Totally RED! by Dinah Toups with music by Barbara Walker

Off 380 Players Community Theater presented it’s second Youth Workshop and Production June 19th through the 30th at the Runaway Bay Community Church.  Students ages 6-14 spent weekdays learning about every aspect of producing and performing a play and presented their production on Friday and Saturday nights June 29th and 30th in conjunction with the Runaway Bay 4th Fest.  Mornings were spent in workshops ranging from acting exercises and technique, to set production, marketing and publicity, costumes, and make-up.  The students designed and constructed the sets, sewed their own costumes, produced the artwork and material for their performance programs, and sold ads and distributed posters for publicizing their show.  Afternoons were held for rehearsals for “Totally RED!”. 
This year’s play, produced by special arrangement with Anchorage Press Plays, Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky, was a “unique and fun retelling, in multiple styles, of the classic battle of with and deception: Little Red Riding Hood.”    Written by Dinah Toups with music and lyrics by Barbara Walker, Totally RED!  is a theatre history lesson as well as an entertaining play.  The students learned about storybook theatre styles in addition to melodrama, Elizabethan, hip-hop 80’s slang, avant-garde, and musical theatre styles as they presented retellings in each style throughout the play.
Charlotte Keefe and Marty Sherman directed the workshop and production with Ruth Kimbrough who directed and performed the music for the show.  Students from all over Wise County as well as from Lubbock and Allen came to participate in the two-week program.  Author Dinah Toups made the trip from San Antonio to attend the opening night performance and greeted the students after the show.

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