(upbeat music) Hi, guys.

You're here with us in Alma, Arkansas, at the Alma Performing Arts Center.

I am the executive director of the Young Actors Guild.

We are youth theater here in Fort Smith area, and we are performing The Lightning Thief musical this week.

(indistinct singing) A Young Actors Guild is a group of kids that come together to perform shows.

There can be classes, workshops, but our real goal is to come together as a team, an ensemble, and tell a story.

And that's usually there in a musical or a play.

So the Young Actors Guild, we are producing The Lightning Thief, which if you've ever read the books by Rick Riordan, it is a series about a boy named Percy Jackson, who finds out his dad is Poseidon.

So he has a godly parent and he has special powers.

He can move water and do all kinds of cool things.

And that is the show that we're working on right now.

So behind us here in rehearsal, we open the show in two days.

We're in crunch time.

We call this Tech Week.

That means we're getting everything together.

Our kids in this show range from age eight all the way up to 19.

(indistinct singing) Of course, being alive is temporary.

So, we might go away and play pinochle for a few hours.

(indistinct) For me, not for you.

You'll be dead.

We're doing a musical today.

And what makes something a musical is it is literally story set to music.

And so for our musical, we are very fortunate to have a really awesome band and our band are literally musicians that live in our town that are really good at playing music, and we put them down there by the stage and they actually play along for our actors.

And that's where our actors sing along to.

(indistinct singing) I've done two plays and I just enjoy it and I just think it's really fun and I like doing the actual play.

This is my third play done.

What I like about it, I just.

I just.

I just like experience, experiencing it and it's just a lot of fun.

There is a place for everyone, whether it's on stage or off stage.

You don't have to have experience.

You just have to have a willingness to come and play.

It's a really fun time to get together in a room with a bunch of kids and just be goofy.

You should see the captain of the other team.

Who's the captain of the other team?

- I am (indistinct singing) (yelling) (indistinct) (sticks pounding on floor) When you get cast in a show, you may know a bunch of people in the show, or you may know nobody in the show.

And that can be a little scary when you come into your first rehearsal, you're like, I don't know all these people, but here's what happens is that you get into this play and all of a sudden these people that you never gotten to meet otherwise you get to hang out with usually become best friends with.

By the end of the four week or five week rehearsal process, all of a sudden people are exchanging numbers.

We're hanging out at the park together or catching ice cream together or whatever it is because you met all these friends that otherwise you wouldn't have met.

And that's what theater does, is it brings together people that may not have otherwise met.

And they get in a room together, create a story, and then at the end of it, you have a whole new crop of friends, which is pretty cool.