Telluride’s Mudd Butts: 23 years and counting

Ask anyone who has been a member of the Telluride Academy’s Mudd Butts Mystery Drama Troupe and they will tell you that theater is the ultimate learning tool – and not just because drama impacts all the senses. For 23 years and counting, at the month-long theater intensive, kids learn about script and song writing, improvisation, clowning, movement/dance, voice projection, even marketing, but they also tap into life lessons such as learning not to take yourself too seriously and how to interact effectively in a group.  This year’s production, “Fears of Your Life,” based on a book by a developmentally challenged man, Michael Bernard Loggins, ramps up the learning experience by asking the young people in the cast to explore their own dark side, just as Loggins does every day, in order to tame their monsters.