Throughout the year, Fox Tucson Theatre offers programming for people of different ages, including children and teens. With their Monsoon Literacy Celebration and new Golden Hour: A Showcase of Youth Poetry event, the theater hopes to encourage young people to find joy in reading and writing. 

The Monsoon Literacy Celebration will be held Saturday, June 27, and the Golden Hour poetry showcase will take place Sunday, June 28.  

The Fox has been putting on the literacy celebration since 2018. This year, they will offer two sessions. 

Jordan Wiley-Hill, outreach and education manager for Fox Tucson Theatre, said they set it up this way so there would be smaller crowds at each event and greater engagement with interactive activities. 

“Historically, this free community event in the middle of the summer is very popular. We’ll have hundreds of people there. It would get so full that even though we have partners all over the theater, upstairs, downstairs and all the lobby spaces, doing activities with the kids, there would be these long lines at the tables. The kids would just grab something and move on. What we wanted to see was a deeper engagement for the students … We wanted them to really slow down and have experiences around literacy,” Wiley-Hill said. “Instead of having one very full event that creates a lot of pressure on the lines and makes everyone move quickly, we’re having two less full events. We’ve communicated this with our partners. We really want them to have activities that slow the kids and the families down and give them a chance to really engage.” 

Attendees are encouraged to register early for the two sessions. 

The literacy celebration will feature a screening of the award-winning animated short film “Tiddler,” a sing and dance-along with mascot Kitt the Fox, story times with featured authors, hands-on literacy activities and free book giveaways. 

Wiley-Hill said the event connects literacy, the desert and the monsoon season. 

“We bring in lots of local literacy groups, like Make Way for Books and Literacy Connects. We also bring in desert-oriented groups, like the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Camp Cooper … There’s everything from storytimes to hands-on activities. We show some short animated movies that are based on books … They are all based in literacy and local cultures of the desert,” Wiley-Hill said. 

The Fox will be highlighting Diné children’s book author Daniel Vandever’s picture book “We Weave” in an interactive way through a virtual reality experience. 

“It takes place on the Navajo Nation, and it’s about a grandson and his grandmother. It’s this multi-generational, traditional weaving meets modern technology picture book. We’ll be showing that picture book up on the big screen of the Fox, and then simultaneously our partners, Act One, who are coming down from Phoenix, are going to have a whole virtual reality experience that they filmed on the Navajo Nation with a traditional weaver and shepherd. You can put on these VR headsets and see an actual Navajo weaver doing his thing, showing you around the ranch, introducing the sheep,” Wiley-Hill said. 

Wiley-Hill said the Fox hopes through the event to combat summer learning loss. 

“Kids are off for two months, and they often start the next school year behind where they ended the previous school year. The idea is in the middle of summer to get them really excited about reading and writing, put books in their hands, give them a chance to have fun with it all,” Wiley-Hill said. 

This year, the Fox has added a new event, Golden Hour: A Showcase of Youth Poetry on the same weekend as the Monsoon Literacy Celebration. 

The Fox partnered with Pima County Public Library’s Many Nations team for the event.  

As part of the showcase, 17 youth, ages 9 to 18, will share their poetry on the stage of the Fox. 

The Monsoon Literacy Celebration is generally meant for kids 4 to 11. The poetry reading is meant to bring in older children and teens from different parts of Tucson. 

Leading up to the showcase, the library offered poetry showcases at three library branches, including Richard Elias-Mission Library, Valencia Library and Woods Memorial Library in May and June. The last showcase at Woods Memorial Library on Tuesday, June 16, featured 12 youth poets. 

The Many Nations team also put on a poetry showcase at the Tucson Festival of Books in March. 

Lindsey Curley, president of the Many Nations team and creator of Golden Hour, said youth poets have been presenting very insightful and thoughtful work at the showcases. 

“I’m really quite impressed with what the kids have been able to contribute, the visuals that they’re able to create with their words and the amount of wisdom and candor that they’re giving to us at this age and stage in life… At their age, they’re getting in front of crowds, and they’re making themselves vulnerable. They’re probably hoping that they’re not going to be misunderstood, but they do it willingly so that their words can be out there,” said Curley, a birth-to-8 librarian in the library’s community engagement office. 

Many young poets have explored topics such as their connection to the desert, their roles within their families and the way that they navigate social norms in their everyday lives. 

Curley said it is important for these young people to have support systems at home so that they continue to have an enthusiasm for reading and writing. 

“My dad was a poetry enthusiast and shared that with me. When I was growing up, he would do his research. He would bring me to poetry readings. He would put me in poetry symposiums. I went to workshops with him at the poetry center,” Curley said. 

Over the years, the Fox has been expanding on its summer youth programming. 

Last year, it put on its first filmmaking summer camp. This year, it is offering outdoor and silent filmmaking camps for teens 14 to 18 and a Silent Films and Movie Magic filmmaking camp for tweens 10 to 13. 

For the outdoor filmmaking camp, they brought in professionals who have worked in outdoor filmmaking. This included photographer, videographer and wildlife biologist Ryan Olinger, best known for “The American Southwest.” 

Teens also had a chance to talk to people from environmental groups, such as Save the Scenic Santa Ritas. 

Some of the short films made during the outdoor filmmaking camp will be shown during the Monsoon Literacy Celebration. 

For the teen and tween filmmaking camps, the Fox has partnered with organizations such as Tucson Village Farm and the Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre. 

Wiley-Hill said that through the camps, young people get to learn more about the art of silent filmmaking. 

“We show them clips, and we show them a few long ones. That way, they get to know the genre … Silent movies actually force you to be a good storyteller. You can’t rely on all the words and all the dialogue… It’s an amazing learning vehicle for young filmmakers,” Wiley-Hill said. 

As part of the teen camps, participants work in groups on different parts of the filmmaking process, including refining scripts, filming and editing. Each group is assisted by a staff member. 

“We’re going to give them a rough idea for certain stories. Then in groups, they’re going to turn those into a script. They’re going to make the movies, and they’re going to bring it all the way through … One of the parents last summer said that these are more master classes than they are camps. We’re really giving them some very expert guidance and support and helping them make something quite amazing,” Wiley-Hill said. 

The teen and tween filmmaking camps will be held back-to-back from July 6-10 and July 13-17, respectively. On the last Friday of the two weeks, the Fox will hold a special red-carpet premiere event for the filmmakers and their families. 

“The Fox has a restored Wurlitzer theater organ from back when it was built to be a silent movie house. We are going to show their movies on the big screen, and we will have them accompanied live on the theater organ, the way it would have been done 100 years ago,” Wiley-Hill said.