Fort Wayne Youtheatre and First Presbyterian Theater are getting their dancing shoes on.

Working in collaboration for the first time, the theater companies will put on the musical The Prom at First Presbyterian Theater over the course of three weekends, beginning Friday, March 1.

“It is a show that should tickle your funny bone and touch your heart,” said director Christopher J. Murphy, who is also associate director of Youtheatre. “I think (The Prom) hilarious and it’s heartwarming, as, in my opinion, the best theater should be.”

Based on true event

The story of The Prom revolves around a female student who wants to bring her girlfriend to prom at an Indiana high school. At this news, the PTA cancels the prom. Word spreads, and four down-on-their-luck Broadway actors jump at the opportunity to make this their “cause” in an attempt to rejuvenate their careers.

What ensues is comedy, music, and lessons on acceptance.

“I think it’s a very important message to send right now,” Murphy said. “I certainly can’t speak on behalf of anyone at First Pres, but for us here at Youtheatre, we always want to make sure that all of our students know that they are loved and accepted. That is certainly the theme of this show: being brave enough to stand up and be who you are. But also it’s very much a story of love and acceptance.”

First Presbyterian’s Managing Artistic Director Todd Sandman Cruz is able to speak on his company’s behalf and shares the same sentiment as Youtheatre.

“First Pres felt The Prom was a very important story to tell as it speaks to the wide-ranging acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community among the Gen Z population in contrast to previous generations,” he said in an email. “It’s a story of inclusiveness told in a fun yet liberating way. An important work that we believe can have a powerful impact on our community as a whole while offering an entertaining and side-splitting night of entertainment.”

The musical is relatively new, conceived by producer Jack Veirtel after he came across the 2010 story of an Alabama high school student who tried taking her girlfriend to prom, resulting in its cancellation.

“He called together a bunch of his friends who are writers, actors, composers, lyricists, and said, ‘I think we should turn this into a musical’ — which is not the way musicals are normally formed. Usually, writers are the ones that come up with an idea, then you take it to a producer,” Murphy said. “He called them all together and (Matthew Sklar, Chad Beguelin, and Bob Martin) wrote the show. And not only wrote the show but decided to write it with roles in mind for all their best friends who were actors.”

The show premiered in Atlanta in 2016, hitting Broadway in 2018. Since then, it’s become a touring show as well as a Netflix movie starring Meryl Streep, James Corden, and Nicole Kidman.

“We had been looking for something for both theaters to collaborate on for quite a while,” Murphy said of the Youtheatre-First Pres partnership. “We perform the bulk of our season at First Pres, so we have a really strong relationship. This just seemed like a really natural fit, because it has a lot of adult roles in it, but it also, obviously because it focuses on a high school prom, it has a lot of youth roles.”

Murphy said the roles are split pretty evenly between youth and adults, and the process of choosing those actors was not easy.

“It’s always my least favorite part of my job — to have to sift through all the amazing talent that we are so blessed to have in Fort Wayne,” he said. “I always say Fort Wayne very often embodies the best of the term ‘community theater.’ The term can be derided a little bit, but we have so many people in this community who just chose, for whatever reason they wanted to, to make acting their avocation instead of their vocation. 

“We are so blessed to have those people here in this community and so many of them came out.”

Familiar face

A natural fit for the show was Youtheatre alum Emersen Conner in the lead role of Emma Nolan.

Getting her start at Youtheatre as a sixth-grader, Conner was with the company until she aged out, at which time she interned for the company for a year, then was an artistic associate for a year.

“She’s absolutely one of my favorite performers,” Murphy said of Conner. “She’s my favorite and most frequent collaborator. I really think in some many ways, because she was a Youtheatre kid, she sort of embodies everything that’s great about this collaboration.”

Conner is very active in the Fort Wayne theater scene. Most recently she’s been busy with Fort Wayne Civic Theatre, playing Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical in the fall and Portia in last summer’s Something Rotten!, directed by Murphy.

 “If I’m not in a production, I’m getting into the next show,” she said, noting her focus now is turning toward college, where she is eyeing a degree in musical theater.

As for Fort Wayne, she credits Youtheatre with putting her on the track she is on.

“It’s provided me with such a great community of people,” she said. “For a lot of my life, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, get me out of this small town. I’m just such a big fish in a small pond.’ Doing theater in this community, especially with the Fort Wayne Youtheatre, has provided me with such a strong group of people that I can rely on for support and advice, and I can do really cool projects with them.”

No villains

That sort of support system is also seen in The Prom as Emma tries to navigate a sensitive time while being pressure by the Broadway performers to be the face of their cause. In turn, she’s also pressuring her girlfriend Alyssa, played by Bekah Guntle, who is also the daughter of the PTA president, to come out of the closet.

“I think one of the things the show does so beautifully is that it really does — even though it is a big brassy musical comedy with hilarious jokes and toe-tapping songs and dance routines — it really does take a very nuanced approach to all of its characters,” Murphy said. “Nobody, even the folks that you might think are the bad guys, nobody is truly presented as a villain. Everybody is presented a fully fleshed human being with understandable feelings, even if you disagree with those feelings, you can kind of see where they are coming from. Everybody is given the chance to grow and learn over the show and to find a good place where they can all come together by the end.”

Conner also said the show is coming at a good time for the community. And even if you don’t agree with everything in it, the comedy is there to put a smile on your face.

“To quote the great Julie Andrews (in Mary Poppins), ‘A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.’ It’s a light and fluffy story with a very emotional and poignant chord that delivers a very important message, especially for this time in our political climate,” she said.