I’ve seen yellow stripes in the middle of a road before, but never quite that wide!

By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com

A school with barely more than 600 students is offering the community a classic seasonal story with 53 young actors on stage.

For one weekend only, Our Lady of Grace, 9900 E. 191st St., Noblesville, is staging The Wizard of Oz. There will be exactly two shows: Friday, Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 7 at 10 a.m.

The Reporter spoke with Director Sarah Szerlong to find out what it takes to stage a musical when such a large portion of the student body makes the cut after auditions.

“This is the third production that we’ve put on with the school and it’s very exciting in that our performing arts program is really growing with the school,” Szerlong told The Reporter. “Our Lady of Grace serves preschool all the way through eighth grade. By nature of the school, it’s a Catholic education, but we’re also STEM-certified and the growth of the fine arts program is new and much needed. We can’t all be STEM, we can’t all be STEM geniuses. So for the kids that are more creative than inclined, this has been excellent.”

Szerlong said this is the first year the school has opened their theater program to all grade levels, K through 8, to audition.

“We had a formal audition process and be in the show,” Szerlong said. “It’s a pretty good percent of the student population that’s in the show. We’ve got our kindergartners as the classic munchkins or flying monkeys. We go all the way up to our middle school students holding more of those lead roles in that classic Wizard of Oz style. The students have been working really hard on it twice a week since the beginning of the year to put on this production.”

Given how well-known the story is, this is a bold choice for a small school.

“It has some solos and duets, but a lot of larger ensemble pieces and some dance numbers, and so. from a theatrical perspective, it was a strong choice,” Szerlong said. “And it’s certainly been both challenging and fun to teach this kind of diverse range of student ages how to put on a show – not just how to sing or how to act, but the things that we don’t think about as much from a musical or theatrical perspective.”

Those skills include blocking, entering, and exiting the stage, listening for cues, and much more.

For the last two years, Our Lady of Grace’s English Literature teacher oversaw the plays. That teacher has since taken on a new role at a new school, so Szerlong stepped up to run the school’s biggest production yet.

“I’m a volunteer, actually, who potentially took on more than expected to make this happen, because to me, it was important value-wise to continue to offer this,” Szerlong said. “I have other parent volunteers who are helping with management, schedules, and stage production. And then my husband, Jason, is helping with the technical side of things.”

Szerlong called the experience so far fun and fulfilling in many ways.

“Our kindergarten through third graders are going home excited from play rehearsal, or dancing around in a living room,” Szerlong said. “I’m getting these stories back from parents. So that’s been very rewarding for me, but it’s certainly been challenging. It’s a very large cast, and in terms of the overall management of that number of children, it has been a learning curve for me. I’m not a teacher – I think – for a reason. And I have more respect for them coming out of this experience.”

Directing large ensemble numbers has been one of many new experiences for Szerlong.

“I think our largest one is probably that Munchkinland scene and that runs about 10 minutes, which is about one sixth of the total show’s run time,” Szerlong said. “That has been both challenging but a lot of fun to get the kids moving around the stage and doing what would never be considered Broadway style dancing, but they’re certainly moving and smiling and it should be pretty adorable. So absolutely it’s been challenging and exhausting some evenings, but rewarding in the way that I wanted. The reason that I wanted to step into it was to hopefully inspire these kids and to get them involved and excited about it, especially in Hamilton County where sometimes my impression is that we are very athletics-focused.  To me there is a lot of value in offering something else.”

You can show these young actors that all their hard work this year has been worth it by being a member of the audience this weekend.

Our Lady of Grace, 9900 E. 191st St., Noblesville, is staging The Wizard of Oz on Friday, Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. and on Saturday, Dec. 7 at 10 a.m. Tickets are $10. You can buy them at the door or online at ologs.org/wizard.