Horizon enters new stage

Horizon youth theater instructor Duffee Maddox (left) and students (from left)  Yelia Xu and Rose Walters draw out scenes during a class on theater design at the Wolfe Center for the Arts. (Photos: Enoch Wu/Sentinel-Tribune)

Horizon Youth Theatre is all about education.
The troupe introduces its ebullient band of fledgling thespians to the theatrical arts. And in the past several years it has served as a training ground for an equally enthusiastic group of college directors and theatrical technicians.
Those dual roles are now being recognized with an agreement between the youth troupe and the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University.
Aimee Reid, who teaches youth theater at BGSU, said the collaboration with Horizon Youth will give college students interested in studying youth theater much needed experience.
Now they have the Treehouse Troupe which travels to schools throughout the region staging plays. That's all.
The new agreement expands their horizons.
Horizon Youth Theatre does plays in fall and late spring, the latter usually a musical. It has also stages one-act plays, including original scripts penned by Horizon members. It also offers a drama club that is offered monthly during the school year, and weekly during the summer.
The drama club offers stand-alone drop in sessions for $5 a pop. These offer more flexibility than the week- or two-week-long workshops the company had offered in the summer.
The agreement formalizes what had been in place since founder Scott Regan relinquished the reins of the theater he founded in 1997. When Regan stepped aside, the troupe turned to one of his students Cassie Guion to direct, and later to serve as managing director, said Kate Frishman, the Horizon board president. Now graduated, Guion is moving out of the area.
The troupe has also benefited from the assistance of young artists affiliated with BGSU and with the independent troupe Lionface Productions.
Reid said she will oversee the students and review their ideas for productions.
BGSU is also offering the troupe something it has been lacking - a space to play.