The Sedona International Film Festival’s theatres are set to become the new home of Sedona Youth Theatre for the group’s upcoming 2024 season. Instructors Shondra Jepperson and Dev Ross had previously been running the program out of the Sedona Public Library.
“We are truly honored to be the new home of Sedona Youth Theatre here at our Sedona Film Festival Theatres,” SIFF Executive Director Patrick Schweiss said. “It is a natural fit with our mission, and we are honored to help groom the next generation of performers. My daughter went through this program for many years, so it is very rewarding for me, personally, to welcome them to our venue and give them a stage and beautiful theatrical setting for their camps, training, rehearsals and shows. It is such a fantastic program for our youth and teaches so many valuable and important lessons. What a gift to this community and to our youth and families. We are so proud to welcome Shondra, Dev and the young performers here to our venues.”
“We’ve pretty much been on our own, we’ve been begging, borrowing, trying to get this going,” Ross said. “The library was a great support, but it’s like making something from nothing. So having the Sedona Film Festival step up for us is huge and [it’s] a long time in coming … We’re always sort of doing guerilla theatre now. These kids will have an experience in a real theatre. It doesn’t have the depth of the stage, but it’s better than what we’ve had and it’s a beautiful theatre and it has wonderful sound.”
In addition to facilitating performances, the move to the Mary D. Fisher and the Alice Gill-Sheldon theatres will open up additional rehearsal space for the group.
“This is really thrilling, and, of course, there’s the lights [in the venue],” Jepperson said. “These are things we weren’t able to give [the kids] before, a real theatre experience and [the] feel of rehearsing in a space like that. Having a stage gives them an actual theatre experience of presentation. So we’re ever so grateful to Sedona International Film Festival for taking us on and giving us a new home … In today’s world kids really need to express themselves.”
Sedona Youth Theatre anticipates being able to run its popular youth camp five days a week next June, for four to five weeks, with at least one performance, expanding from its current format of an hour and a half four days a week for two weeks at the library.
“We co-founded this back in 2007 when we had a regional theatre,” Jepperson said. “We had a bunch of high school students from Sedona come to us, including their parents. We took on 15 to 18 students that were willing to come after school for two hours. We used one of the parents’ house for rehearsal, it was a little bedlam with all those kids … We helped them to create their own vignettes, songs, and then come up with a theme that would go through the whole [production]. It was really a big success.”
Sedona Youth Theatre was born out of that environment and produced three performances in 2007, its inaugural year. The program returned annually with the exception of the COVID-19 pandemic response period. A return to the group’s original idea of giving youth the opportunity to to tell stories that come from real life and build scenes from that is another major benefit of the move.
“When we were at the library, after that first year, it was more about tying it in with [improvisation],” Jepperson said. “The kids would write stories and then what we would do is we would go in and clean it up and help facilitate the writing of it. [2024] is going to be different. This time, it will be more like the 2007, where the kids are going to write an actual show, and we’ll help facilitate that.”
“It isn’t going to all be emotional and serious, it will be lots of fun,” Jepperson added. “There will be lots of learning, including the whole ‘yes-and’ process [of improv] games that will help them to learn that and get it down. Then workshopping any of the scenes, monologues or songs through using those skills and having them build a show that we can help facilitate.”
SIFF is anticipated to make a signup method available for those interested in participating as the program start date approaches. Interested parents and children can also visit Ross and Jepperson’s website at thetwolucys.com.
