THOUSAND OAKS : They’re Getting Starry-Eyed at Theater Camp

Ten-year-old Monica Coles fretted over getting her Mary Poppins British accent just right, while 13-year-old Ashley Conway wondered if she’s capturing the way Lucy Ricardo would wring her hands whenever she was in trouble.

Nearing the end of a two-week summer theater youth workshop at Cal Lutheran University, both girls were working Wednesday on the final touches of a play they created with their classmates.

The play involves two devious businessmen, their secretary, a magical machine and a cast of famous Hollywood characters who somehow emerge together from the machine on the day ofthe Northridge earthquake.

With an umbrella as a prop, Coles marched across the stage and stopped to stare at 13-year-old Shauna Stueve, who is playing Marilyn Monroe.

“Cover up dear; you’re going to catch a chill,” Coles-as-Poppins said.

Voice and movement teacher Barbara Wegher-Thompson called a brief halt to the rehearsal.

“Make sure you articulate,” Wegher-Thompson told Monica. “If you do, you’re going to get a laugh.”

The next time through, Monica assumed the properly haughty British tone, looking down her nose at Shauna while snapping out the line.

The class of 25 students, ranging in age from 9 to 14, has met every morning for almost two weeks, spending four-hour sessions learning acting, improvisation, voice and movement. On their last day Friday, they will perform the plays they created as well as a choreographed musical number.

During a practice for the musical piece, a song from “Grease,” the entire class milled happily around the stage, shrieking out, “We go together, like shobby, dobby, dobby, do-op, do-op.” From center stage, Wegher-Thompson directed their movements and somehow managed to create order from the bedlam.

“Sometimes it does get noisy,” said Ken Gardner, director of the workshop and an assistant professor of drama at Cal Lutheran. “They get a little hyper. This is a creative outlet for them. I don’t know if they have that much in school.”

The theater class is in its ninth year at Cal Lutheran and Gardner, who also runs the Young Artists’ Ensemble in Thousand Oaks, said the program is a popular one, with about half the students returning from year to year.

The first of two classes for beginners ends Friday. A second session begins Monday, from 1 to 5 p.m. on the Cal Lutheran campus. Spots are still available in that class, but a session for advanced performers, ages 11 to 16, is already full.

For information, call Gardner at 493-3375.