East Lynn Theater Company Helps Students Perform

CAPE MAY – The Princesses can’t stop dancing, and the Fisherman keeps asking favors from a Magic Fish. It’s all part of the fun in two one-acts based on The Grimm Brothers’ Collection: “The Dancing Princesses” and ““The Fisherman and His Wife.”
The performance is on Dec. 5 at 6:00 p.m. at The Wildwood High School, 4300 Pacific Avenue, in Wildwood, and admission is free and all are invited. The sixth and seventh grade performers are part of the after-school program funded through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant. This is the second year of this exciting program, and the second year that the not-for-profit Equity professional East Lynne Theater Company has been involved. For two afternoons a week, almost weekly, throughout the whole school year, ELTC’s artists-in-residence meet with two after-school workshops. Group sizes vary between ten to twenty students, and topics cover improvisation, movement, and working with scripts.
Like last year’s March performance, students are under the guidance of Sally Bingham, Rudy Caporaso, and Grace Wright, with last minute assistance by ELTC’s artistic director, Gayle Stahlhuth. Sally, who has been an actor, director, and playwright for twenty-five years, directed “1,001 Arabian Nights” last summer for ELTC’s Student Workshop, and started the after-school theater project at West Cape May Elementary School, focusing on Shakespeare. Rudy, co-founder/co-artistic director of Rev Theater Company, has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway, regional, and London productions. He’s worked extensively in outreach theater programs for Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, and charter and public schools in New York City, Philadelphia, upstate New York and in Connecticut. This is Grace’s third year working as an artist-in-residence with ELTC, where she also performed in “He and She” and “The Poe Mysteries.” She’s worked with numerous theaters in South Jersey, including Sojourn Productions, where she has performed, stage managed, and was musical director.
Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1869) Grimm started out to research and collect folk stories for a scholarly treatise. What they did was forever popularize “Cinderella,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Snow White,” and numerous other stories that are universally well-known.
For fourteen years, East Lynne Theater Company has been involved with educational outreach in schools in Cape May County, usually having to find the funding through organizations like Target and The New Jersey Theatre Alliance.
For information about this performance, or any of ELTC’s various programs, including its current mainstage production of “Christmas with Harte and O. Henry” through December 14 in Cape May, call 609-884-5898 or go online to www.eastlynnetheater.org.