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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Heber City theater company Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s production of the Tony award-winning musical “1776,” which depicts the months of debates leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is full of famous faces. But actor Don Doud is playing a somewhat obscure Founding Father.

Doud had never heard of Delawarean Continental Congressman Caesar Rodney until he was cast as him.

In a fictionalized scene set in early June 1776, Rodney breaks up a fight between fellow delegates John Adams and John Dickinson, who are on opposing sides of whether the colonies should secede from Britain. When Rodney finally gets Adams and Dickinson to stop trying to whack each other with their canes, he collapses due to his health issues from skin cancer.

The scene is a reminder that debates over independence were a lot more contentious and chaotic than what might be presented in a history class. It’s also a microcosm of what director Kristen Hughes wanted to accomplish with the play: encouraging civil disagreement in a politically polarized time.

In tone, “1776” has more in common with “12 Angry Men” than “Schoolhouse Rock.” Most of the lyrics of the opening song, “Sit Down, John,” are about the sweltering heat and flies buzzing around Independence Hall in Philadelphia. 

Hughes called Adams, the song’s subject and protagonist of the play, a “pushy little man” whom other delegates disliked because of his insistence on independence.

The play depicts each of the Founding Fathers not as infallible heroes, but human beings with their own quirks. 

Thomas Jefferson is introverted and cerebral, while Benjamin Franklin is a manipulative jester of a politician, constantly “schmoozing” and “partying” with his fellow delegates. They’re far more than faces on currency, as Hughes put it. Each delegate had their own grievances, or lack of them, depending on their colony’s interactions with the crown. As such, each man had a different idea of what independence should look like.

That’s explored when Jefferson writes a draft of the Declaration of Independence that impassionately condemns slavery as a “cruel war against human nature itself,” despite being a slave owner himself.

That passage was later removed. The exact reason why is unknown, though Jefferson, in his autobiography, said it was a concession made to delegates from South Carolina and Georgia. 

“That’s the one concession they made, which later just kicked the can down the road to the Civil War and caused lots of bloodshed. It’s very sobering,” Hughes said. “(The song ‘Molasses to Rum’) talks about how the North is complicit because they provide the ships that bring the slaves. They use the sugar. They drink the rum. They consume the products created by the slaves. So, they’re making money off it, too, even if they don’t own them.”

In the play, it’s delegate Edward Rutledge of South Carolina who performs the number; “1776” often combines several delegates into one character.

Dickinson, the delegate from Pennsylvania and the play’s antagonist, embodies the argument against independence, hoping for reconciliation with Britain. In the play’s climax, he does not sign the Declaration of Independence. Even as he makes that decision, his greatest opponent, Adams, applauds his character.

Hughes hopes the pair’s respect for each other despite their differing opinions inspires audience members to engage in political discussions with people they disagree with.

“We’re all working towards the same problems. We have different ideas about how to solve those problems, but maybe that’s how we’ll come to the best solutions,” she said.

Hughes sees “threats of authoritarianism” under the current presidential administration as the greatest threat to the country today.

“My personal (point of view) is that things are being dismantled, institutions and things that have kept safeguards in place for a long, long time. … The power structure is being altered,” she said. 

She hopes that reflection on the signing of the Declaration of Independence during its 250th anniversary prompts Americans to become passionate about defending its founding principles of democracy and unalienable rights.

“(The Founding Fathers were) willing to put their lives and their property and their families on the line,” Hughes said. “It was a huge sacrifice on their part, and it is something that we could maybe hold more reverently or dearly than we do.”

Even if “1776” doesn’t engender those feelings in all audience members, Hughes is content with the fact that she was able to hold the attention of a few “Hamilton”-obsessed teenage audience members who attended a performance last week.

“They said, ‘We were in here for three hours, and it didn’t feel like three hours,’” she said. “If a teenager says that, I feel like there’s my little gold star on the forehead that we did our job.”

Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s production of “1776” will be staged Wednesday and Friday, with a special matinee performance on Saturday as part of Heber City’s Red, White & Blue Festival. The play’s 29 actors will also be marching in the city’s morning parade and would love to share their characters’ real stories. Learn more and buy tickets at timpvalleytheatre.com.

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After entertaining 106,000 patrons at various venues in Midway since 2009, theater company High Valley Arts is hoping to build a permanent home in Heber City, explained founder Sue Waldrip during the Heber City Council meeting on May 19.

High Valley Arts has no permanent facility in which to build sets or store props and costumes. It’s been a long 17 years of “hauling things” back and forth and “building on driveways,” Waldrip explained.

The solution? The High Valley Arts Performing Arts Center, including a 600-seat main theater, a 225-seat black box theater and two dance studios housing The Block Dance Studio and Primary Ballet Academy. The facilities would be available to rent by local performing arts organizations when they are not being used by High Valley Arts.

The organization is eyeing a 2.6-acre land parcel north of the corner of Fitzgerald Road and U.S. 40. High Valley Arts is hoping to annex the land into Heber City and build the performing arts center on the property. 

In return, High Valley Arts would enter into a shared parking agreement with the city. 

The performing arts center’s 406-stall parking lot would likely be shared by users of the public park and fire station planned just east of the property. The park and fire station are for Fitzgerald Farms, a planned residential development that will be built on 66 acres that were annexed into the city in 2022.

Unbeknownst to Waldrip and engineer Paul Berg before it was pointed out by Mayor Heidi Franco during the City Council meeting, the planned fire station cuts into a portion of the land for the performing arts center’s proposed parking lot, removing land for over 150 of the stalls.

Waldrip still hopes the proposed location can work out.

“Paul Berg now has the specifics that we were unaware of of the size of the fire station, and he is going to see if he can put sufficient parking on the remaining ground, which may cause us to lower our size of theater somewhat. It will be a balancing act. How small can we make that theater and still hope to survive financially?” she said. “Then, we’ll see whether we continue or don’t, or look for a different piece of property.”

Another consideration is the location of the Heber Valley bypass, which will divert traffic off of Heber City Main Street. 

Alternative A keeps traffic on U.S. 40 between Potters Lane and 900 North. Alternative B instead cuts through the North Fields wetland area between those two roads. Alternative A, Waldrip said, would take 1 acre off the land parcel where High Valley Arts hopes to build the performing arts center.

The Utah Department of Transportation announced its preference for Alternative B in January. UDOT hopes to finalize its route by the end of the year. Waldrip said High Valley Arts will not purchase the Heber City land parcel until UDOT finalizes its route.

These two setbacks are not the first the performing arts center has encountered. 

High Valley Arts has considered “four or five” sites in its hometown of Midway, including at the Homestead Resort, since 2018, Waldrip said. 

The most “viable” location, according to Waldrip, was on the south side of the East 300 Main Street block. High Valley Arts began eyeing that location in 2022. 

The Midway City Council had concerns about the proposed performing arts center that included its size, parking and potential traffic impacts. Before any site plan was approved, the land High Valley Arts hoped to build on was purchased by another buyer in December 2024.

“We were so distraught, we sent out an email that said, ‘That’s it. We’re folding up our tent,’” Waldrip recalled.

However, about three days later, Waldrip received an email that gave her the encouragement to continue her theater company. 

Sculptor Stephen Neal, who is the director of the Monument of the Americas, a Latter-day Saint sculpture garden to be located on 10 acres near Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, invited High Valley Arts to build an outdoor amphitheater on the property to put on summertime plays to attract visitors.

The Monument of the Americas is not fully planned out yet, so the promise of the outdoor amphitheater has not swayed Waldrip’s determination to find a year-round, permanent home for her theater company.

Not everyone in the local arts shares Waldrip’s vision. Wasatch County Arts Council President Pat Sweeney questioned if the performing arts center was really necessary in a public comment during the Heber City Council meeting. 

The Arts Council has been planning the Heber Valley Arts Center since December 2023. Planned for 4 acres east of the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, the arts center could include an outdoor amphitheater, indoor theater and rehearsal, community and gallery spaces, though the Arts Council is still drawing up the layout and design. 

Heber City has invested in the project by entering into a 50-year lease with the Arts Council at a rate of $1 per year. The Arts Council hopes to open the arts center by the 2034 Winter Olympics.

Sweeney questioned why Waldrip, whom she described as a friend, refused to bring High Valley Arts under the roof of the Heber Valley Arts Center.

“Our creative community is only so large. Our creative community needs directors, talents. If we’re all pulling and pulling and pulling these people, we won’t have people to direct and fill all these venues,” Sweeney said.

Waldrip stood her ground, saying she wants a venue that is truly owned by High Valley Arts.

“There is a great difference between two kinds of theater. One theater is the resident theater, like Hale (Centre) Theatre. The other type of theater is more of a town hall facility, where it’s a building that multiple groups can come in and use. Both of those concepts function amazingly well in Salt Lake City,” she said. “They are not competitive.”

City Councilors Aaron Cheatwood and Yvonne Barney chimed in their agreement with Waldrip. Cheatwood said his children, who have both participated in community theater, have experienced the challenge of being unable to build a set in a rented venue until it is their turn to use the space.

“There is actually a need for multiple (venues). I know it seems crazy, but we’re filling most of these physical spaces already,” he said.

The City Council did not vote on the matter because of High Valley Arts’ need to redraw its plan for the performing arts center. The City Council did request that Waldrip and Sweeney continue discussions about their respective arts centers. 

City councilors’ reactions to the idea were overall positive, in no small part because the project would require no fiscal investment from the city.

“That’s really amazing and really wonderful to hear that you are so well funded,” Franco said. “So, of course, you can go forward (in redrawing the plan and bringing it back to the City Council), but it’s a matter of, ‘Is this the place?’ I’m not sure if this is going to be the place.”

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Timpanogos Valley Theatre President Trudi Harter was on the Wasatch County Arts Council in 2022, when voters were considering approving a 10th of a percent local sales and use tax, called the Trails, Arts and Parks tax. She lobbied for it in any way she could: signage, flyers and conversations. 

Her efforts were successful. Voters approved the tax; it went into effect in 2023; and the first grants for trails, arts and parks projects funded by the revenue were awarded in 2024. 

Wasatch County, Midway and Heber City each have their own grant programs funded by the revenue. The Heber City Council on Tuesday awarded nearly $120,000 to 12 arts-specific projects of the 14 that applied, following the recommendation of an advisory committee. Each project is matched by at least 25% funding.

Timpanogos Valley Theatre received two grants to fund the production costs — including costuming, royalties and advertising — for two plays. 

“Possessive! The Musical!” a family-friendly, pop punk-flavored comedy about demonic possession premiering in American Fork this week, will come to Heber City Sept. 3-5. Timpanogos Valley Theatre received about $5,000 to summon the production. 

“That’s one of the points of our mission statement, is to support new and upcoming playwrights,” Harter said.

Timpanogos Valley Theatre also received a $12,000 sponsorship of “1776: The Musical,” which plays June 24 through July 4 in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

The funds will be vital in gathering hard-to-find revolutionary period costuming and wigs, which will also be used in the city’s Fourth of July parade, Harter said. The grant will also make it possible to donate 100 tickets to veterans and active military personnel through Black Rifle Coffee Company, she said.

“The grants do help offset that, and then we can all be more generous with everybody, and everybody wins,” she added.

Before the Trails, Arts and Parks tax was passed for Heber, Harter said, “If we received grants, we would get a grant for, like, $1,000 or $1,500.” So the Trails, Arts and Parks tax grants have been a game-changer, she said.

In 2024, the theater received a $20,000 grant from the county to replace the worn-out, nearly two-decade-old plywood stage in its building, which is a historic amusement hall the theater moved into in 2010.

“We thought we could do it ourselves, but in hindsight, no way,” she said. “It’s wonderful to have a new stage that will last us a long time.”

The largest grant given this year was $25,000 to the Wasatch Community Foundation to help install two monuments honoring Timpanogos Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah. That’s in addition to a $10,000 Trails, Arts and Parks grant from the county.

The first, a new grave marker for his son, Tom Tabby, was installed in the Heber City Cemetery earlier this month. 

The second, a statue of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah created by Wyoming artist Jonathan LaBenne, soon will be installed on the roundabout near the city columbarium. The unveiling was originally scheduled for Memorial Day, but LaBenne had a concussion after falling from a ladder and needs time to recover, explained Wasatch Community Foundation Treasurer Marvin Rust.

The two projects’ overall cost is $50,000, Rust said.

Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah lived through violent conflict between Native American tribes and Latter-day Saint pioneers, including the Black Hawk War from 1865 to 1872. 

Although the church had placed an extermination order on all male Timpanogos in 1850, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah remained a lifelong advocate for peace, signing a treaty with Heber City Bishop Joseph Stacy Murdock in 1867. 

Rust spearheaded the project because he was passionate about “do(ing) more to honor the Indigenous people that were here in this valley” and to acknowledge that “this was theirs first.” He has been in conversation with some of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s descendents and got their consent before going ahead with the projects.

Heber City’s nearly $120,000 grant funding in arts projects is nearly double what was allotted. Heber City typically uses 10% of its total Trails, Arts and Parks revenue — this year, $66,000 — for arts grants.

The city had also already planned on spending some Trails, Arts and Parks revenue on some projects, like the Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah statue, regardless of whether a grant was submitted. That’s why the City Council agreed to fund all 12 projects and figure out where each falls under the umbrella later.

Additionally, the City Council unanimously approved to increase funding of the arts grants program from 10% of the city’s total Trails, Arts and Parks tax revenue to 15% in its next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

“We made this arbitrary decision to give 10% to the arts as Heber City. There was no objectivity in that. It was a lowball, conservative, safe percentage. ‘We’ll throw 10% at the arts, and then we get to distribute the other 90%.’ I always thought that was too chintzy,” said City Councilor Mike Johnston, adding that he is not a creative person himself but appreciates the value arts adds to a community.

City Councilor Morgan Murdock agreed.

“Arts can change lives, and it’s had a really big impact on my family. Every single one of my children has performed on these stages and helped out backstage,” he began, choking up. “I love parks. I love trails. But arts is important. It’s powerful.”

Here are the 12 projects that received funds, totaling $119,774.

• Wasatch Community Foundation’s Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah Statue: $25,000
• Community Alliance for Main Street’s Music on Main: $19,612
• Main Street Entertainment’s Heber Tourist Shows: $17,000
• Red, White & Blue Festival’s Free Community Music Programming: $12,000
• Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s “1776: The Musical”: $12,000
• Wasatch County Senior Center’s Senior Arts Project Classes: $7,387.50
• Heber City Historic Preservation’s Home Tour Addition: $6,626.20
• Wasatch County Library’s Community Concert Series: $5,100
• Commemorative Air Force Museum’s Signage and Crowd Control: $5,000
• Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s “Possessive! The Musical!”: $4,999
• Community Alliance for Main Street’s Hello Heber Mural: $2,850
• Heber Valley Children’s Choir’s “Sing for America”: $2,200

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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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