Norway Bay’s Centennial Hall was jam-packed with friends and family of the 19 young actors in the community’s summer musical theater performance, a rendition of The Lorax, on Friday evening.
Inside the hall, long wooden benches faced the small stage in the front, which was decorated with Truffula-like trees on long strips of brown paper, painted by the theatre group.
The performance was the grand finale of the four-week musical theatre program organized by the Norway Bay Municipal Association, which met every weekday evening from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the weeks leading up to the final show.
The kids aged five through 13 came together to sing and dance, dressed in a variety of costumes, from town characters to forest animals and mystical creatures, to perform an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s 1971 children’s story about an environmental activist – the Lorax – who speaks on behalf of the trees, and tries to protect them from destruction.
The Norway Bay adaptation was written and directed by Amy Harris, who said she’s known most of the kids in this year’s theatre program since they were babies.
“To see them grow and improve is such a joy,” she said during the intermission of their performance.
When choosing what play to do, she said that she wanted to change things up, because they had been doing a fair bit of Disney over the past few years.
She said she really loves the message behind the original story of The Lorax and wanted to expose younger ones to its message of environmental stewardship, nodding to the forest fires and other environmental challenges of the moment.
“They really love it,” said Sarah Bolton, who is on the board of directors of the NBMA and coordinates the musical theatre and arts programs. “They’ll do it until they age out, then they become the instructors.”
True for instructor Sam Dun, who participated in the program when she was young.
“It’s such a special experience for the kids,” she said, mentioning her most favourable memory with the theatre program was when she landed the lead role of Matilda when she was eight years old. She said the program was special for her, so she really loves being able to make it special for the next generation too.
