Footlight Players, Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance summer youth theater program, will present the musical Finding Nemo, Jr. and the play As You Wish It in a double bill on July 14 and 15 on the main stage at Theatre-by-the-Grove in IUP’s Performing Arts Center.
Performances are open to the public at a low cost.
Advance tickets can be purchased at IUP’s Marketplace (iup.edu/marketplace) or at the door. The July 14 performance is 7:00 p.m.; the July 15 performance is a 2:00 p.m. matinee.
Footlight Players, in its nineteenth year, explores creativity through workshops and creating plays and musicals. It provides four weeks of day-long performing arts programming and is open to youth who have completed grade three through high school. A total of 42 youths are involved in this year’s camp.
Director Maddie Dee Jones holds a "rehearsal circle" for the Footlight Players play As You Wish It.
IUP alumma and former Footlight Player Brianna Adkins leads a movement workshop for Footlight Players.
The Players spend their mornings rehearsing spoken lines, songs, choreography, and movement to prepare for the performances. After a “company lunch” of everyone together, the Players split off into several workshops in support of the skills they will need to succeed.
The Players end the day together to review the “word of the day” and how they experienced values like “focus,” “bravery,” “discovery,” and “accomplishment.”
“Footlight Players is designed to provide a creative opportunity for young people in our community and valuable experience for IUP students learning to become teaching artists,” said Brian Jones, IUP Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance chair, who created Footlight Players in 2004 as an outreach project. “All participants enrolled in Footlight get a role onstage and are given tasks to help complete backstage production tasks as well.
“While the metro regions are rich in summer programs for youth using theater and performing arts, Indiana County is more limited,” he said. “Footlight Players was created to fill this gap in opportunity for rural students. The program continues to reduce disparity in arts programming by offering open access to youth in rural populations.”
The Footlight Players program is supported by professional teaching artists with experience onstage and backstage.
Sharen Camille is the program’s longtime teaching artist and artistic director. Camille spent her early career performing national and international tours of musical theater, including the role of Liesl in The Sound of Music.
Footlight Players youth theater company began with a handful of students and staff and has grown steadily each year. It now serves more than 60 youth, interns, musicians, teaching artists, designers, administrative and production staff and produces full-scale theatrical shows.
A core tenet of the program is inclusion, Jones said.
“We do not turn away any student who wishes to participate, regardless of experience, financial ability, special needs accommodations or background. In fact, Footlight supports youth who often experience discrimination within their own communities,” he said.
Footlight is a safe space for young people with varying identities, including youth of color, LGBTQIA, and neurodivergent learners, Jones stressed.
The Footlight experience is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Footlight is also funded by a generous financial hug from Kiwanis International, and individual donations to the Footlight Players fund of the Foundation for IUP.
Both the musical and the play being performed are one-acts based on films.
Finding Nemo, Jr. is based on the 2003 Disney/Pixar film Finding Nemo written by Andrew Stanton (director), Bobo Peterson, and David Reynolds. In it, Marlin, an anxious and over-protective clownfish, lives in the Great Barrier Reef with his child Nemo, who longs to explore the world beyond their anemone home. But when Nemo is captured and taken to Sydney, Marlin faces his fears and sets off on an epic adventure across the ocean. He is soon accompanied on the journey by the helpful but forgetful blue tang Dori whose perseverance drives them forward with the mantra, “Just keep swimming.”
As You Wish It is based on the popular movie The Princess Bride directed by Rob Reiner. It tells the story as originally written by William Goldman of a swashbuckling farmhand named Westley, accompanied by companions befriended along the way, who must rescue his true love Princess Buttercup from the odious Prince Humperdinck. This one is a Shakespeare version of The Princess Bride, in which the fair maiden Buttercup is betrothed to the evil Prince Humperdinck, but she is forlorn since her true love Westley has died at sea. Before she can make it to her ill-fated wedding day, three thieves and a man in black will change everything and be proof that true love conquers all.
Footlight Players Creative Director Sharen Camille-Becker assist with the technical rehearsal of Finding Nemo, Jr. Seated next to her is choreographer and former Footlight Player Jesse Chovanec.
Direct Amber Leitsch directs Footlight Players in a tech rehearsal of Finding Nemo, Jr. on the Theater-by-the-Grove main stage.