Finding hope in the midst of grief is central to all for One productions’ upcoming show, Walk Two Moons.

“all for One is very much about stories of hope or redemption, just good, clean family fun,” said the show’s director, Jeff Salisbury. “This story falls into the hope that you can find when dealing with your grief and coming through the other side and finding closure and acceptance and processing what’s happened rather than letting it spiral and keep going and controlling you. 

“There’s that beautiful moment where you kind of learn how to accept what happened. And, you know, it may hurt, but things are gonna be OK, and you realize that. That kind of fits in with our hope and the way we feel about our faith. Our company is based around things like that.”

Walk Two Moons opens Friday, March 7, and will include six shows at PPG ArtsLab through Sunday, March 16.

Road trip

Walk Two Moons centers around a cross-country trip from Ohio to Idaho by 13-year-old Salamanca (Sal) and her grandparents. The hope is to reunite with Sal’s mother, who left their former home in Kentucky and has not returned in a year.

“During the travel, she starts telling a story about her best friend, Phoebe, who we find out is dealing with some of the same stuff Sal does,” Salisbury said.

Phoebe’s mother has also disappeared, and Sal entertains her grandparents with tales of her creative new friend.

“Phoebe has an extremely overactive imagination and starts creating all of these situations and scenarios that are just outlandish,” Salisbury said. “But she can’t process why her mom does what she does. So, she just starts coming up with all these stories: She’s convinced her neighbor is a murderer who has killed her husband and buried him in the backyard, and all this stuff.”

Cast of rookies, veterans

Portraying the young characters are Elianna Maser (Sal) and Leonna McIntosh (Phoebe).

Both are making their afO debuts. 

Maser has experience on the stage by coming up in Fort Wayne Youtheatre, while McIntosh has worked with Missoula Children’s Theater and was part of Voices of Unity Youth Choir’s championship team that competed in New Zealand last summer.

“They are fantastic,” Salisbury said. “Both of them, this is their first big show. I think they’re 11 and 12, but their work ethic and the way they’ve approached this show puts a lot of professional actors I work with to shame. 

“They are they are taking it so seriously, and they take the direction that I give them very well, and they process it. The discussions we’ve had about their characters and what they’re feeling and what they’re going through, these girls have impressed the heck out of me. They understand what’s going on in this script, which has made it easier in ways because I was afraid I was going to have to get into all these really deep discussions and try to explain it, but these girls just got it.”

Playing Gramps and Gram will be Daniel Woodruff and Lorraine Knox, both veterans of the local stage scene.

“Those two going back and forth with each other, they are just hilarious,” Salisbury said. “And those two, they are gonna have you crying. They’re gonna have you laughing your heads off. They are wonderful.”

The rest of the cast includes Nate Chen, Stacey Kuster, Megan Harmon, Matthew Williams, Oren Atkins, Phoebe Atkins, and Ethan Dumser.

Setting the scenes

Along with a strong cast, the crew have been just as important in telling a story that transitions between people in car to Sal’s flashbacks to Phoebe multiple times.

“The lighting and the sound is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this show,” Salisbury said. “It’s a lot of, when they’re in present day, the lighting looks a certain way. Whenever they’re in flashbacks, there’s things on stage that signify Sal is going to someplace else. There’s a lot of the staging where you can tell where we are.”

Salisbury is double dipping since he’s also the lighting designer, while Scott Kump is sound designer. Also on the crew are Jadon Moore (assistant director), Sarita Swerens (stage manager), and Mary Swerens (head costumer).

When it all comes together, Salisbury feels viewers will get a show that reaffirms that light is always at the end of the tunnel.

“It’s very funny humor and has situations that are used to see how these kids ultimately deal with the grief and the abandonment and the loss and come to a place where they deal with the issues rather than just letting it keep spiraling,” he said.