Children’s theatre takes stage

Now in its 22nd year, the Children’s Summer Theatre Workshop is once again providing local kids with a soup-to-nuts understanding of how to stage a play.

Founded in the 1990s by former Bowlus executive director Susan Raines, the tacit mission of CSTW is to instill in the community’s youngest members a love of the performing arts and the confidence to know that, however miniature their frames — we’re looking at you third-graders — there’s a place for them onstage.

But the group’s first imperative, said John Higginbotham, CSTW’s current creative director, is even simpler than that, although no less essential. “At our big meeting, I told our CSTW workers” — volunteers from the theatrical glitterati at Iola High School — “that our goals involve a couple of things: we hope the kids will fall in love with the arts, but we are really here for them to have fun.”