Registration is now open for “Encounter,” an intensive five-week summer arts experience integrating movement with classic and contemporary music, special effects and multimedia theatrics.

No theater experience is necessary for students ages 12 to 18 to participate in the June 14-July 17 program at Santa Barbara Junior High School. The program will culminate in three public performances at 7 p.m. July 15-17 in the Marjorie Luke Theatre.

“I would really describe it as movement theater,” said Peter McCorkle, who co-wrote and will co-direct the production with Matt Tavianni. “From the minute it starts, this thing takes you on a journey. It’s really fast. It starts with a person who is having a dream, and you go into this dream and the whole thing really is a dream, and throughout the dream there are different sections.”

The show really travels through a journey, rather than a linear story, says Tavianni, an accomplished actor who is probably best known locally as a managing director, producer and performing member of BOXTALES Theatre Company.

Michael Mortilla — a nationally recognized musician who has composed, orchestrated and performed his original scores for some of the finest ensembles and artists in the world — will create the soundscape. Together, the three principals have more than 75 years of professional, music, movement, dance and theater experience. College students Laura Mercaldo and Jenelle Rodriguez also will assist with “Encounter.”

“It’s more like Fantasia than traditional musical theater,” said McCorkle, a Santa Barbara native who ran the theater arts program at Laguna Blanca School for 13 years and has performed and taught extensively in the area. “The kids’ bodies are the sets. The kids’ bodies are the characters. The kids’ bodies are the movement.”

“There’s audience participation, too,” Tavianni said. “We break the fourth wall a lot.”

In addition to props and actors interacting with the audience, there is also a section of the show where the audience is videotaped and their images are projected into the theater in very creative ways.

“It’s different. “We don’t want it to be the same as what everybody else is doing,” McCorkle said. “There’s no singing, and right now there’s no dialogue. It’s movement theater, and it’s really something that most people don’t get to experience until college.

“The reason why I went in that direction is that kids don’t know how to move. So why not do a whole summer program where they learn how to move and have a really good time experiencing doing it and being in something that’s really cool?”

The cost for participation in the five-week program is $750, with some scholarship funding available, said Poppy Tuomi, director of programs for the Patricia Henley Foundation, which is underwriting the production.

In just a few short years of involvement with local youth theater, the nonprofit Patricia Henley Foundation has distinguished itself by producing unique shows, such as the original musical production of Newton’s Cradle, a new work based on Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” and focused on real life, humorous and serious experiences of young people.

The group’s inaugural youth production, Theatre of Life for Children, was a lavish musical presented in 2008. Since then, the foundation also has developed the Teen News Network, an ongoing TV series produced by and for teenagers; a Mobile Arts Program, which assists public schools with transportation costs for field trips to cultural programs, and it’s working on a pilot theater arts program at Roosevelt Elementary School, in conjunction with DramaDogs Theater Company.

Click here or call 805.568.3600 x115 for more information or to register for the program.

— Leslie Dinaberg is a frequent Noozhawk contributor and can be reached at leslie@lesliedinaberg.com.