Wanted: Young actors

When Amy Kamarainen started searching for a building for her growing K-8 Young Actors Theater Company, she lucked out. The Cedar Valley Church in Eagan wanted to share the cost of its spacious building.

"When I walked in, I almost fell over because it couldn't be more perfect," said Kamarainen. "It's got sound and light and everything you need."

Her theater company quickly inhabited the space last summer.

The children's chapel, which has a mini stage, became a rehearsal place for short scenes. The company rolled a giant peach-and-green Cinderella carriage right into a storage room large enough to contain it. Dresses and hats were stuffed into a new costume/makeup room. And young actors decorated one practice room wall with a banner of painted handprints -- one for each performance.

A main stage area that seats about 400 is "perfect," said actor Aaron Lutz, 12, of Eagan. "[There are so] many places you can get through without having the audience see you."

Although practices typically don't overlap with church activities, theater company instructor Michael Venske recalled once overhearing a small group worshipping loudly during rehearsal. He just used it as a lesson for his students.

"Could you all hear them?" he asked. "Do you know why? Passion, passion, passion."

Ideas for passion-inspiring classes are scrawled on a chalkboard wall in Kamarainen's office -- stage combat, playwriting, special effects makeup.

She started the company in 2010 after becoming frustrated at the lack of theater opportunities for her daughters in elementary school.

"This is the age where their imagination is at its peak," she said. A visit to see her great-uncle, a former high school theater instructor who taught such actors as Alan Alda and Jon Voight in White Plains, N.Y., got her thinking.

She approached the Pinewood Elementary School principal about starting a theater program for kids. "Within 30 days, I had 80 kids and a waiting list," she said.

Other schools in the south metro soon joined. But the company struggled to find proper practice and performance space for its quickly growing enrollment.

In the new space, everything is under one roof.

Making it fun

Kamarainen takes suggestions from actors and instructors about plays to perform, and most involve humor and music.

Aaron played M-bot, a robot, in "Space Pirates," a musical about technology and imagination. "It was fun," he said, "so I tried out again. Then the next one was fun, so I tried out again." In a "Midsummer's Feast," he played a prompter who shouted his lines over a megaphone from the back of the stage.

This fall's first shows in the new space included short plays such as "After Ever Happily," about a young girl whose fairy tale book drops and gets all mixed up, and "Action News," which was "a kids' version of Saturday Night Live," Kamarainen said.

The experience offers all kinds of collateral benefits for the kids enrolled.

"They need to have strength of confidence so much younger than before," said Kamarainen, who believes confidence helps kids deal with bullying and conflict resolution.

"Confidence is a huge one," agreed instructor Shelley Johnson. "If they can develop a confidence in who they are, that confidence can help them stay true to themselves."

Kamarainen rattled off ideas for future activities: An overnight party with a 5 a.m. set call. Talks by people in the theater industry. A murder mystery fundraiser put on by the staff.

"We all have lots of big dreams for the company," said Johnson, "which is part of the fun of it."