Theater program in North Las Vegas ensures every child has lines, keeps moving

Home-schooled Gabe Steckbeck tried participating in sports as a way to get out of the house — and his shell.

The 9-year-old didn’t like any of them, said his mother, Cinda. Then Gabe gave the stage a shot via Up With Kids, a theater program aimed at ensuring every participant has a speaking and/or dancing role. The Las Vegas boy’s second try was a charm: He has made friends there and plans to take acting lessons, his mother said. She and Gabe’s father, David, spoke before a rehearsal Nov. 30 at Grace Point Church in North Las Vegas.

“I don’t know that any other acting coach could have opened him up like this,” she said of instructor Patti Townsend, who led a group of singing, bouncing and smiling second- through fourth-graders through musical numbers from “Beauty and the Beast,” which the group is set to perform in May. Up With Kids, a nonprofit program developed 30 years ago in Salt Lake City, began in the Las Vegas Valley last year, Townsend said. She took over this year.

“I started it in St. George last year, and we wanted to come down to Vegas to see if we might be able to get a few groups going down here,” she said. “We had heard from some families that had moved here from Salt Lake that Las Vegas didn’t offer a lot in children’s musical theater.”

About 30 students are involved in the North Las Vegas program, Townsend said, adding that she’d like to see that number double. The program meets weekly and costs $40 a month.

About 10 children and six parents gathered in a room at Grace Point Church in a rehearsal scene that would have been timeless if not for the iTunes-controlled playlist and one student’s Pokemon shirt.

Well, that and one other reminder that it’s 2016: When Townsend said in a booming voice into a microphone, “May the Force be with you!” a little girl replied, “What is ‘The Force may be with you?’”

The question drew laughs and smiles from the parents, as did songs and choreography that required most of the children to fall to the ground in unison. Youths also delivered monologues via a microphone in a corner of the small room.

Camille Baker, 7, recited from a “Casper the Friendly Ghost” story: “I see dead people. A-ha! Of course I do. I’m a ghost.”

Gabe chose the same reading, which concluded, “The weird thing is, I can see live people, too. And they can see me.”

That’s a dynamic of the stage Gabe and any of the others who pursue acting will have to continue to get used to. Cinda Steckbeck said it’s in her son’s blood; she studied theater in college.

Besides, Gabe said he’s comfortable on stage — “because I get to be myself.”

To reach View Assistant Editor Brian Sandford, email bsandford@viewnews.com or call 702-380-4531.