressure, that they have previously undiscovered leadership skills, as well as a host of other character defining qualities.