Step inside the Moonpaper Tent and enter a world where anything goes. The enchanting studio secretly plants itself at 918 N.E. 64th St., with whimsical writing on the inviting front windows, exposing the magical play conducted inside.
A place for children to be free creatively, the Moonpaper Tent is Sylvan Bourgette's (a mother of six) seventh "baby."
"My main goal is to bring the magic of make-believe to children and adults and to have fun doing it," Bourgette said.
Explore the imagination
The 1-year-old Moonpaper Tent evolved from a themed birthday party business, Magical Dress-up, that Bourgette and friend Jenessa Wight operated for 10 years.
Moonpaper Tent's permanent space allows Bourgette to continue offering traveling theme parties while opening up a treasure box of new opportunities. She offers quarterly classes, camps, in-house parties and a retail line of varying fairy-related items.
She also plans to put on local performances for kids to watch, like last spring's puppet show of "Peter Rabbit," put together by a local Seattle playwright.
A child can choose from a bevy of classes for the upcoming winter quarter, catering to various ages. Classes focus on encouraging imagination through art and drama and engendering new ideas.
It's an emerging curriculum, Bourgette explained, that relies on responsive teaching and teachers playing along with the characters. Classes are not performance-oriented, but rather dramatic imagination-oriented.
"We're just facilitators to their ideas. If it's a class that involves prop making or set making, we're giving them the art supplies and they're doing it," she said.
On any day, boys and girls can be found in deep concentration, thinking up wild, imaginative potions or characters or stories or crafts.
One boy enrolled in Fantastic Quest talked about his potion to ward off monsters: "It does bad stuff to enemies.... When they start to come near us and try to hurt us or try to do anything to us, they come near and then they smell it and go, 'Oh my gosh! What's that?' And then they stink...like a skunk!"
The magical realism incorporated in classes opens a door to any path, instructors say.
"I think that it allows them to think up any scenario and that anything's possible. Their minds kind of work that way any way, and the idea of magic kind of gives them the excuse," Wight, also one of the instructors, explained.
Bourgette, who has worked in community theater, modeling and television, said, "This is exactly what I have been doing since I was 5, which is sort of creating magical atmospheres to play in, and that play is based on drama and art."
A community niche
Inspired by the success of Magical Dress-up, Bourgette found a warm and inviting space near Roosevelt Way.
The space had been completely gutted when she moved in. Her husband did all the construction work, and she painted the walls and the cement floor. From there, the Moonpaper Tent sprung.
In the beginning, she started with only a couple classes, a "fairy school" and lots of intricate art projects and dress-up. The entire front space was devoted to retail: items crafted by Bourgette, artist friends and vintage pieces she acquired.
Instead of slowing down when she became pregnant, Bourgette was prompted to hire others and keep classes going.
She removed the retail items temporarily until last month, when the space used for a healing-arts studio was vacated and Bourgette expanded Moonpaper Tent. "It was great to make it bigger, because I have big ideas," she commented.
Bourgette advertises on a small scale and circulates fliers, but has no big advertising plans just yet.
"At this point, I really just am going on this total passion.... There's a lot of word-of-mouth because everybody that walks in here gets pretty much put under a spell, and then they walk out and tell everybody about it," Bourgette said, laughing.[[In-content Ad]]
