MITCHELL, SD (Mitchell Now) — Area youth actors are ready to get their kicks on Route 66, and the rest of the community gets to watch it unfold live on stage on June 26th and 27th.
The Area Community Theatre holds a four-week summer program for kids out of school every year that culminates in a live production. Office Manager Jesse Stroud tells Mitchell Now the theatre takes care to treat its Junior Players show with all of the care and attention they give to the five plays the regular cast commits to.
The summer youth shows are “more of a 70- to 90-minute type of a production, rather than a…fully encompassing show, but we do build a full set. Outside of our regular rehearsal time, we have a set build workshop that we do with the students, basically anybody that wants to come is welcome, and we paint and we build whatever the pieces that we need.”
This year’s show is properly Americana as one would expect for the country’s 250th anniversary. It Happened on Route 66 centers around a minor celebrity from the Los Angeles area trying to avoid an estranged lover at a diner near Phoenix in the 1950’s. America’s most nostalgic highway is the backdrop for the comedy.
Adding another wrinkle to the show is the youth of the two directors. Both Tessa DeWitt and Max Bruguier are in their early-20’s, just out of college at the University of South Dakota. This is their second year helming the A.C.T. Junior Players and their aim is to make the play a true reflection of the kids taking part.
Stroud beams, “Everybody is really enjoying it, and getting into their characters. And having the hands-on piece, too, of the set building and picking out some of the props and doing those things is really giving them a lot of ownership in the process…They’re really, really dedicated to it.”
The play will have an opener, something new for audiences. Before the kids come on for the main production, staff at Dakota Wesleyan University are working with LifeQuest, an organization dedicated to housing and support people with special needs, to create a history lesson on Route 66. Stroud says it will last about 20 minutes. Then the curtain goes down so the regular cast can set up their props. Stroud calls it a “double whammy” for those in attendance, in a good way.
Tickets are only $10 for the junior players production, thanks to a grant from the State of South Dakota, the Arts Council, and the Mitchell Charitable Foundation. Stroud admits, “Without those organizations, it would be a much bigger struggle to make these things happen.”