Kids become stage icons for a day

The kids who attended the Newport Beach Public Library’s “Seasoned with Theatre” program Saturday may not have appreciated it, but they got to play some of the most iconic roles on the stage: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the dancers from “West Side Story.” For that matter, they also got to play dead.

During the opening hour of the theater club’s first meeting, instructors Tom Shelton and Diana Burbano — both cast members from South Coast Repertory — led an exercise to get the young actors accustomed to taking directions. When the instructors shouted, “Hamlet!”, the kids dropped to one knee and replied, “To be or not to be!” When they blurted out, “Streetcar!”, the prodigies clutched their faces in Marlon Brando fashion and wailed, “Stella!”

And when the order came for “dramatic death,” well, the kids just had to use their imaginations.

“I want you to take three seconds to die in the most dramatic way possible without falling on anybody else,” Burbano told the crowd of three dozen kids — who did not disappoint — in the library’s meeting room.

“Seasoned with Theatre,” sponsored by the library and South Coast Repertory and funded by a gift from the Argyros Foundation, is a 19-session course in which elementary school-age kids will learn about acting, costumes, stagecraft and just about every other part of the theater world through May.

Along the way, they’ll also put on three productions — which may have been part of the reason Shelton and Burbano ended the first meeting by teaching the class a song about overcoming stage fright.

Some of the students said they had acted in school productions before, but others were completely new to the craft. Lindsay Powley, who attends Eader Elementary School in Huntington Beach, said her only performance experience to date had been ballet.

Still, she said, she looked forward to the challenge.

“When you go in front of people, it sometimes seems like you’re going to mess up,” said Lindsay, 9. “But if you embarrass yourself, oh well.”

Her classmate, 10-year-old Alexandra McCrimmon, was also new to theater, but said the prospect of working with South Coast Repertory excited her.

“Hopefully, we’ll get connected with the directors and people like that,” she said.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.