Thank you to The Good Feet Store for their generous support of this year's Academy Festival!

Friday, May 30th, 6:00PM
Performance Time: 45 minutes (no intermission)

Adapted from the three-time-Tony-nominated Broadway hit comes A Year with Frog and Toad KIDS. Based on Arnold Lobel's well-loved books, the jazzy, upbeat score bubbles with melody. Part vaudeville, part make-believe, and all charm, A Year with Frog and Toad KIDS tells the musical story of a friendship that endures throughout the seasons.

In Junior Academy: Musical Theater (Orange), class students were challenged to engage their creativity and imagination, worked on understanding characters and lyrics, and learned vocal techniques.

Saturday, May 31st, 5:00PM
Performance Time: 60 minutes (no intermission)

Middle school, ugh. It’s the worst. But Greg is determined not to be at the bottom of the popularity chart.  Jeff Kinney’s popular character takes center stage as Greg’s cartoon diary becomes a hilarious and heartfelt musical. Will Greg’s plans to become popular lead him to sacrifice his one true friend? Can anyone avoid the dreaded Cheese Touch? Grab a hall pass and don’t be late for an adventure familiar to anyone who actually survived middle school.

In the Junior Academy: Musical Theater (Blue), students studied character development, proper vocal placement and technique, and best rehearsal practices. Through working on a full show with limited rehearsal time, students were trained in taking initiative and responsibility for lead roles, featured roles, and specialty ensembles.

Sunday, June 1st, 6:00PM
Performance Time: 60 minutes (no intermission)

One Acts Academy will be performing a double feature of two highly entertaining plays! First, is a suspenseful radio drama, Sorry, Wrong Number by Lucille Fletcher. This story follows a bedridden woman who overhears a murder plot through the telephone. As the play continues, she desperately attempts to get help from the police or anyone who will hear her. But will it be too late? Is her life actually in danger. Second is The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon written by Don Zolidis. This comedy reimagines classic fairy tales like Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel through the eyes of two narrators and a cast full of wild imaginations. 

Acting Academy: One Acts has focused on giving students the opportunity to work on acting techniques with slightly shorter scripts, giving them the opportunity to master their characters and material. Students have been introduced to essential acting techniques through improv, acting exercises, script analysis, and rehearsals. 

Saturday, May 30th, 1:00PM (Saturday cast)
Sunday, June 1st, 2:30PM (Sunday cast)
Performance Time: 120 minutes (includes one 15-minute intermission)
Recommended for ages 10 and up
 
Steel Magnolias, written by Robert Harlling, is a well known Southern play that follows a group of women who work and spend time in a beauty parlor, offering each other friendship, support, and laughter through life's challenges. Steel Magnolias focuses on the strength of female friendship and how it can endure through the joyful and difficult seasons of life. Filled with hilarious repartee and not a few acerbic but humorously revealing verbal collisions, Steel Magnolias reveals these characters to be truly touching, funny and marvelously amiable company in good times and bad.

Advanced Acting Academy is a class to help students learn the acting process. Students worked on tackling the roles of the Steel Magnolias characters through scene analysis, acting exercises, partner work, and rehearsals. Through this work, students have been challenged to apply the acting techniques they have learned this year as they perform this clever, heartwarming show. 

Friday, May 30th, 8:00PM (Friday cast)
Saturday, May 31st, 8:00PM (Saturday cast)
Performance Time: 2 hours (includes one 15-minute intermission)
Recommended for ages 10 and up
 
In this transcendently powerful new play adaptation by Wendy Kesselman, Anne Frank emerges from history a living, lyrical, intensely gifted young girl who confronts her rapidly changing life and the increasing horror of her time with astonishing honesty, wit and determination. An impassioned drama about the lives of eight people hiding from the Nazis in a concealed storage attic, The Diary of Anne Frank captures the claustrophobic realities of their daily existence – their fear, their hope, their laughter, their grief.

Advanced Acting Academy focused on learning different acting techniques from great acting teachers like Constantin Stanislavski, Uta Hagen, and Standford Meisner. Students used exercises to create a character, bring truthfulness to their performances, and to listen and respond well to scene partners. 

Sunday, June 1st, 8:00PM
Performance Time: 90 minutes (no intermission)

Entourage is a high school mockumentary comedy tv show about four teen "heartthrobs" trying to stay relevant after skyrocketing to fame as a boy band. With fame fading and egos clashing, the guys must navigate friendship, fame... and their next big hit. 

This year, Film Academy gave students the opportunity to experience the full production process in putting together a 4-episode tv show. From the initial concept, pre-production and a year's worth of filming comes a final product everyone can enjoy on the big screen at Academy Festival.