Over the hills and through the woods, this 1996 cast was Gone to Texas! Kids Who Care is an international company with roots in the city of Cowboys and Culture, Fort Worth, Texas! The company wanted to celebrate everything Texas, especially their Texas moms, and that “BIG COW STATUE in their neighbor’s front lawn!” This show has been revived several times and renamed Deep in the Heart.
Someone’s excited about Kids Who Care’s 1995 production Soul Avenue! Kids of all ages encouraged audiences across the United States to “give up some soul, to someone you don’t know.” It was all about understanding, compassion, and paying it forward. The kids in the company imagined a world where people spend their days serving others.
This flashback is to a group of forward-thinking kids in 1994 who wanted to make a musical about taking care of the planet. They gave life to the musical Earth and Soul. The kids sung out, “Let’s give them a place they’ll be proud to call home!” in the upbeat dance song, “A Place Like That.” The company knew that taking care of Mother Earth had to be the message because the future is “in our hands (and it’s in yours too!).”
This company had the opportunity to perform at Disneyland!
“Make good choices,” is now a popular catchphrase that moms and dads shout to their kids as they leave for school, the movies, and even church! This phrase gained popularity after the 2003 film Freaky Friday was released. This means that Kids Who Care was way ahead of its time with the 1993 musical Choices. The kids created this musical to let their peers know that the choices that we make aren’t just superficial, but can deeply affect the way that others feel. We have a choice to compliment someone instead of bullying them, or to give up our bus seat to an elderly person instead of ignoring him.
Check out current Production Manager Chad Jung in the center of the front row!
“Heart to heart, it isn’t very far!” rang the declarative ballad of Kids Who Care’s 1992 musical, Heart 2 Heart. This show was created to state that although we have our differences and our own busy lives, we all have a heart, and everyone deserves a little compassion!
Check out Executive Director Deborah Jung on the far left, and current Company Manager Kate Lovelady in the center! Just goes to show that you are always a member of the Kids Who Care family.
“We Have A Voice,” that oh-so triumphant and defiant anthem from Free to be a Family became its own show in 1991. We Have a Voice is all about how kids have the power to speak out and stand up for what they believe. Why can’t kids be the leaders of today instead of merely the leaders of tomorrow? Perhaps We Have a Voice gave Co-Founder and Executive Director Deborah Jung some inspiration for KidPower Leadership, the training that is infused into every aspect of Kids Who Care culture.
This week, we move into a new decade, the 90’s, with Kids Who Care’s production of The Me You Cannot See. The cast is representing the decade very nicely with wind shorts and scrunchies! This company had the amazing opportunity to perform at the Kennedy Center on their annual Study Tour and dazzled Washington D.C. On the company’s 2nd anniversary, they were already in the big leagues!
This summer we began our year-long celebration of twenty-five years of pure joy exploding from children of all ages on the stage of the Scott Theatre. Throughout the next year, we are celebrating twenty-five years of summertime lunches enjoyed on the patio. We are celebrating twenty-five years of original work, monologues and dialogues from six-year-olds and seventy-year-olds! We are celebrating twenty-five years of beautiful international students from Italy, Israel, Germany, Albania, Hungary, Indonesia, Spain, and Latvia. We are celebrating twenty-five years of memories.
So let the reminiscing begin! We kicked off our celebration this summer and for the next 25 weeks we will be sharing a timeline through the years, starting with 1989, and ending with this past summer.
Take a stroll down memory lane.
This gem is from the 1989 production of Free to be a Family. The talented kids declared, “We Have a Voice!” on the bare Scott Theatre stage, to a house that was packed to the max. Something unique was born, and people were hooked. Kids Who Care was already legendary.
KidPower Leadership 