Wallen@communitycommon.com

The Portsmouth Area Arts Council (PAAC) has launched Portsmouth Area Children's Theatre. The formation of the theatre was recently announced with a fall schedule.

"There are kids in this community that are extremely talented, extremely motivated and the arts council thought this was a great time to pull all of this together," Becky Lovins, Director of the PAAC said. "Portsmouth Little Theater has a summer program which has been going on for almost a decade now. We've got anywhere from 30 to 40 (children) that took part in the summer program."

She said there are a number of advantages to having a children's theater in the community. "First is the children, when children are involved in theater they have tremendous gains in self-esteem and they are much more likely to be successful academically. They learn to take direction, that a lot of parents struggle with, teachers also see that benefit," Lovins said.

"We are looking at spending $7,000 a production, that will all be spent locally with the exception of renting our backdrops," Lovins said. "We have a tremendous amount of talent in this community and this is a way for us to keep it local. Two shows a year $14,000 in the community, we can really see a huge impact in what we are planning to do."

Currently a production of 101 Dalmatians is slated for September 24, 25 and 26.

"Rehearsals will be held at the Portsmouth Little Theatre, we will move each week, the five days prior to production. We will move to the Vern Riffe Center For the Arts. All of our shows will be on stage at the Vern Riffe," Lovins said. "We really have an opportunity to take what we created to a big audience, this way."

"One of the things I would like to see happen is this theatre remain free for all children who want to participate. I would like to see parents and the community become members of the theatre and support it financially," Lovins said. "We (PAAC) would like to launch this as a self-sustaining nonprofit. We want to use the admissions we get from one show to fund the next show. If we have enough money to get the first show off the ground, which will give us money for the second show, which will give us money for the third show."

She said one of the long term goals of the theatre is to be able to hire an artistic director.

"This is an opportunity for the arts council to branch out and support our mission of coloring kids lives with the arts," Lovins said.

There are various packages to which one can become a member, for more information about the Portsmouth Area Children's Theatre email paac@shawnee.edu