youth theater performance at Fort Worden

ProgramMusicTales Texts & Theater

About Tales Texts & Theater

Grade 6 | May 19-23, 2025

During Tales, Texts & Theater, the entire sixth grade student body of Port Townsend’s Blue Heron Middle School works with vital, contemporary artists in a variety of disciplines— creative writing, theatrical movement, music, and visual art—for a weeklong immersion in creativity.

Since 2001, this popular innovative collaboration between the Centrum, the Port Townsend School District, the Washington State Arts Commission, and PT Artscape, provides both students and teachers a model experience in arts immersion.

youth theater program at Centrum, Fort Worden

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Youth Art Immersion Program

  • A hands-on, experiential art program for Port Townsend's youth since 2001
  • Free to all 6th graders at Port Townsend's Blue Heron Middle School
  • Week of creative writing, theatrical movement, music, and visual art
  • Pick your path - select a genre and explore interconnected art forms

Experience Tales Texts & Theater

Beginning each day with a core subject, students get an in-depth concentration on a genre of their choice. Then they explore by learning about other art forms in their other three classes, seeing how the different arts interconnect.

Each afternoon, the core artist faculty show and talk about the work they do. At the end of the week, students share their creative experiments with the community in a student showcase performance.

2024 Class Descriptions

Giant Puppets — Margie McDonald
Bring Giants to life with you inside. Students will create large puppets
using simple materials such as cardboard, wire, fabric, sticks and tape.
You will learn to put cardboard together use a sewing awl and hot glue.
The final product can be based on something that exists such as animals or is fabricated from your imagination. The Giants come to life on stage for Friday’s Student Showcase.

Caribbean Steel Pan Band — Angie Tabor
This course takes students through a fun, high-energy, hands-on musical journey tracing the roots of the steel pans in Trinidad & Tobago. Students will explore the traditional music created by a determined youth culture, who, in spite of many obstacles, continued to find ways to make their music. Instruments will include Tamboo Bamboo, found metal objects, and authentic steel pans!

Comics and Worldbuilding — Taylor Dow
How can collaborative world-building techniques from tabletop role-playing games help us make comics in community? This class will focus on building your narrative and collaborative art skills to create a host of memorable settings and characters in a living, thriving world. Students will begin this class by drawing a massive, continuous map. As the week progresses, we will create comics that add details to our world-map, zooming in on individual cities, habitats, legends, characters, and forbidden places. The week concludes with an art show, allowing attendees to explore the landscape of our collective imagination.

Theater Creation — Marisol Rosa-Shapiro
Explore a variety of theatrical means for telling stories. Our emphasis will be on playful exploration that employs the poetic body, voice, and imagination to create brand new, collaborative works of theater. Participants will wear a variety of creative hats, including actor, director, and writer. All levels of experience welcome and encouraged!

West African Dance — Etienne Cakpo
Learn basic dance moves and drum rhythms from the Benin-Ghana coastal region of West Africa. This class is appropriate for boys and girls of all experience levels. The dances have graceful and strong movements that require undulation of the back and bending of the knees. Dances integrate traditional, social and spiritual dances as well as modern movements commonly found across West African countries.

Spoken Word Poetry — Sara Brickman
Everyone already has everything they need to write a poem. We’ll begin by writing poems that explore our personal experiences, and find our voices and the confidence to perform. We’ll look at different types of poems, and engage with theater and performance exercises to learn the skills to bring our writing to life through performance. We’ll study gestures, vocal tone, attitude, pacing, and connecting with an audience as we build towards our final sharing day.

What to Bring & What Not to Bring
Cell phones and electronic devices are not allowed at Centrum Youth Programs. In case of emergency, Centrum's program manager and staff carry phones and will notify you as soon as possible. You may leave a message for your student at any time with Program Manager Alyssa de Leon (360) 385-3102 x120. You will receive contact information in an email prior to the start of the program.

Lunch is provided. The safety and comfort of your children is our highest priority. Meals at Fort Worden State Park feature locally-grown, organically-produced food prepared to the highest standards at the Fort Worden Commons.

If you have any more questions about Tales, Texts, and Theater, please contact Alyssa de Leon at 360-385-3102, x120, or adeleon@centrum (dot) org.

Find more answers - Centrum FAQs

2024 Details Coming Soon!

Photo of Sara Brickman

Sara Brickman

Faculty

Coming Soon

Photo of Etienne Cakpo

Etienne Cakpo

Faculty

Etienne Cakpo (he/him) is an award-winning professional dancer, choreographer and musician from Benin, West Africa. He is specialized in instruction and performance of traditional African dance from Benin as well as contemporary African dance styles, and has been building his dance repertoire for nearly thirty years. He is director of Gansango Music & Dance, a dance company registered in Washington State.…

Photo of Taylor Dow

Taylor Dow

Faculty

Coming Soon

Photo of Margie McDonald

Margie McDonald

Faculty

Margie McDonald is the artistic director for the Port Townsend Wearable Art Show now heading into its sixth year.
Margie’s work in Wearable art and sculpture has been exhibited in the New Zealand World of Wearable Art Exhibition, Bainbridge Island Art Museum, Museum of Northwest Art, Northwind Arts Center and Simon Mace Gallery.

Photo of Marisol Rosa-Shapiro

Marisol Rosa-Shapiro

Faculty

Marisol Rosa-Shapiro is a New York and Seattle-based performer, director, teaching artist, and creator of original works of theater. She is a graduate of Princeton University and of Giovanni Fusetti’s Lecoq-based Helikos School of Theatre Creation in Florence, Italy. Her specialties include mask theater, mime, clown, commedia dell’arte, improvisation, physical comedy, movement-and ensemble-based creation and more.…

Photo of Angie Tabor

Angie Tabor

Faculty

Angie Tabor (they/them) is a performing musician, music educator and composer based in Port Townsend, WA. They are known for being highly versatile, performing with jazz ensembles, symphony orchestras, music theater productions, and Top 40 & tribute acts. They can also be heard performing on steelpans with their Caribbean-infused trio, Caribe. As a music educator, they have taught grades K-12 and college.…

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