STARKVILLE – Fights over stolen hamsters, chemistry accidents that lead to a zombie apocalypse and other shenanigans intended to dismantle a college music festival can be found at the Summer Scholars on Stage performances this weekend at McComas Hall.
Now in its 45th year, Summer Scholars on Stage is a theater camp at Mississippi State University that provides rising eighth-graders through 2026 high school graduates with the opportunity to create an original musical.
“The overarching theme (of the musical this year) is that by working together, we can accomplish a lot more than (we could) working separately,” Camp Director Stephen Cunetto said Thursday.
The show is split into three acts and centers around a war between two college fraternities, pulling inspiration from “Romeo and Juliet,” Cunetto said.
Campers participating in the writing track spend the first week of the three-week residential program writing the music and script for the show. While the musical is being written, students on the technical track prepare for their roles by learning how to run sound and lights and build the set.
Production-focused campers come in for the final two weeks to audition for roles and start rehearsals. The short turnaround provides a healthy challenge, with students often spending 12 hours per day modifying and rehearsing the show, Cunetto said.
“Watching the kids come in and bond and the amount of dedication they’ve put into coming up with the script and the songs for it and then getting to the point of being able to produce in three weeks is just amazing,” Cunetto said.
Campers will hit the stage at 7 p.m. today and 1 p.m. Saturday in McComas Hall to perform “Face the Music (Fest)” at no cost to attendees.
The program welcomed 55 campers this year from across the South and as far north as Michigan, Cunetto said, with some students having parents who are alumni of the camp.
“It’s most definitely a generational thing,” Cunetto said.
This is only the second year the program has offered the technical track, but Cunetto said there’s been clear interest shown, with seven students signing up this year.
“Two of the students had no connection to MSU,” Cunetto said. “They just happened to Google technical theater camps and found ours.”
Ryan Bergman, songwriting instructor and pit leader, returned for his third year to help direct Summer Scholars and said the program teaches students how to collaborate creatively.
“We give them a structure and song conventions so they can make parts of songs and it’s not like any song is one person’s baby,” Bergman said. “That way they’re always contributing to each others’ work.”
Josiah Palmer, 16, has attended Summer Scholars for four years, but this is his first year as a songwriter. Palmer said his favorite part of this year’s program has been seeing the music come to life and hearing different interpretations of the songs.
Palmer has also enjoyed getting to help new campers find their footing, he said.
“There’s new campers coming in (and) it’s their first year,” Palmer said. “I get to kind of mentor and be there for new campers and show them the experience I got.”
Cunetto said many participants return as campers or continue to participate in other ways once they’ve aged out of the program.
“Some of the staff have been here for 20 or 30 years,” Cunetto said. “Some of them are former campers and they’ve just stayed on.”
For more information on Summer Scholars on Stage, visit summerscholarsonstage.msstate.edu/.
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