The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Summer musical theater tradition
CHITTENANGO, N.Y. » It all started with family for the Chittenango Summer Musical Theatre program. Eleven years ago, Matt Stearns and his wife, Lisa, kicked-off the program with a production of “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.”
“That first show we did had like 10 people in the cast and now it’s just evolved into these full-scale musicals that so many people love and support every single year,” said Lisa Stearns, co-director of the summer productions.
This summer, more than 60 participants of all ages worked for just five weeks put together “Once On This Island,” an award-winning adaptation of the beloved fairytale, “The Little Mermaid” and performed for two nights only in front of record audi- ence of more than 300 people each night.
The show featured the familiar faces of many former and current Chittenango students that our small town has come to know and love through numerous performances in the high school’s auditorium.
There was Tyler Sternberg (Class of 2015) as Papa Ge, the menacing Demon of Death and Nicholas MacLane (Class of 2009), as Agwe, the God of Water.
Libby Welch (Class of 2016) also returned to the stage for her role as Ti Moune, a curious and spirited young peasant girl who falls in love with Daniel, a wealthy boy from the other side of the island, portrayed by Phil Abell (Class of 2017).
Welch, now a rising junior at Syracuse University, played the younger version of her character when Chittenango
produced “Once on This Island” in the spring of 2007 when she was just eight-years-old.
“It was so wild coming back and having that nostalgic feeling of being back on that stage in the exact same spot I was as young Ti Moune 11 years ago,” said Welch.
In both renditions, Welch, her sister Maegan and her mother, Patricia, all participated together, further strengthening the incredible family connection that can be seen throughout the cast and is translated into their audience with every show performed there.
“It really does feel like a family when you come back,” said Abell, now a rising sophomore at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “My dad did musicals when he went here and I started doing them when I was here and that’s something that I know a lot of people here have in common. That generational thing is fantastic.”
Similar praises were sung by lifelong Chittenango resident Colleen Zimmer (Class of 1971), who has been coming to Chittenango’s fall plays, spring musicals and summer shows since she was in school.
Zimmer was in the audience on Saturday night to support the stage she, her children and now her children’s children have performed on.
“I loved seeing my classmates have their kids do shows and then watching grandchildren do shows and it’s been very rewarding, very fulfilling,” Zimmer said. “For me, I guess I have to go with there’s no place like home.”
There truly is “no place like home” for the members of Chittenango’s music and drama departments. For them, “home” is an auditorium and “family” is the community of individuals who fill it with the common goal of sharing a love for a stage that so many of us grew up on.
How fortunate we have been to have grown in this tight-knit community that is bursting at the seams with such explosive personality and talent from generation-to-generation.
My heart soars to the patrons of Chittenango high school’s music and drama departments. They never fail to encapsulate nostalgia, joy, family and community with every song and dance and because I am sure that my words couldn’t possibly come close to capturing the magic our town and its people expelled this past weekend, I hope you let the wonderful cast of ‘Once On This Island’ fill you in.
I know that we can all relate to, as Lisa Stearns so beautifully put it, that “love is why we do it” and I look forward to the next time my compass points me back to the stage and the family I know will always be there to remind me where I came from.