Abbey Players bring a bit of Broadway to Peters Township
Some people pretty much were born to perform.
“I like being onstage,” Jillian Spernak will tell you, and there’s a good reason: “I’ve been onstage since I was 3.”
The incoming Peters Township High School freshman will do so yet again as part of the Abbey Players’ Broadway Musical Revue, scheduled for 7 p.m. July 14 at the Peterswood Park Amphitheater.
Jillian will play the title character from “Alice in Wonderland” and Zazu the hornbill bird from “The Lion King” as she joins other members of the youth theater group in presenting various songs, dances and scenes from standards of the Great White Way.
Among them is Johnny Traficante, who just graduated from Bethel Park High School and was another early bloomer.
“I’ve been doing this since kindergarten,” he said. “I don’t know what else I would do.”
For the revue, he’s ready to sing one of his favorites, “Mack the Knife.” You probably know the tune from Bobby Darin’s version topping the American charts in 1959, but it actually originated three decades before, written by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill for “The Threepenny Opera.”
From the 1920s into the 21st century, the Abbey Players will take audience members through quite the cross-section of shows, including “Company,” “Sweet Charity,” “Into the Woods,” “Once On This Island” and “Cats.”
“We have some full-cast numbers and some solos, duets and dance numbers,” Lorra Brannen, the company’s co-founder, said. “We basically said to the kids, ‘OK, who’s available? Who wants to do it?’ And we fit the show around them.”
She and Nicole Tafe, both of whom have extensive backgrounds in performance, started the Abbey Players in 2009 after they worked together directing a musical production at Peters Township Middle School.
“We had seen that there was just a lot of talent there,” Brannen said, “and we just wanted to start an affordable outlet for the kids to perform.”
They took their idea to the Rev. Samuel Esposito, then pastor of St. Benedict the Abbot Church in Peters Township. “He loved it,” Brannen recalled, and the troupe has had a home at the church – you’ll notice the similarity in names – ever since.
The Abbey Players is for students in seventh for 12th grades of any faith and, although many of the members are from Peters, welcomes performance-minded youngsters from all around the area.
For example, Charlize George, who will be freshman at Canon-McMillan High School, joined in time for the spring production of “The Music Man JR.,” the youth-oriented version of Meredith Wilson’s Tony winner. For the revue, her prime spot is as Mrs. Potts in “Beauty and the Beast.”
“I really like being able to do what I love, because I love performing,” she said. “I love being able to share what I love with people I know and people who may not know me.”
Along with performing, members of the theater group have plenty of opportunity to help others.
“Our motto is ‘Abbey Players: performance, prayer and charity,'” Brannen said. Organizations that benefit from fundraising efforts include Relay for Life, the ALS Association, Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, and Operation Shoebox, which provides care packages for troops and veterans.
At the core of the Abbey Players, of course, is the opportunity for youngsters to do what they really enjoy, as Peters Township Middle School student Aidan Cheek explained:
“What I love about performing is that you never have to worry about what you are, because you aren’t you. You’re someone else. It’s kind of an empty sketchbook that you can draw anything in, but it already has the lines in it. You have your basis, but then you have the part of you that you can put into it.”
The Abbey Players also will present a children’s theater production on Sept. 17 at the Peterswood Park Amphitheater. For more information about the group, visit www.sbapeters.org/Abbey-Players.