Bay Area Children's Theatre Students Showcase New Aladdin JR At Junior Theatre Festival WEST

Students in Bay Area Children's Theatre (BACT) Advanced Performers education program are showcasing a new version of Aladdin JR, featuring four new songs from Disney's hit Broadway musical Aladdin, at this year's Junior Theatre Festival WEST (JTF WEST) in Sacramento CA.

BACT's Advanced Performers are East Bay students aged 9 - 16 who have successfully auditioned for BACT's traveling musical theatre team. The group performs the new Aladdin JR tunes, Saturday, before an audience of 1,600 students, teachers and theatre professionals as part of a three-day celebration of musical theatre and performance.

JTF WEST, now in its second year in California, is one of two theatre festivals produced by iTheatrics that serves thousands of students from throughout the world, bringing young performers together in Atlanta and Sacramento for demonstrations, workshops, and performances that are professionally critiqued, as well as for appearances by Broadway and Disney stars.

This is the second year in a row that BACT has been selected to perform as part of the JTF New Work Showcase, which highlights new work for young performers and models how to use ensemble work to tell stories on stage.

Advanced Performers come to BACT's education program in Oakland from as far south as Pleasanton and as far north as Vallejo, as far west as San Pablo and as far east as Livermore.

Established in 2004, Bay Area Children's Theatre, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, serves 115,000 children and adults throughout the Bay Area, with main stage performances in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and Sunnyvale; programs and productions in local schools; and classes and summer camps in the East Bay, South Bay, and San Francisco.

Our Mission: To inspire young audiences with imaginative productions, introduce children of all backgrounds to the excitement of live theatre, and create an engaging, entertaining, and educational environment in which children and their families can explore and enjoy the arts.

How We Carry Out Our Mission:

• Bring high quality, professional theatre to children and their families, with artists who create vibrant worlds that are intriguing to young audiences
• Encourage young people to explore literature, language, and the arts by producing stage adaptations of great children's books
• Engage preschoolers in the world of theatre with productions specially designed for them
• Develop and perform exciting new work for the stage
• Reach out to children who might not otherwise experience live theatre with free tickets, special performances for school groups, and touring productions at local schools
• Create touring productions for young audiences nationwide
• Partner with communities to meet the need for theatre education
• Introduce children to the joy of performance through our theatre education program