Homer’s Pier One Theatre has been providing youth theatre camps and productions for several decades, with many youth attendees as second- or third-generation participants. Summer 2025 offers several opportunities for youth of all ages, and the most recent session about to finish up is “Production and Theatre Skills,” with the students performing Treasure Island on the Homer Spit stage this weekend.
Pier One’s Youth Theatre is described on the website as a “high-quality, dynamic theatre education that builds skills & confidence. Every student leaves with a new understanding of their own potential, and skills that will serve them in both the theatre and the world.” This summer, Homer youth have already completed one session, and the most recent will finalize this weekend with a production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, adapted by Jules Eckert Goodman.
There are approximately 30 youth involved in this session with instructors Kathleen Gustafson and Carolyn Norton. The goal for this group was to create a fully staged theatrical production from auditions to final performance. Other features of the camp, according to the Pier One website, are to learn to bring characters to life with dialogue study, improv, costuming, script writing and more.
On Tuesday this week, the students were finishing their first costumed run-through of the show and the last time that director Gustafson and student stage manager Lola LaPlant were offering to provide line assistance. LaPlant followed the script along with the students, providing line leads each time a performer asked, although Gustafson continually encouraged them to keep moving through the story, as they knew it, even if an exact line was not available. “Stop second-guessing yourself, and you'll get there,” she said.
Gustafson provides several other tips as students move through the script rehearsal: “Open your body up to the audience, even if you’re talking to the other character,” and “You can’t actually whisper! Just lean in and pretend to whisper, but the audience still needs to hear you,” she coaches. She also continually reminds actors in the wings to stay quiet. “Now, put your stage left leg upstage, and that's it. Then you can't turn away from us!”
Gustafson finishes up the rehearsal with the final song and calls all the actors to the house for final notes for the day: “Okay, hold. Right there. Find your light, bro. Step a little closer. No, feel that light. This isn't gonna be the light. Wait. Can you put him in his light? No? Okay, okay, then give me house and works—everybody to stage, please? You guys gonna have a seat in the house? I'll herd them through everybody. What's the first note I'm gonna give each and every last miserable one of you? Okay, so, but what I was telling Amy is no bull. Once you get your costumes on, you start wandering around up there on stage. It's like you're in a different play, and it can be really hard to remember your lines. And I think you'll understand—however, tomorrow, there will be no calling for lines... Tons of you have been through the eight-to-11-year-old camp where the goal is to set intentions, and then you just say whatever you're going to say to make that happen. So what you must do tonight, when you are learning your lines, is understand what needs to be accomplished in that scene, so that if somebody goes up on their lines and no one is helping, then you can still accomplish the objective of the scene.”
Following the rehearsal, some of the students provided their comments on what it has been like to put Treasure Island together. William Head, who plays the character of Black Dog, provided some details on the props for the show. “We've been practicing for a long time. We're blocking. We're currently practicing using hand props. And tip of my tongue... so what kind of hand props do you have? We have swords. I have one of the two knives. We also have a few picks and shovels, muskets—which are taller than me—and a few pistols.”
Lola LaPlant, in her first year in theatre camp, talked about some of her experience as stage manager. “I learned how to write... how the blocking's like, how to write upstage and downstage and stuff like that.” says LaPlant.
Finally, Freya Bartlett described her role in the play and how the camp has progressed since they first started in early June. “Yeah, I'm playing accordion as the musical director. It's mostly been about getting ready for the play. Like, I think the first day we had—we had a read-through, or actually before that, we had auditions, kind of, and then the first day of the actual camp, we did a read-through of the whole play, which took a really long time, and we've pretty much just been building off from there.”
Many of the other youth actors were happy to share their comments on the summer event and lined up to share an opinion.
“I really like being able to interact with other people a lot. It's really fun. I like that about it.”
“I like being able to kind of work together with people who are from different ages and make something bigger, and work together and hang out with people while doing it, and then see it all come together. It's just really fun.”
“I like being on stage and acting out.”
“I like the satisfaction of finally memorizing your lines.”
“And I also really like working with other people, and, yeah, like making new friends and stuff.”
“I like working with other people, and I love doing theater.”
“Theater is fun.”
Pier One’s Treasure Island will be performed in the Spit Theatre June 19–21 and June 26–28. All shows will start at 7 p.m. Tickets are available through the Pier One website at pieronetheatre.org, by calling their office or at the door.
