Speaking at the scholarship presentation, Thea Director and Founder Paul Leopoulos discussed the importance of the arts in young people’s lives.

“Arts help young people do a lot of things better,” he said.

Students submitted their films as part of the AETN Student Selects Showcase. Each of the four winners received a $2,500 college scholarship. Thea has partnerships with institutions of higher education all over the state, which match or exceed the scholarship awarded. The winners include:

• Zak Heald, Gravette High School – Cinematography for “Fatty in Wonderland”
• Robert Crisp, Har-Ber High School (Springdale) – Editing for “Saturday”
• Joseph Largent, Fayetteville High School – Screenwriting for “Vasudeva”
• Anna Thompson, Har-Ber High School (Springdale) – Directing for “The Illusion”

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These films, made by Arkansas students in kindergarten through 12th grade, were chosen for screening out of more than 100 submitted as part of the festival’s Youth Program (LRFF Youth!) and the AETN Student Selects showcase. Program director Casey Sanders said choosing what to screen was difficult, because so many great ones were submitted.

“These are the best student-made films in Arkansas,” she said. “Many had the passion to look beyond the taupe cinder-block classroom in creating their films.”

Many students were not able to attend the event at 610 Main St. because it conflicted with many graduation ceremonies, but students from Springdale, Cabot, Gravette and Little Rock were able to attend.

Four seniors were selected to receive $2,500 scholarships from the Thea Foundation. Most of the films were created by groups of students, but to be eligible for a scholarship, students had to solely be responsible for an aspect of the film, Sanders said.

The films screened include:

• “How We Never Met” (Rogers High School)
• “Killing Crime: The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year” (Cabot High School). This film is a sequel to their submission last year.
• “Confidence Commentary” (Rogers Heritage High School). This film was made by a student who led a no-makeup day at her school.
• “Life of a Giant” (Springdale High School)
• “Cups” and “Smoking Dead” (Springdale District TV). These two are anti-smoking public service announcements, as part of the Stamp Out Smoking campaign.
• “Dear” (Lake Hamilton High School)
• “Zombie PSAs” (Har-Ber High School in Springdale)
• “Saturday” (Har-Ber High School in Springdale). Robert Crisp won a Thea scholarship for editing on this film.
• “The Illusion” (Har-Ber High School in Springdale). Director Anna Thompson received a Thea scholarship.
• “Vasudeva” (Fayetteville High School). Joseph Largent received a Thea scholarship for screenwriting.
• “Little Lonely Girl” (Jefferson Elementary). This film was made by 8-year-old Hannah Alexander.
• “Fatty in Wonderland” (Gravette High School). Cinematographer Zak Heald received a Thea scholarship.

The films will be broadcast on AETN later this year, but an exact date has not been set, Sanders said.

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“Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Rodrick Rules” is based on the best-selling follow-up novel by Jeff Kinney about Greg, who’s entering seventh grade, and his older brother – and chief tormentor – Rodrick. They must deal with their parents’ misguided attempts to get them to bond.

Individual tickets for non-pass holders are $10. Buy them here.

At 2 p.m., the Little Rock Zoo will host an autograph and meet-and-greet with the stars. Zoo admission is $10 for adults and $8 for children (age 1-12).

Sunday: Free Family Fun Day
The Little Rock Film Festival’s Free Family Fun Day is Sunday May 19 at 2 p.m. at the Darragh Center Auditorium at the Main Library downtown. The event features family-friendly films throughout the day, as well as games, activities, balloons, face painting and a visit from Little Rock Zoo animals. Sponsored by the LRFF, Little Rock Zoo, Le Pops and Central Arkansas Library System.

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Little Beginnings is for children ages 2 to 4 with a parent. Each month the class focuses on a different topic and features hands-on activities, music making, movement and storytelling.

Admission is free. No day care or school groups. Click here or call (501) 324-9685 for more information.

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The event features the regular farmers’ market fare, including delicious Arkansas strawberries from Barnhill Orchards and North Pulaski Farms, along with music and family activities. Boulevard Bread Co. will also be on hand serving strawberry shortcakes, whoopee pies and other strawberry treats.

The Bernice Garden Farmers’ Market is located at Daisy Bates and Main Street in SoMa. Entry to the event is free, with food items available for purchase.

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SATURDAY: Lil’ Wild Ones: Nature Stories and Activities at the WSJCANC. Held the second Saturday of each month during the school year at 2 p.m., the event explores wildlife and habitats of Arkansas through nature stories and hands-on activities. Recommended for ages 4-8. Free. Registration is not required. For more information, call (501) 907-0636.

SATURDAY: Helping Hand’s Walk, Run and Wheel for Special Needs 5K/2K. Click here for details.

SATURDAY: International Migratory Bird Day at Holland Bottoms WMA in Jacksonville. Join Audubon Arkansas for family-friendly activities to learn more about birds in the area. Event includes morning bird walk with the Audubon Society of Central Arkansas at 7 a.m., a family bird walk with Dr. Dan “the Bird Man” at 11 a.m., and children’s activities from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free lunch at noon. For more information, contact Uta Meyer at (501) 244-2229, umeyer@nullaudubon.org.

SATURDAY: Magic Springs Water Park in Hot Springs opens at 11 a.m. It will be open on weekends until May 19 and seven days a week beginning May 25. The theme park opened last month. There are several ticket options available, including season passes starting at $74.99. Click here for more information.

SUNDAY: Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Guild’s Mother’s Day tea party, Teapots & Toasts, as part of the Symphony Designer House XXII. Click here for details.

SUNDAY: Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s Cirque de la Symphonie at Robinson Center Music Hall, 3 p.m. Children (K-12th grade) can attend free with a paying adult. Individual tickets start at just $14. Click here for details.

The post More Stuff To Do This Weekend: May 10-12 appeared first on Savvy Kids.

The 5K begins at 8:30 a.m. for runners and walkers. The 2K starts at 9:30 a.m. and is much more casual to allow families with kids and those with disabilities to walk, run or wheel. Both start and finish at the Helping Hand Learning Center in North Shore Business Park (4901 North Shore Drive in North Little Rock). Race Day Parking is at the Garver Building; follow the path to registration at Helping Hand.

There’s still time to register! Come to packet pick-up at Easy Runner in the Pleasant Ridge Town Center on Friday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Or, get to the race an hour early.

Helping Hand is a nonprofit developmental preschool that also provides occupational, physical and speech therapy to children up to 21 years of age. Proceeds from this event will go toward building phase one of an entirely wheelchair accessible playground.

For more information or to register, click here or call (501) 791-3331.

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Formed in 2007, Armadillo Rodeo is made up of kids age 13 to 18, with members graduating from the troupe when they leave high school. Currently, there are 10 members. Though they practice for up to three hours every Saturday, honing their comedy and ability to think on their feet as a unit, everything they do onstage is thought up on the spot.

Allison Light, Ryan Gauger and Raven Duda

For the audience, not knowing what will happen next is all the fun. The room is hot, buzzing with anticipation. They’ve brought in extra chairs, filled them, and soon kids are sitting on the floor. If there’s a foot-square space to stand, someone is standing on it. A Friday night can seem awfully dark to a parent watching their teenager head out the door into the big city. But here, on a weekend night, it’s a well-lit corner of Little Rock packed with smiling, texting, chattering teenagers, and the only law breaking going on might be a violation of the occupancy ordinance.

Promptly at 7, the lights dim. When the members of Armadillo Rodeo bound onto the stage, the crowd – most of them teenage regulars from local high schools and middle schools, all of whom paid $8 for a seat – bursts into an approving roar that’s flat out amazing to an audience newbie, especially given that many of the folks onstage aren’t yet old enough to drive. The troupe splits into senior and junior members, and for the next hour and 15 minutes, Armadillo Rodeo has us eating out of their hands with guessing games, improvised skits and impressions of the famous and infamous, all based on audience suggestions. If you’ve got even a hint of stage fright or acting ambition, it’s both a glorious and terrifying thing to watch. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny.

At 18, Noah Whitney is one of the oldest members of Armadillo Rodeo. He’s graduating from high school and the troupe this year – heading off to Illinois, where he’ll attend the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. A performer who plays his facial expressions with the skill of a concert pianist, often building his comedy around doofus responses that remind one of Steve Carell, Noah said working without a net was terrifying at first, but he’s since grown into it.

“Your first show, you’re just a deer in headlights,” he said. “You’re up there, and you’re making something in front of people. There’s no lines, there’s no rehearsal, there’s just raw comedy, right there. That’s what makes it fun, but that’s what makes it scary.”

Brook Scalzo is Armadillo Rodeo’s adult mentor. A member of both Improv Little Rock and a new troupe called The Joint Venture – which performs every Wednesday night at The Joint in Argenta – Scalzo took over as the Rodeo’s volunteer mentor last May, after the original founders, Josh Rice and Katie Campbell, moved out of state to pursue their careers. Scalzo said the packed house for Armadillo Rodeo is not uncommon, with the theater so full some nights they have to turn people away.

“If we could do a show every week, I’m convinced they would sell out,” she said. “It’s nuts, the response they get. There’s not a lot for teenagers to do in this town, especially on a Friday or Saturday night. Where most places are asking teenagers to leave, we’re asking them to come and have fun.”

Scalzo said that every dime the troupe makes goes to theater rental and paying for the group’s yearly trip to the Chicago Teen Comedy Fest, which the members of Armadillo Rodeo attend every May. While in Chicago, Scalzo said, the members take part in a workshop at the legendary improv theater and school, The Second City, which counts a who’s who of comedy greats among its alumni.

Open auditions for next season’s Armadillo Rodeo cast were held at the end of April, with the troupe looking to replace several seniors who are graduating from high school. The members of Armadillo Rodeo make all their own decisions on who gets in, Scalzo said. Even though a lot of shaping and honing of junior members takes place during their weekly rehearsals, she said they look for a certain skill set in that first audition.

“We look for creativity, we look for bravery,” Scalzo said, “but mostly we look for people we’d want to play with, and who want to play with us. These kids are friends, and we’re kind of a little family.”

Sixteen-year-old Raven Duda has been part of the Armadillo Rodeo family since 2011. Having acted in productions at the Arkansas Arts Center since she was in elementary school, Raven said the key to improv is to avoid “trying to be funny.” Instead, like a lot of members of the Rodeo, she just tries to have fun onstage, knowing that if she has fun, the audience probably will too. The format of improv makes that easy.

“In a way, I think it’s more fun than normal acting,” she said. “With normal acting, you go onstage and you rehearse your lines, so it’s just the same thing over and over again. With improv, it’s new, it’s fun, and it’s completely spontaneous. Sometimes, you might say something, and you’ll think in your head: ‘Did I really just say that?’”

At 14, Aaron Eley is the youngest-ever member of the troupe, having won his spot last year at only 13. An eighth-grader at Bryant Middle School, he’s clearly becoming a crowd favorite. Though he’s only in his first year, he hung easily with the more seasoned cast members during the performance we attended, doing a knockout impression of Elvis at one point that had the audience rolling with laughter. Like a lot of members of the troupe, Eley heard about the Rodeo while attending the Summer Theater Academy at the Arkansas Arts Center. His instructor asked him to audition.

“At first, I thought, ‘Improv? I’m not really sure about this,’” he said. “But after the audition, I’d gotten a little taste of improv, and I really wanted to be in the troupe.” Being in Armadillo Rodeo has helped him both on and off stage, Aaron said.

“It’s really helped me to think on the spot and come up with things faster,” Aaron said. “It’s made me a lot happier. I know that sounds kind of cliché, but it’s doing something that I like… It’s great to know that there’s a way I can start as a performer.”

Standing on the sidewalk outside the Public Theater, waiting for Aaron to make his way through the throngs of fans so they could head back to their much-less-glamorous life in Saline County, Aaron’s dad Chris Eley echoed his son’s enthusiasm about Armadillo Rodeo. Aaron wants to be a stand-up comedian someday, Chris said, and there’s just not a lot of opportunity to get onstage experience when a performer is so young.

“The Rodeo has been a huge blessing for him,” Chris said. “Every time he finishes a show, on the ride home, he’s just beaming.”

Check out the Armadillo Rodeo YouTube channel for more videos. They’re on Facebook, too!

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Teapots & Toasts will feature traditional afternoon tea fare, like fruit, cucumber sandwiches, chicken salad, petit fours, scones, mimosas and tea. Guests are asked to wear tea party attire, like what families would wear to church, said Susan Marsh, chairman of the event.

“Dressing up a little bit will make it a more special occasion,” she said.

The event is open to kids age 2 and older, but children under 12 may not tour the designer house. So, while mom tours the home, kids can enjoy arts and crafts, Marsh said. They can also enjoy a performance by the ASO Youth Orchestra.

“This is a memorable child-friendly, grown-up experience,” she said. “It’s something parents and kids can do together.”

Teapots & Toasts benefits ASO music education and other AO programs. The event is at the showcase home, 9 Bella Rosa Court, off Highway 10 in Little Rock. Adult tickets are $40. Children under 12 are free with an adult ticket.

For details or to purchase tickets, click here.

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