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    West Wendover Elementary 21st Century After School Program has brought out The Missoula Children’s Theatre to help put on the play “The Pied Piper”. Students from both the elementary and Jr/High school will get to audition for the play on April 21st and the performance will take place on Friday, April 25th at 6pm in the West Wendover Elementary Gym.
It will cost $1.00 per person to see the play. We will be taking donations as well to bring the company out again for the next school year. If you have not been to a performance yet, bring the family out for a night of drama! This is our third year of having The Missoula Children’s Theatre help our students put on a play in less than one week.
    While few would respond “Missoula” in a word association game as a response to “theater” for hundreds of thousands of children all over the United States and Canada their first and often only glimpse of Broadway comes via the Missoula Children’s Theatre.
    “Yeah a lot of people are surprised that we are actually located in Missoula,” said Theater cofounder Don Collins. “It was a kind of serendipitous start in 1970 but now more than 35 years later we have productions in all 50 states and five Canadian provinces.”
    Collins estimated that hundreds of thousands of children have performed in one of the company’s productions, most who would have never had the opportunity had the Missoula children’s Theatre had not come to their town.
    The story of the MCT began inauspiciously enough in 1970.
    According to the MCT website co-founder Jim Caron, unemployed and searching for a mission in life, was on his way from Chicago to a friend’s wedding in Oregon when his aging Volkswagen van broke down.   The nearest service station was - fortunately and fatefully - in Missoula, Montana.  While waiting for the van to be patched together, Jim noticed an audition poster for Man of La Mancha.  Just for fun, he auditioned and was cast in the role of Sancho.  An instant and lasting friendship was developed with Don Collins, the actor playing Don Quixote. 
    Along with Don, MCT’s current Senior Development Office, Jim organized a company of adults who did plays for children on a makeshift stage in a local movie theatre.  The plays - as well as the idea of developing live theatre for kids - were well received in Missoula, and soon nearby Montana and Idaho communities requested performances of their own.
    During this time period (the early 70’s) the company began to use kids as cast members when it seemed appropriate - Hansel and Gretel, the Dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, etc. 
    In 1972, when February performances of Snow White were booked into Miles City, a small Montana community located an icy 500 miles from Missoula, Jim and the other directors were not excited about the responsibility of traveling with seven children across the state, so they decided to take a radical step; they would attempt to cast the dwarfs from children in Miles City.  The directors traveled across the state a week before the rest of the company, a bit skeptical about finding seven kids who might be interested in being in the play.  When 450 children arrived at the tryout, the astonished team auditioned the huge group and cast the seven roles. 
    “That was really the beginning,” Collins added. “I remember watching a production back stage I think it was 1974. And to see the look on those kids faces as they received the applause. It was almost magical.”
    The success of that week - obvious major interest among kids, parents, teachers, and even the press as well as an excellent  production and sold out audiences - opened the eyes of the MCT staff and opened the doors to the MCT future.
    The lessons learned in those early days, especially the rewards of involving children as cast members, set the stage for today’s International Tour, MCT’s Performing Arts Camps a strong local children’s season, the acclaimed MCT Community Theatre, and the magnificent home base facility which opened its doors in 1998.  As for the future, MCT continues to reach for the stars.
    “We know that by far the vast majority probably over 95 percent of the children will never have another acting experience apart from the production we did.” Collins added. “We are not doing this to create new professional actors. What we have seen and heard in testimonial after testimonial is that experience of being on stage performing often has a profound effect on a child. Parents and teachers have time and time again told us they see such positive changes in their kids. And yes it was all by accident.”