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 It’s a play about a play.
The Spring-Ford Community Theater Youth Ensemble is staging “Our Miss Brooks” this weekend, with performances Friday and Saturday, Nov. 3 and 4, at 7:30 p.m., in the Spring-Ford Eighth Grade Center. The play opened Thursday. Tickets are $7 at the door for adults, discounted for students.
In the three-act comedy, set in a 1950s high school, teacher Miss Brooks is directing the school play. The action centers around auditions, the making of the sets, props and costumes, “all the things that go wrong up to curtain time,” said Bonnie Fetterolf, director of the Spring-Ford production and adult mentor for the youth ensemble.
The role of Miss Brooks is performed by Spring-Ford High School junior Emily Stockton-Brown, in her sixth show with SFCT. Her “love interest,” gym teacher Hugo, is played by Phillip Ballantine, a Spring-Ford senior who has been involved in the youth ensemble since eighth grade.
Playing the lead high school students are freshman Ellen Tamaki, as Jane, and Spring-Ford sophomore Jeff Meehan, as Ted.
Leading the 30-member cast and crew is student stage manager Sarah Murphy, a 10th grader at Spring-Ford. Fetterolf said Sarah “is doing a phenomenal job.” She added, “I try and put as much responsibility on them (the teens) as I can. That’s what we’re here for.”
The youth ensemble was formed nine years ago, when a group of seven teens, from a number of different schools, decided they wanted to do theater together. The group approached the Spring-Ford Community Theater and asked if they could start a youth group, Fetterolf recalled.
Those seven plus five more teens made up the first show. Now, a total of more than 500 kids have been involved in the shows, coming from at least 11 different schools. About 50 to 60 teens are involved each year, most of them in eighth through 12th grades.
“We are run by a group of teenagers,” Fetterolf noted. A teen committee, under Fetterolf’s direction, decides which plays to produce, picks the director and researches the production. When it’s time to begin, the teens handle the stage managing, set building, lights and sound, as well as the acting roles.
“They do every aspect of it that they can,” Fetterolf remarked.
The youth ensemble stages three productions each year, in the fall, winter and spring. In the past, the group did one comedy, one drama and one musical, but Fetterolf noted they haven’t had a piano player for several years and have been unable to do musicals.
Instead, they do a night of one-act plays, which are student-directed. “It gives the students a chance to direct,” Fetterolf said. “They do everything.” The one-acts will be presented in February, also at the Eighth Grade Center. A children’s show is planned for the spring.
Fetterolf has been the mentor for the ensemble from the start. In fact, her two middle daughters were among the original seven. “I love the kids,” Fetterolf said. When her daughters graduated and moved on, she said, “I enjoyed being with the kids so much that I wanted to keep doing it.”
The Royersford resident added, “It’s such a joy working with them. They’re all so enthusiastic and so great to work with.”
“I think that kids are very creative and expressive,” Fetterolf remarked. “It gives them a safe place to be creative and expressive and be rewarded for that.” She added that not all the students want to be on stage; some prefer to be involved in set design or the organizational aspects of theater. The students enjoy participating in the youth ensemble because they have more control over the production, she noted.
Senior Phillip Ballantine reflected, “It’s just fun here. It’s really kid oriented … it’s all about the kids.”
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