Roadshows in a day

I don’t know if this will work for you, but for our Youth Conference this past summer we did “Road shows In A Day”.  Our theme for Youth Conference was “The Hero Within”.  We divided the youth into 4 groups and each group was given a hero as the theme for
their production.  They received their hero and a short synopsis of why they were recognized as a hero after breakfast on Friday morning.  The groups each had a basic brainstorming session to see where they wanted to go with their theme, what their storyline would be and then they broke into two core groups. One group wrote the
script and adapted the songs they would use and planned the  choreography and their other group made the scenery.  The wards were each responsible to bring a list of basic things they could use to make the props and scenery with, things like tape, markers, newspaper, butcher paper, paint, yarn, rope, scraps of material, etc.  The stake supplied tables and chairs, brooms, large mattress boxes we obtained free from a furniture company that the youth used to paint their scenery on.  They spent the morning writing and making the props.  We used two different buildings in our stake that are in the same city.  We broke for lunch at noon and fed them in both buildings and then they had
the afternoon to spend practicing their productions.  Using the two different buildings allowed them all to be able to use the stage for at least half of their practice time.  We had everyone meet back at the stake center and fed them dinner and then they had an hour to make a technical run through to work out lighting, etc. on the stage at the stake center.  The whole stake was invited to their performance.  They did a wonderful job!  Every single group was so creative.  Our stake YM/YW music specialist had chosen the themes and kept them secret until she passed them out that morning.  The “heroes” were not people that most people were familiar with, she made them really reach to come up with their storylines.  But that too was a good thing.  It made them grow, even though some of them weren’t happy about it.  She really made them think.  If they would have received Captain Moroni or Esther or someone that they were familiar with they would not
have been near as creative as they had to be.  Each production had to have an opening act, 2 songs and 1 dance number.  Kids we never thought would participate did participate and had a great time doing it.  It was a wonderful part of our Youth Conference.Karen in Topeka