It is hard for Tracy Hostetter and her mother, Claudia Shouse, not to finish each other’s sentences when they talk about Kaleidoscope Youth Theater’s nonprofit drama school. Their enthusiasm for teaching their drama students, ages four to eighteen, and passion for bringing their imagination into action bubble over and engage everyone in their path.

What started in the mid 1990s as an after-school volunteer activity for her two daughters’ drama and dance activities has evolved into a full-fledged career for Tracy and her seventy-year-old mother. After graduating with honors from MSU in Art Education and English Literature, Tracy was asked to coach the drama club at Hawthorne School, where she wrote and directed over twenty original shows involving up to seventy students per show. Word soon got out, and other Bozeman schools including Chief Joseph and Wilson asked Tracy to coach their art, theater, and drama clubs.

In 2000, the theater chair for Bozeman’s Sweet Pea Festival was so impressed with the quality of the performances and originality of the shows that she asked the talented duo to bring their children’s theater to perform at the festival.

“People saw us at the Sweet Pea Festival and wanted their kids involved, so we started teaching Saturday classes and added two summer theater camps,” says Tracy. With her talented and musical mother by her side, Tracy formed Kaleidoscope Youth Theater while still coaching drama and teaching at Bozeman’s schools. Within a few years, Tracy and her mother were working at this nonprofit theater full time, adding after school programs and increasing the number and variety of summer theater camps.

“Because we’ve been involved in teaching drama for so long, our nonprofit theater took off before we really thought it would,” says Claudia.

During Tracy’s tenure at Chief Joseph, Claudia assisted students in learning their lines. It quickly evolved, and Claudia began working with her daughter to write original musical scores. She then became their chief production accompanist and pre-school drama teacher.

“Most of my friends are going to leisure communities or traveling, and here I am teaching first graders and I really can’t leave because I’ve got a show to put on,” Claudia says with a laugh.

From the beginning, Tracy has written her own productions to control costs. Together, these two creative minds have written and produced more than 100 shows, 500 musical pieces, and 60 original musicals. Their inspiration and ingenuity does not end there. The two are also the chief costume designers and seamstresses, stage prop designers, and head prop builders - all jobs that Tracy performed for eight years with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks.

These skills are also part of their production-based curriculum. “We try to get the kids involved in all aspects of the production. We find it teaches them respect and responsibility for the whole production; they learn the time it takes to create those things,” notes Tracy. When visiting Kaleidoscope Theater, you might find students stitching poodle skirts or Kangaroo puppets, putting together sets, learning lines, practicing their stage presence, or singing an original honky-tonk tune. Many of the theater’s previous students, now in college and beyond, come back to assist with after school classes, apprentice at Kaleidoscope’s summer camps, and provide expertise for the year-round productions.

Kaleidoscope Youth Theater moved out of Tracy’s downtown Bozeman home into its very first dedicated building in February of 2011. “Until now we’ve been like gypsies. I had to move the theater out of my whole house - we used to sew costumes on the dining room table and store the props in my bedroom and mom’s barn,” says Tracy. “My daughters would find their prom dresses in the costume box. I had an identity crisis when all of it was relocated to our new location.”

Tracy and Claudia hope their new home will bring with it additional recognition and funding to continue expanding the children’s theater’s curriculum, add staff, and publish a few of their works. “We have great aspirations and vision,” says Claudia, “What these kids do on stage - it’s just magic.”

For a performance schedule and more information visit www.kytbozeman.com. MSN