Glen Echo Park

On Stage with Adventure Theatre

Photo by Tyler Whitmore

From first graders to strapping teens, the children backstage were costumed for their musical production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (yes, you read right; Macbeth the Musical!). Lights in Glen Echo’s Adventure Theatre dimmed, fog rolled out and the audience of parents, grandparents and friends hushed as the play began.

But the serious acting was going on underneath the stage, where eight little girls dressed as witches had director’s orders to refrain from giggling until their cue to emerge from their hiding place onto the stage and to their task of “boil, toil and trouble.”

No premature giggles escaped and the girls were “wonderfully cute wicked witches,” says Ed Tamulevich, director of the Summer Musical Theatre Workshop at Glen Echo.

On June 18, Tamulevich is scheduled to launch his 28th summer running five two-week sessions of the acclaimed acting summer workshop for children ages six to 15. During each session, three groups of about 18 children fully produce a one-hour play. “You would be amazed at what they accomplish in two weeks,” said Tyler Whitmore, director of Marketing and Public Relations for Adventure Theatre.

Tamulevich, a Bethesda native, came by his craft the old-fashioned way: he earned degrees at Catholic University and then taught severely disabled and learned disabled children in schools Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. “In order to keep their attention, I found I had to be very dramatic,” said Tamulevich, a fit, smiling man with an obvious relish for life.

Some children come from as far away as Alaska during summer visits to relatives here and come to the workshops. Most children come year after year, and many become counselors.

“I have tremendous love and respect for the materials I’m working with and I try to infect the children with that,” Tamulevich chuckled. “It’s a good balance of working hard, having fun and making new friends. At the end of the sessions, they’re crying and handing out e-mail addresses.”

For more information, go to adventuretheatre.org.