Seventeen-year-old Logan Whittier has acted in about 30 plays, mostly at Timpanogos Valley Theatre in Heber City — a small miracle, given how much he hated his first play nine years ago.

“It was this really awful production of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in North Carolina,” he said. “They took out all the music. They just did it as a straight play. I played one of the flowers. I hated it so much. I was like, ‘Mom, I’m never doing theater again.’”

But as soon as Whittier realized how entrancing a well-made production could be, he was auditioning for any role he could. He had that realization while watching Jeremy Jordan’s performance of lead Jack Kelly in the 2017 Broadway production of “Newsies.”

Whittier will be donning that newsboy’s role in Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s production of “Newsies Jr.” next weekend. The Disney play depicts the 1899 newspaper hawkers’ labor strike in New York City, which occurred after newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Heart raised distribution prices.

Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s production features about 60 actors aged 12 to 18 who will be performing after a nine-day theater “boot camp.” 

The hardest part of wrangling the kids has not been teaching them tap dancing — they picked that up within two days — but having patience with them when they’re goofing off, music and choreography director Will Andrus joked.

But more often, the kids come prepared and eager to learn. All but one of the actors have theater backgrounds, and even that one new actor, 13-year-old Andrew Severson, has a background in choir and dance and no jitters over being onstage.

Unlike Severson, some of the kids in Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s youth boot camps are on the shy side, explained marketing manager Bettina Giese. She teaches fifth grade at Soldier Hollow Charter School and is constantly recommending that parents enlist their children in the theater.

“They’re like, ‘I don’t know that he’ll be brave enough.’ I say, ‘That’s the whole point. They’re shy in school, but when you get a part in a play, they tell you what to say. They tell you where to stand,’” she said.

Whittier added that theater did wonders for his self-confidence and social skills while he was in middle school.

“I would go on stage, and they’re like, ‘Pretend you have so much confidence in what you’re saying.’ So, I just transferred that into my own life. I would be talking to somebody. I’m like, ‘I have no idea what I’m talking about. I have no confidence in myself, but I can pretend I do,’” he said.

Director Roy Buttermore, 20, has been participating in theater since childhood. Literally walking in another person’s shoes as an actor has made him a more empathetic person. He hopes that he can instill that quality in the actors he’s currently mentoring — especially since many of them are the same age as the newsies who went on strike 127 years ago.

“Some of them are just so tiny. I’ll look at them and be like, ‘Gosh, I can’t imagine you having to go through this. But, you know, there was someone who was a lot like you that did, and had the strength and determination to undergo fighting against these people of amazing influence and power,’” Buttermore said.

The director hopes the play inspires its young cast and crew to have the same fervor as the real-life newsies did and to adopt other qualities of their characters in their day-to-day lives.

For example, Leina Magalie, 18, hopes to gain the self-startedness of her character, journalist Katherine Plumber, as she enters the adult world.

Sarah Ray, director of Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s youth programs, said the best part of her job is seeing kids come of age.

“Most of these humans who I love have actually grown up doing shows in the program,” she said, referring to the young adult crew. “It’s fun to watch the kids grow from being tiny little things, basically standing on the stage and waving at their parents, to being able to carry a whole show.”

While the “Newsies Jr.” cast is young, and rehearsals happen in a very short window, Ray assures prospective audience members that the show is well worth the ticket. The kids doing flips and cartwheels during musical numbers will justify the price of admission.

But the biggest reason to see “Newsies Jr.” is to support a program that empowers kids during awkward adolescence. 

“It’s such a positive, accepting environment here. We don’t put up with any kind of bullying or cliques or anything,” Ray said. “For kids that have felt like, ‘I don’t really have somewhere to belong,’ this has kind of become their home.”

Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s “Newsies Jr.” runs Friday, July 31 and Saturday, Aug. 1. Learn more and buy tickets at timpvalleytheatre.com.

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If the witty banter between cast and crew members behind the scenes is any indication, Heber City theater company Charitable Acts Theatre’s production of Larry Shue’s 1984 comedy “The Foreigner” is going to be a riot. 

“The first priority is to make everybody laugh so hard that they pee their pants,” joked director David Thorpe. “So, we’re going to be handing out bottles of water and try to have everybody be really hydrated so that those with the weakest bladders can help us meet our goal.”

The premise of “The Foreigner” ensures that it’ll be easy to laugh at.

The play follows an Englishman, Charlie Baker, who visits a lodge in Georgia for a weekend trip. Feeling shy and depressed, Baker pretends to be a foreigner from a fictional country who doesn’t know English — a very reasonable excuse to get out of socializing.

Actor Gary Page said playing Baker is, in many ways, a breeze. He barely speaks, and when he does, his lines are complete gibberish. If he flubs a word, he can just make up the next one. You can’t do that in Shakespeare.

It’s a very physical role, characterized by facial expressions and exaggerated body language. That’s resulted in a fair amount of chaos. During rehearsals, Page jumped from a table and collided straight into the ceiling.

“Full leg spring into the thing, and you watched his head collapse into his rib cage,” Thorpe laughed. “And he landed, and everybody was like, ‘All right, so your next line is …’”

Probably the trickiest thing for Page to pull off will be a three-page monologue written in gibberish, performed in a way so that the audience comprehends the monologue’s meaning despite it not making a lick of sense. 

As Baker pretends not to understand English, people become much more loose-lipped around him. As a result, Baker learns all kinds of gossip and even discovers a plot by members of the Ku Klux Klan to take over the lodge as a new gathering place. 

Some theater companies have chosen to remove the Klan storyline, but the crew at Charitable Acts Theatre felt it was important to carry on the play’s original mission of pointing out the horror and absurdity of racism.

The cast and crew were inspired by a quote by 17th-century French playwright Molière: “The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.”

The play is rich with mature themes, including unwanted pregnancy, xenophobia and the fetishization of foreign cultures, but comedy makes these themes easily digestible for a general audience.

“I think (the audience) will be reminded of things that are happening that are current events in America and out of America, but they won’t feel like they’re being talked down to or lectured to,” Thorpe said. “It will feel relevant and pertinent, but it will feel fun, and that’s the most important thing. This show is designed to be fun, to remind us to enjoy each other and to enjoy community.”

Community is central not just to the script, but to Charitable Acts Theatre as a venture. The theater company was founded in 2022 with the mission of giving all proceeds to local charities. 

Founder Carrie Zabaldo began her theater journey in childhood, but her passion fell to the wayside while raising her children in Oregon. There, she began volunteering with a bevy of charities. By the time she moved to Heber City, she knew she wanted to start a charity of her own, all while getting in touch with her thespian roots.

Production costs for Charitable Acts Theatre productions are covered by grants, including Wasatch County Trails, Arts and Parks tax grants, as well as a haunted house fundraiser in October. That means truly every penny spent on a ticket is going directly to charity.

Over five productions, Charitable Acts Theatre has raised over $72,000 for organizations including The Horse of Many Colors, Wasatch Community Foundation, Peace House and the Midway Playhouse.

All proceeds made from ticket sales for “The Foreigner” will go to the Wasatch County Children’s Justice Center, which provides services to children undergoing the child abuse investigative process.

“The Foreigner” runs Friday through March 28 at the Ideal Playhouse in Heber City. Learn more and purchase tickets at hebercat.org.

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The 3rd, 4th and 5th-graders of Parley’s Park Elementary School performed “The Lion King, Jr.” for classmates and family members Wednesday afternoon, May 10, 2017. The students sang, danced and dressed in full-costume with face paint. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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The Canyons Village kicked off their spring concert series Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017, with a handful of musical acts. Vacationers and locals alike are invited to the free event to listen to the music, enjoy food and drink and to play in the snow. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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