By Marissa Ballantyne
?Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.? ?Trading Spaces.? BYU Theatre Workshop.
What these three have in common is that they make things happen? fast.
The 45 youth participants at the BYU Theatre Workshop will perform the junior edition of ?Guys and Dolls? Friday in the Pardoe Theatre. The performance, which begins at 7 p.m., is the culmination of only two weeks of preparation.
Elizabeth Jenson, 17, a camp participant from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, said the actors have been working hard since the minute they arrived at camp.
?It?s all part of the experience,? Jenson said. ?It has helped me learn what my body can and cannot do.?
Camp participants arrived June 20 and auditioned only a few hours later. Final casting and an initial script read-through were completed the first day of camp.
Most full musical productions take months to prepare, so the pace at this two-week camp has been accelerated.
?If we?re not on stage, we?re asleep,? said camper Laurel Luke, 17, from Craig, Colo.
Tiare Curtis, 16, of Naperville, Ill., described the daily scene offstage.
?You walk backstage and there are bodies everywhere sleeping,? Curtis said.
The actors learned from a speaker at camp that theater is not their talent.
?Your talent is your passion and your heart,? Luke explained. ?Theater isn?t your talent. You apply your talent to theater.?
Each of the camp participants has had the opportunity to apply their talent to multiple characters over the past two weeks. No one actor plays a main character throughout the play.
?It gives the kids the chance to at least say they had a leading role,? music director Ben Cummins said.