Thursday, August 3, 1995 (Living section, Page D1, The State)

By Tim Brosnan, Staff Writer

Elizabeth Adams gets a lift, from left to right, from Brigitte Vogt, Emily McRedmond and Jessica Wheeler during a choreography session at Cottingham Theatre on the campus of Columbia College.

Meredith Lucio is a performer by trade.

In a few months, she'll be in Florida opening a one-woman show based on the life of Amelia Earhart. In November, she'll be under contract with the Nebraska Theatre Caravan's national tour of ``A Christmas Carol.''

But this summer, she's paying the bills by teaching schoolchildren from Florence and Horry counties how to pretend -- with conviction, that is.

Lucio is co-directing seven summer drama camp productions of a musical children's play called ``Practically Peter Pan.'' The camps are sponsored by rural arts councils and public school systems around the state and run by Lucio's employer, Southeastern Theatrical Productions, a professional theater company based in Columbia.

``Sometimes, it's sort of like trying to get blood from a turnip,'' Lucio says, ``but when the light finally goes on, it makes everything worthwhile.''

Building a better Wienerbun.

On a given day, Lucio mijght be in Lake City or Mount Pleasant or any one of a number of other hamlets in South Carolina teaching the fundamentals of theater to elementary and middle school-age children who, as often as not, have no performance experience whatsoever. The list of lessons to be learned is long and the time they have to learn those lessons is, by comparison, quite short.

Lucio's students must mount a play from scratch to finish in two weeks, grappling for the first time with the concepts of projection, diction, eye contact, economy of movement and sightlines while at the same time memorizing dialogue, songs and choreography.

It isn't such a far cry from pretending to be Power Rangers on the playground perhaps, but the creeping and the leaping, the crouching and the ``flying'' and the occasional reminders that ``you are not a little boy (or little girl), you are a Wienerbun Indian! -- and Wienerbuns don't fidget!'' aren't entirely frivolous either.

The business of teaching children to make spectacles of themselves serves a higher purpose, albeit one that the Wienerbuns probably don't appreciate.

The payoff.

Even though Buren Martin, owner of Southeastern Theatrical Productions, has seen it all before, he says that seeing it again never gets old.

``Many of these kids come from family and financial situations that are far from ideal,'' Martin says, ``and this gives them a chance to participate in something where there are no losers -- everybody wins. It still amazes me how much effect a two-week drama camp can have on a child's self-esteem.''

Lucio adds, ``A two-week drama camp might be insignificant in the broad spectrum of a kid's life, but you never can tell.''

Betty Carter, on the other hand, has no doubts.

Twelve years ago, Carter founded the Lake City Concert Series, which works year-round to bring the arts to schools and civic organizations in her community.

This year, she hired Southeastern Theatrical Productions to run Lake City's first summer drama camp.

``Theater brings children out of themselves,'' Carter says, ``it teaches them to express themselves, to speak clearly and to project. It teaches them grace.'

And sure enough, glancing around the dimly lit Blanding Street Auditorium in Lake City, watching 30 rural middle schoolers both thrilled and terrified at the prospect of their first ``opening night,'' one can see that grace is very much in evidence.

The chosen.

Ninety miles from Lake City, a different crop of middle school-age kids is enrolled in a somewhat different kind of drama camp run by the Tri-District Arts Consortium on the campus of Columbia College.

The 41 drama track students at Tri-DAC are part of student body of 260 students studying five artistic disciplines.

Tri-DAC is a highly selective three-week summer arts program designed to meet the needs of artistically gifted and talented students in the Richland 2, Richland/Lexington 5 and Lexington 1 school districts.

As is the case with drama camps everywhere in South Carolina -- and there are many from which to choose -- Tri-DAC students audition and pay for the right to participate in a program that culminates in a public performance.

``We're totally open to everyone,'' says Charlotte Kirby, Tri-DAC's director since its inception in 1986. ``Any student who is chosen who cannot afford to pay will have a scholarship provided.''

Tri-DAC's program fee is $275 per student, compared to $70 for Southeastern's camp. The dollars-per-hour ratio is about the same for each.

``It's more fun than it is hard,'' Dent Middle School seventh-grader Julia Bradford says, ``but it isn't a breeze.''

Bradford has the unique perspective of also having participated in a drama residency conducted last year at her school by Southeastern.

``It's different,'' she says, ``Here we get to meet more professionals and there's more auditioning.''

In fact, one of the first things Tri-DAC drama students do is audition for their own culminating performance.

Then, for six hours a day, five days a week, Tri-DAC drama students are inundated with master classes, field studies, rehearsals and guest artists representing everything from educational television to Broadway.

They learn how to prepare resumes, how to audition for stage and film and then they put what they've learned to practical use in -- you guessed it -- a general audition to which local agents and directors are invited.

It's competitive and it's intense, but, fundamentally, Tri-DAC's mission is the same as that of any other arts camp in the state.

The big picture.

Just as Boy Scouting isn't intended to produce a master race of forest rangers, every kid enrolled in a drama camp isn't expected to become a professional performer.

Nor are the parents, for the most part, hoping that their children will turn from legal, medical and firefighting aspirations to pursue careers in the arts. They're simply glad to see their children leave the company of Beavis and Butthead, if only for a while, and they hope that a few weeks' exposure to ``the finer things'' will leave a lasting impression.

As for the kids, some say they want to be actors when they grow up, but, for the most part, they're just having fun being unacceptably loud and boisterous in the comfort of an air-conditioned building.

It's the administrators who take drama camps most seriously.

To Kirby, Carter and Martin, students like Bradford are the future of the arts in South Carolina.

They hope that, when Bradford grows up, she's going to look back fondly on summers spent learning to speak with authority, stand with presence and walk with grace.

They hope that she'll go to plays and attend concerts.

And, most importantly, they hope she'll give her children the same chances she's had.

``These drama camp kids are my pension plan,'' Martin jokes half seriously.

Or, as Carter so succinctly puts it, ``We need an audience for the future.''