Longtime Fort Worth children’s performing arts company is closing after 35 years

A longtime children’s performing arts company announced on Friday it will cease operations on Aug 6.

KWC Performing Arts, formerly Kids Who Care, was founded 35 years ago by executive director Deborah Jung, a longtime live theater professional who shaped it into a regional hub for developing leadership skills and instilling a love for the performing arts.

“Anyone who spent any length of time at Kids Who Care has been gifted the tools and the voice to create change,” Jung said in a statement. “Sometimes, God gives us endings. Our job now is to bless, release, and do the Kids Who Care ‘thing’ — finish well!”

The company did not state a reason for its closure. According to its most recent tax filing, in 2022, it had nearly $470,000 in assets.

The company was best known for its summer theater camps but also offered leadership training like the KidPower Leadership Team and toured nationally.

Colte Smith of Fort Worth is a KWC alumnus, a board member and has a daughter, Rorie, who has never missed an opportunity to perform with the company.

When he walked into the theater’s lobby 24 years ago with a friend to audition for “A Midsummer Night Dream: A Rock Musical,” he worried his fellow students would judge him.

He found just the opposite.

He also found a role that, like Jung was known for, fit his talents.

“Kids came up and welcomed me,” he said.

Then he met Jung. He calls her the “fairy godmother of Fort Worth.”

Her style is child-centric. If a student thinks they have no talent, she’ll find it.

“If you walk into the room and she talks to your kid, it’s like you melt away,” Smith said.

He voted to close the company, a “heartbreaking decision.”

Yet he has accepted its fate.

He’s happy the final show is “Matilda the Musical.” Jung has wanted to stage since its debut in 2010. It runs August 2-4.

“It’s going to be epic,” Smith said. “It’s the most Kids Who Care way to go out.”