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PRESTONSBURG — Big Sandy Community and Technical College will be offering a Children’s Music and Drama Summer Workshop — “The Little Sandy Singers & Actors” — for children ages 8 to 13. The workshop will be taught and directed by Laura Ford Hall, BSCTC Music and Drama Director.

The workshop will be held on the BSCTC Prestonsburg Campus and will start Monday, July 16, and will run every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Wednesdays off, from 2 to 4:30 p.m., with possible additional rehearsal days, until the children’s performance on Saturday, July 28, on the stage of Gearheart Auditorium, Prestonsburg Campus.

The cost of the camp will be $80 and is due the first day of camp.

This year, the Children’s program will focus mainly on vocal music, but will have elements of acting/theatre as well. The area of music will consists of lessons teaching the basics: notes, rhythm, and techniques of singing including matching pitch, singing scales, and harmony singing.

In the area of theater, children will learn stage directions, blocking, staging, techniques of acting, costuming, and how lighting and sound play a role in a production.

The class will finish-off with the production including both music and drama elements – in which every child participating will have a role. This year’s production will include group and solo singing, the production will have some drama elements as well, including monologue, duo and skit performances. Children who love to sing and act are highly encouraged to sign-up.

Hall has been teaching music and drama classes to children for the past thirteen years. She is a 14-year veteran member of the Kentucky Opry, and studied voice for 14 years with various instructors including the “vocal coach to the stars,” Dr. Tom Cleveland at the Vanderbilt Voice Clinic in Nashville. She earned her Masters Degree from Morehead State University and a Bachelor of Arts from Pikeville College, majoring in communication/theatre and music. Hall taught children’s music and drama classes at the Mountain Arts Center, as she served as the Center’s Arts Education Director for several years. She now teaches at BSCTC as well as coordinates The Big Sandy Singers, as well as the other college singing groups: InHarmony Women’s Chorus, Serenade, and assists in the coordination of the Big Sandy Teen Singers and the Big Sandy Idol with Idol Director Clayton Case. She enjoys working with her colleagues Clayton Case and Technical Director and Producer Timothy Cooley. Cooley and Case will also be assisting with the summer camp.

Only 25 spots are available for this Children’s Music and Drama workshop. Register at childrensmusiccamp@gmail.com. When you email, you will receive an instant reply with a registration form. Fill that form out and you will receive a packet in the mail with all of the information you may need to know by Friday, July 13. Hall can be reached by phone at (606) 424-2498 if you have questions. You can email Hall at childrensmusiccamp@gmail.com.

The BSCTC Music and Drama Program is sponsored by Premiere Sponsor Gearheart Communications, of Harold, and Jennifer Reynolds State Farm Insurance, of Pikeville.