If all the world is a stage, then several Lawton Public Schools students got their 15 minutes of fame during a theater class offered as part of Makerspace Summer Camp.

The class was taught at Lawton Community Theatre by Michael Kidd Harden, managing director of Lawton Community Theatre, with assistance from some fellow thespians. Students received instruction in a variety of theater techniques, including how to build a set, how props are used and how to audition for a play. On the last day of camp, students were given a script, told to choose characters and to design and build their own sets.

On one particular day, the class of seven students was divided into two groups and given two different plays. One group was given “The Ant and the Dove” and the other was given “The Ant and the Grasshopper”. Students were told to choose characters, practice their lines, and draw their set design on a whiteboard before actually building the set on the theater stage.

The trio of Joshua McCarthy, Nyellie Payton and Angel Wolbrueck was given the play “The Ant and the Dove” because it has only three parts. They quickly divided up the speaking roles, with McCarthy selected to be narrator. Wolbrueck was in charge of set design and decided the team needed a tree, an ant hill, a little pond and a brook.

“I don’t know what that is,” Wolbrueck said of the brook.

“What is a brook? A pond?” McCarthy asked.

McCarthy kept prompting the group to rehearse their lines, even when they noted they had already done so.

“We need to talk really loud so everyone can hear,” McCarthy reminded them.

Then it was time for the two groups to head to the actual LCT stage to build their sets out of cardboard. Harden and Martha McCartney assisted in cutting out cardboard pieces to serve as props while students used markers to color them.

“We need trees, a brook, an ant hill, straw, a stone and a dove,” Payton said.

“A dove? How are we going to find a dove?” McCarthy asked.

“We are going to make one,” Payton said.

While Payton and Wolbrueck worked on the larger set, McCarthy made a stone out of a ball of duct tape.

McCarthy, looking at the set, said, “We have an ant hill, we have trees. What is a brook?”

“No! We don’t have an ant hill,” Payton said.

Once the sets and props were finished, each group had the opportunity to read their lines and act out the play.

McCarthy said his favorite part of the week was learning about the parts of the theater and props and how good people were at painting sets since the class was taught against the backdrop of the set of LCT’s production of “Oliver!”

Payton said her favorite part was reading lines with a partner, while Wolbrueck’s was character design.

“You make your own characters and design it and act it out,” she said.

Makerspace Camp is provided by Lawton Public Schools in partnership with Arts for All Summer Institute.