Junior Theater Festival to Honor Schwartz and Gershon

By Adam Hetrick
18 Dec 2009

Aspiring performers from across the country will converge on Atlanta to participate in the Junior Theater Festival in January 2010.

Jointly presented by Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars and iTheatrics (which develops many of the Broadway Junior musical titles), the festival will run Jan. 15-17, 2010, at the Cobb Galleria Center in Atlanta. Over 1,500 elementary and middle school students and teachers are anticipated to attend.

The festival will honor Academy Award-winning and Tony-nominated composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell, Pippin) with the inaugural Junior Theater Festival Award honoring Advancement of Musical Theater for Young People. Radio host Seth Rudetsky will appear as a guest of honor and will present a master class for young performers. He will serve as music director for a special performance at the awards ceremony.

Also honored will be Music Theatre International chairman and Broadway Junior founder Freddie Gershon, who created MTI Education in 1995. The division was the first of its kind to develop age appropriate material and adapt Broadway musicals for young performers. The festival has announced that it will rename its annual awards "The FreddieG's" in Gershon's honor.

As part of the festival, students perform a 15-minute selection of their respective show for a panel of theatre professionals, who then adjudicate the work. Disney will offer a performance highlighting upcoming titles that will soon be available for licensing. Among the shows that will be presented are Disney's Aladdin KIDS, The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley JR, Disney’s High School Musical 2 JR and Fame JR.