Theatre Camp is Enriching Lives By Beth Slaughter Sexton, Staff Correspondent
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ne only has to look at Carson Skidmore’s theatre resume to see this young man is talented, accomplished and ambitious— and it was summer theatre camp at The Aurora that first gave him a big push. “I was in middle school and this was the first theatre camp I’d ever been to,” the Gwinnett County native said. “It was a good start because one of the most important things about it was learning that, ‘O.K., here it is outside of school. Here’s how things run. Here’s what I can do...Here’s how theatre is in the real world.’” His theatre education in school began in 5th grade when he said he auditioned for chorus as a way to make friends and get involved. “I remember at the audition, it’s funny to say that now because it was 5th grade and the bare bones of an audition,” he said. “But I remember doing all these crazy voices and accents and our chorus teacher was, ‘Wow, Carson. Where was all this?’” He loved watching movies and impersonating the characters and often entertained his friends by sounding like Obi-Wan Kenobi and C-3PO of Star Wars. Skidmore, the son of Chip and Kathy Skidmore of Lawrenceville, graduated from Rock Springs Elementary, Creekland Middle and was a 2019 6 SUMMER CAMP GUIDE
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honor graduate at MARCIGLIANO PHOTOGRAPHY Collins Hill High School. While he continued to perform after that 5th grade chorus program, it was on stage at CHHS that he took his skills to another level. High school audiences awarded standing ovations to his castmates and Skidmore for his portrayal of Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors; Harlequin in Changes of Heart; the baker from Into the Woods; multiple characters in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Unabridged; Link Larson in Hairspray; Dr. Galen Gray in Anatomy of Gray; part of the ensemble in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Lord Farquaad in Shrek. He’s taken part in many other theatre productions, festivals and camps and is already making his mark as a freshman at Columbus State University where he’s played Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web; the butler in The Importance of Being Earnest and will soon star as Jessie Tuck in Tuck Everlasting. Now majoring in theatre, Skidmore said he has fond memories of theatre camp and the friends he made there—some for life and others now re-connecting. He was walking down the hall at Columbus State one day when someone came up to him and said, “Hey, you were in my Aurora camp years ago.” “In theatre camps, you’re all working together,” Skidmore said. “You make connections as friends.”