CAPA in the News

Film premieres at Churchill

May 13, 2007

BY ALEX P. KELLOGG

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

For years, Gail Mack dreamed of writing and directing her own film, involving her students at Livonia Churchill's prestigious Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) program along the way. On May 4, that dream came to fruition for the dedicated teacher, revered by students and faculty at the high school.

Mack's low-budget thriller, "Dissonance," was screened at Churchill that Friday. The full-length feature's premiere came complete with a reception and even a few limousines to whisk in students and faculty who were a part of the project.

More than 100 students, faculty, staff and friends showed up for the screening.

"I had a great time," said Mack, who lives in Livonia and has directed Churchill's CAPA program since 1998. "Everyone said it was a great story."

The accomplishment was yet another significant milestone for CAPA, which produces respected artists in directing, set design, acting and other disciplines, year in and year out, and is recognized throughout the state. The program is celebrating 20 years in existence, with events scattered over the months to mark the milestone.

"Dissonance" is of particular significance to Mack and her students.

Mack based the film on her college life as an undergraduate at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, where she majored in English and literature. A student and DJ stalked her while she was there. It was an experience that stuck with her.

She set the film in high school to accommodate her students, some of whom, along with faculty members, acted in the movie. It's set amid the tumult of the festering Vietnam War.

A seminal event, too, is the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State at the hands of National Guard troops in 1970, which occurred while Mack was in college. She says the event shaped the outlook of many college students of her generation.

Though the experience was difficult, the inspiration it provided was key to the work. The film follows the heroine for a few weeks in a fictional Midwestern town.

"It's very interesting how the film commences into the climax," said Mack of "Dissonance," which ends with the heroine and her stalker in the midst of a struggle in an empty high school building.

Mack's foray into film is an extension of her belief that students at Churchill should be allowed to work with original material. Several have written and produced their own plays, and have shot short films in classes there.

"It's just been a good place for me to be," Sarah Andrus, 17, said of the CAPA program. "It helped me find my niche," something she said she couldn't have done without Mack's help.

Andrus, a senior at Churchill who lives in Livonia, was an assistant director of the film. She often acts and directs shows at Churchill.

Mack gives students an excellent opportunity to learn about difficult subjects, such as international conflict or political turmoil, without frightening them, her colleagues say.

"Gail has the ability to present mature subject matters in the least controversial way possible, but also in a fashion that kids will learn from it," said Rod Hosman, 57, who was the principal at Churchill for about 15 years.

Contact ALEX P. KELLOGG at 248-351-3693 or akellogg@freepress.com.

Livonia Churchill senior Sarah Andrus, right, assistant director of "Dissonance," with fellow students Theresa Russo, far left, and Kelsey Kistle at the May 4 premiere of the film at the high school. Teacher Gail Mack wrote and directed the film.

Livonia native has serendipitous meeting with Plymouth producer, ends up shining on Broadway

January 5, 2007

BY MARTIN F. KOHN

FREE PRESS THEATER WRITER

You couldn't make this stuff up.

About a year-and-a-half ago, this guy from Livonia is at a show in New York when the guy behind him, who's from neighboring Plymouth but a complete stranger, taps him on the shoulder.

This launches a sequence of events -- auditions, callbacks, an off-Broadway production -- at the end of which, on Dec. 10, 19-year-old Jonathan B. Wright of Livonia makes his Broadway debut in producer (and Plymouth native) Tom Hulce's show, "Spring Awakening."

At some point, but not right away, Hulce discovers their common geographic origins. "Isn't that crazy? Five minutes away from where I grew up," Hulce says.

And Wright discovers a new word.

"Jonathan B. Wright," the New York Times critic wrote, is "stealing all of his scenes with a delicious air of weary loucheness."

"Yeah, I looked it up," says Wright. The dictionary defines "louche" as "not reputable or decent."

On the other hand Wright, who turned 20 on Dec. 13, is acquiring quite a decent reputation.

Reviews for "Spring Awakening" have been uber-raves ("the best Broadway musical of the year," "The best new musical ... in a generation"); several have singled out Wright, in a featured role, for special praise.

Not bad for a kid who took off for New York three days after he graduated from Livonia's Churchill High School in 2005.

Not bad for Hulce, either, perhaps the most hands-on of the show's two dozen producers. A noted actor, with Tony ("A Few Good Men") and Oscar ("Amadeus") nominations and an Emmy Award (for "The Heidi Chronicles"), Hulce has more recently been producing and directing.

Wright and Hulce tell the same story about their first and fateful encounter.

"I was seeing a show at Lincoln Center," Wright says, "and he was sitting behind me and he poked me from behind and he said, 'Excuse me, why did you come to see this show?' I was like, oh, my clown teacher told me to come see it. And he said, 'Oh, you're an actor. We're doing this project... that you might be right for in the spring.' "

Understand, Hulce says, that the show at Lincoln Center was no ordinary play but an avant-garde work by Ariane Mnouchkine's Theatre du Soleil, "an 8-hour piece about refugees around the world. The fact that someone of that age" (Wright was 18) "would be at such a complex, challenging piece of theater made me interested."

Wright was in New York studying at the Actors Center. Hulce was in New York developing "Spring Awakening" for its eventual first production, off-Broadway at the 168-seat Atlantic Theater Company. The show, book and lyrics by Steven Sater, music by Duncan Sheik, is based on an 1891 play, "The Awakening of Spring," by German playwright Frank Wedekind.

Extremely controversial in its day -- and hardly conventional Broadway fare now -- "Spring Awakening" deals with adolescent sexuality in a repressive era; parents and teachers in the play won't talk about sex with their children and students. The play, which wasn't produced in Germany until 1905, and had its first American production in 1917, acknowledges masturbation, teen pregnancy, abortion and suicide.

Except for two actors who play all the grown-ups, the characters are adolescents and the actors are young adults.

Wright describes his character, Hanschen, as "a 15-year-old German boy who is sort of twisted, even violent in his fantasies." He fantasizes about a woman and then about killing her, and he seduces a boy on stage.

Although the music is decidedly 21st Century, the musical is set in 1890s Germany. When Wright first started working on his character he used the description: "They said he grows up to be a serial killer, or in the SS, or the father of very, very obedient Nazis."

"It's a fantastic show," says Pamela Wright, Jonathan's mother. She and her husband, Tom Wright, Jonathan's father, have seen the Broadway and off-Broadway versions of "Spring Awakening."

Once her son enrolled in the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) program at Churchill High School, "I had a strong inclination where he was headed," says Pamela Wright, who teaches 8th grade social studies at Livonia's Emerson Middle School. Tom Wright is a captain with the Westland Fire Department.

Between his junior and senior year, Jonathan spent six weeks studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York.

"I needed to make sure I was comfortable with that," his mother says, so she went with him. "We stayed at the YMCA up on 63rd Street." All in all, "It was a delightful experience," she says. Charlotte Booker, an acting teacher at the Strasberg Institute, was especially encouraging, she adds.

"He is doing a spectacular piece of work in the show," Hulce says, who calls Wright "a major, major talent. It's very exciting to imagine who he will become as he grows into his best power and strength."

Hulce got involved in "Spring Awakening" eight years ago, shortly after Sater and Sheik and director Michael Mayer began working on the musical. Hulce was considering commissioning an opera of "Spring Awakening" and mentioned the idea to Mayer. Coincidentally, Mayer had just started working with Sheik and Sater "on a music theater version," Hulce says.

"As soon as I heard that they wanted to keep the story in the 1890s, in the conservative, repressive community and have the songs be in Duncan and Steven's contemporary idiom, and allow there to be a kind of relief and exhilaration in the music that the world of the story couldn't allow, that excited me so much" that Hulce abandoned his idea of an opera.

"I sat down with Steven and Michael and Duncan and suggested that I help them complete the process."

You want contemporary idiom? There's one song called "The Bitch of Living" and that title, at least, is printable in a family newspaper.

The play begins "with the young people in their 1890s garb, and suddenly someone's reaching inside their jacket and pulling out a microphone and beginning to sing.

"This," Hulce says, "could have been considered a very bad idea or a very good one."

Critics and other playgoers have embraced the concept.

Wright couldn't be happier. "I'm just having a really, really, really fun time, I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing." With "Spring Awakening" building an audience and appearing consistently on lists of the year's best plays, he may be doing it for quite some time.

Contact MARTIN F. KOHN at 313-222-6517 or mkohn@freepress.com.

rfstack

Let me add my congrats to the Livonia school system for maintaining its dedication to training in the performance arts. If native Jonathan B. Wright is any indication, Livonia is doing one helluva job. Jonathan shows amazing poise, confidence and talent on a Broadway stage for someone so young and with so little professional experience. I am a New Yorker with roots in the Detroit area who has seen "Spring Awakening" twice, for the reason that it is the best musical to come along in many a moon. In fact, for those who might say "I don't like musicals", I say try this one. If you can't get to New York in the near future to see it, I highly recommend the original cast CD. You do not need to see the show to understand and enjoy the music. This is not your usual musical, but a terrific rock/pop score with some of the most lush and moving ballads anyone has heard in a long time. On the recording, you can hear the good job Livonia has done in Jonathan Wright's performance. His co-stars are no slackers either. Martin Kohn and all the New York critics are raving about this new show for good reason.

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:54 pm

dt34

I saw this kid when he played Stanley in "A Street Car Named Desire" at Churchill High School's Creative and Performing Arts black box theatre. I could not believe how powerful that production was. It was amazing, especially considering it was high school. Livonia Public Schools and CAPA should be commended for their support of the Arts!

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 1:09 pm

From Livonia to Broadway

Churchill grad to perform on New York's premier stage

September 10, 2006

BY ALEX P. KELLOGG

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

There was a time when Jon Wright liked playing football and hoped to one day become a veterinarian.

These days, the 19-year-old from Livonia makes a living singing rock tunes and pretending to be a 15-year-old German boy living in 1891 -- the fact that Wright's an actor planning to debut on Broadway this winter should put that all into perspective.

Wright graduated from Livonia Churchill High School's magnet program in Creative and Performing Arts last year. Roughly a year later, he landed a role in "Spring Awakening," an off-Broadway musical with an ensemble cast. He found out last month that the play would debut on Broadway on Dec. 10.

"People were jumping around and screaming," said Wright last week while home for about a month. "I was sitting in a chair, too scared to get excited about it, because I didn't want to think about it too much. I didn't want to psych myself out."

Today, Wright will perform with cast members in Times Square in "Broadway on Broadway," a promotional event that features live performances by actors from upcoming productions on America's biggest stage.

Life has moved fast for Wright since he graduated from high school in June 2005. Three days after graduation, he moved to New York to attend the Actors Center, a prestigious acting school in Manhattan. He was the youngest member of his class, and in an effort to keep him focused, the school forbade him from working and discouraged him from auditioning. He did anyway, and seven months after enrolling he landed a role in "Spring Awakening."

"It was huge. I freaked out when I found out," he said. "It was off-Broadway, you know, so it was like a dream. I was so happy."

Based on German playwright Frank Wedekind's controversial play, "Spring Awakening" depicts a group of young people on the verge of adulthood in the midst of a sexual awakening. The play was partly a critique of what Wedekind considered a sexually repressed German society at the turn of the 20th Century. It was banned for decades in several countries because it was considered pornographic.

The version of "Awakening" Wright is in has been modernized, with alternative rock music interspersed. It had a popular two-month run in New York before being chosen to make the leap to Broadway.

Wright's father, Tom, and his mom, Pam, a 50-year-old social studies teacher at Emerson Middle School, said they're pleased with their son's accomplishments. Both parents went to New York to see him perform in the play; his dad went three times.

"It's nerve-racking," said Tom, a 55-year-old captain in the Westland Fire Department. "I worry about him a lot. But his mother and I always wanted him to be able to pursue his dreams."

Gail Susan Mack, director of the creative and performing arts program at Livonia Churchill, said she recognized early on that Wright was talented. The magnet program has produced other talented actors as well, including Judy Greer, a film and television actress; and Michael Spellman, who's appeared in Bud Light commercials and on the TV hospital drama "ER."

"I really thought that he would go far," Mack said.

Contact ALEX P. KELLOGG at 248-351-3693 or akellogg@freepress.com.

High school junior debuts original musical comedy
BY STEPHANIE ANGELYN CASOLA
STAFF WRITER

Kris Wellman will present his original comedy musical, Slander is Grander, this weekend at Churchill High School's Black Box Theater.

Students -- some dressed in suits and ties, others in brightly-patterned tourist attire -- shuffled about the back halls of Churchill High School long after the final bell rang. They searched for costume accessories and they disassembled remnants of a previous production at the school's Black Box Theater.

It was all part of the final week of preparation leading up to Kristofer Wellman's original musical comedy debut, Slander is Grander

Wellman, a Churchill junior and member of the Creative and Performing Arts program, is an aspiring playwright, composer and screenwriter. To date, he's written three full-length films, one full-length play, seven one-act plays, numerous independent film scores and a Web-television pilot.

His current production is two years in the making. Wellman said he hones his writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts Summer Arts Camp, where last year he completed a film entitled Citizen Kane: The Musical. Throughout the process, he became intrigued with the life of media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Taking cues from his studies, Wellman wondered what it might be like if a Hearst-like character were actually a coffee tycoon -- trying to take over the world.

Building on the that idea of corporate greed, the story of Slander is Grander revolves around a tabloid publication called the Daily Pry, and its editor, Janet Steed. When a new reporter joins her staff, Janet finds herself in the middle of a maniacal plot concerning a coffee mogul named Cosmo Empire. Empire is brought to life by Matt Weiss, a CAPA veteran and Churchill graduate.

In addition to the script -- and inspired by legends like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin -- Wellman wrote more than 20 original songs for the show. Some cast favorites include Hearst vs. Welles, Expletive Deleted, and Time To Switch to Decaf.

Wellman considers himself a fan of musical comedies, and of film noir in general. He particularly enjoys the work of movie masters like Orson Welles, Woody Allen and, perhaps more recently, Joel and Ethan Cohen (Blood Simple, Fargo).

Wellman showed an early version of his own musical to Gail Mack, CAPA director. He was given the green light to take an independent study course and transform his idea into a spring production. He cast the show in February, with 15 actors and five crew members.

This won't be the first time Wellman has seen his words acted out on stage, though. Earlier this year, two of his one-act plays were performed at Michigan State University's Young Playwright's Festival, earning Wellman top honors. "It was pretty amazing," he said.

His creativity comes as little surprise among classmates at Churchill. In fact, that's what drew many of Slander's cast members to audition. Lena Drake said she's "always thought Kris is a genius" and she wanted to be part of his show.

Drake said Wellman was "generous" with casting. He gave her four parts as a chorus member -- with plenty of stage time.

"It boggles my mind that he wrote it," added Mallory Waterman, a senior who portrays love-starved leading lady Janet Steed.

Churchill senior Jennifer Koralewski directed and choreographed the entire show. Her dance experience, according to Wellman, brought new life in movement to his characters.

"Kris puts a lot of time and pride into everything he does," added Brittany Matthews, a cast member.

Mallory Waterman portrays love-lorn leading lady Janet Steed in 'Slander is Grander,' showing this weekend in Livonia.

For this show, Wellman said, "There are no teachers involved whatsoever. It's completely student-directed and student-produced."

Audience members will also find the playwright-composer acting in the production, after a cast member withdrew from the show. Due to the last-minute change, Wellman said he took over and is now playing a part he wrote as an overly-neurotic version of himself. Think Woody Allen.

David H. Shapiro is also acting in the show. Of his character, he said, "I feel like I know who I am more, when I'm acting as this guy."

Jon Sprow, a junior, said the production was large enough to encompass "every element" of Wellman's creativity. "This is going to be his calling card," said Sprow.

Siera Salisbury agreed. She's also Wellman's girlfriend. "He's so talented," she said. "This shows how much creativity he has."

Wellman is already hard at work on another project, a play called Ponderosa. Set in the 1930s the story deals with the history of Michigan's transportation as streetcars gave rise to highways, and the hope of public transportation died.

Wellman plans to pursue his studies at Purchase College at the State University of New York, after he graduates next spring.

For now, play goers can catch Wellman's work in Slander is Grander, scheduled to open at 6 p.m. Friday, May 26, in The Black Box Theatre at Churchill High School. Additional performances are set for 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 27, at the school, 8900 Newburgh. Showtimes are subject to change. Visit the Web at starringcapa.com for more information. Tickets cost $5 and are available at the door.

Homework first, then time for play

Livonia high school junior creates a film noir musical comedy spoofing big business and newspapers, 'Slander is Grander'

Seventeen-year-old Kristofer Wellman of Livonia wrote jokes about tabloid journalism and 20 songs into his musical comedy, "Slander is Grander," being staged Friday and Saturday at Livonia's Winston S. Churchill High School. (Photos by STEPHEN McGEE/Detroit Free Press)

'Slander is Grander'

6 p.m. Fri., 2:30 & 7:30 p.m. Sat.

Black Box Theatre

Winston S. Churchill High School

8900 Newburgh Road

Livonia

$5, available at the door

The new musical "Slander is Grander" premieres this weekend. Set at a newspaper called the Daily Pry, big on stories about alien abductions and invisible men from Ohio, "Slander" has 20 songs, a film noir atmosphere and a plot that pokes fun at tabloid journalism and big business.

Kristofer Wellman of Livonia wrote the show's book, music and lyrics.

The prolific writer-composer-lyricist says he does his creative work "every time I get homework done."

Wellman is 17.

It's his second full-length work for the stage (the first was also staged at the school); he's also written a screenplay or two, a film score, a few one-act plays and the odd short story.

The Churchill High School junior may be a lightning-fast doer of homework, but one reason Wellman has finished so many writing projects is that he started young. "I was 10," he says, when he began spending summers at Interlochen Arts Camp in northern Michigan where he "majored in dramatic writing" and "minored in music composition."

Unlike the legions of composers who use a piano to write their music, "I composed 'Slander is Grander' on an alto saxophone and a bass guitar."

Writing and composing are solitary but theater is a group effort, and Wellman finds enthusiastic collaborators among fellow students in Churchill's Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) program -- and beyond. David Shapiro, 17, a Churchill junior, has a part in the musical -- "I'm Milton. Milton is a very uptight employee of the Daily Pry" -- and he's already on board as technical director when Wellman shoots the movie version of "Slander is Grander" this summer.

In costume as Milton, Shapiro looks especially resplendent in a blue plaid sport jacket, a yellow-and-black shirt and an electric orange bow tie.

Another actor, Matt Weiss, 19, is a Churchill graduate who attends nearby Schoolcraft College. "Kristofer and I are buds," Weiss explains. "He called me up when he was writing." Weiss plays Cosmo Reginald Empire, a rapacious businessman trying to take over the Daily Pry. Does that make him the villain?

"You can call me that," Weiss says. "He's a lovable guy."

That may be a stretch. Cosmo has his eyes on the Pry because he's in desperate need of dough. "I got sauced at a charity ball," Weiss explains, and pledged $5 million to further the good works of the Chronic Nail Biters Foundation. Unfortunately, Cosmo doesn't have that kind of cash but the Nail Biters employ an enforcer who becomes rather insistent.

What makes the Daily Pry ripe for a takeover anyway? "Laziness" on the part of management, says senior Mallory Waterman, 19, who plays Daily Pry publisher Janet Steed.

"My character is really conniving but my intentions are for a good cause," says senior Siera Salisbury, 18, the one in the slinky blue number. Her character's name is Lisa Hudson. The cause is loosening up Lisa's boss, publisher Janet Steed.

"My boss is not a nice person," says Salisbury. Lisa and Milton conspire to get Janet "involved in a relationship, so she'll get nicer," Salisbury explains.

As the cast gathers after school for a dress rehearsal, it's evident that everyone is having a good time. There's a certain joie de vivre that comes from being in costume, from wearing fedoras, loud ties, vampy dresses, career-woman blazers and gangster suits typical of 1940s film noir movies. (Several outfits belong to Wellman; he collects vintage clothing.)

Director Jennifer Koralewski, an 18-year-old senior, pinpoints another reason for the cast's sense of excitement. "I think people love the fact that this is new; it's an adventure."

Wellman says it's his ambition to be like actor-producer-director-writer-designer Orson Welles whose approach to theater and filmmaking was to "take over every aspect."

This weekend at Churchill's intimate Black Box Theater audiences attending "Slander is Grander" might be able to say they were there when the adventure began.

Contact MARTIN F. KOHN at 313-222-6517 or mkohn@freepress.com.

REEL-LIFE LESSONS: Livonia's arts students help craft a gritty look at dangers of drugs

DRESSED TO THRILL: Brian Weiss, 15, of Livonia heads past the sign touting "Juvie," a film made by the Livonia Creative and Performing Arts program, on Saturday at Churchill High School. Students and Churchill staffers helped create the film that shows the effects of drug abuse. (MADALYN RUGGIERO/Special to the Free Press)

A heroin addict who robs an old man's house for quick cash and then beats him viciously when he walks in on her.

"Juvie" -- the first feature-length movie by Livonia Public Schools' Creative and Performing Arts program in its 20-year history -- chronicles the lives of these and 10 other juvenile delinquents who meet in lockup.

The 92-minute film, starring 50 arts program students and Churchill High School teachers and Westland firefighters and police officers in the adult roles, was shown Saturday night at a red-carpet premiere in the Churchill auditorium.

Gail Mack, the head of the arts program, served as the director, three students were her assistant directors, and students manned the two cameras and held the two boom microphones.

Program alumnus Nick Fitzer helped with makeup; the actors wore their own clothes. Aspiring light and sound director Michael Rayes, 15, was one of two boom-mic operators.

"You can't really bump it anywhere or it transfers to the microphone, and then you have a glitch and have to do it again," the freshman said. "It's a lot harder than it looks and a lot heavier than it looks. It looks like an aluminum pole, but it's hard to hold it as still as you have to hold to get the sound to come out smoothly."

For arts program theater student Emily Osborn, who played Phylly the pyromaniac, "Juvie" was a chance to try a new medium.

"Onstage, you have to use exaggerated, big movement, so everyone in the audience can see you," said the 16-year-old sophomore. "On film, the camera picks up even your subtlest movement. Even blinking your eyes can mean something. In film, you can focus more on what your face does, rather than what your body does."

Among the Churchill staffers Mack asked to join the cast was social studies teacher Kelly Granowicz, who played shoplifter Anne's lawyer. Granowicz does not have an acting background.

"I watched a lot of 'Law & Order' to prepare," she said jokingly, adding that she would do it again, if asked. Mack, who had experimented with filmmaking in some of her acting classes, got permission to write a screenplay based on Jerome McDonough's play "Juvie," which was one of the first shows the arts program staged. She plans to write an original screenplay this summer.

Shot on digital video and edited using Sony Vegas 6 software at school and in Mack's home after Easter, the flashback-heavy movie includes scenes shot at the old Detroit House of Corrections, Hines Park and local party stores, which took up to 5 hours each.

Since the project began last August, Mack estimated that they collected more than 100 hours of footage. They used Sony Cinemascape to compose parts of the soundtrack.

Because of copyright issues, Mack isn't sure what will happen to the film; she can't enter it in film competitions or show it commercially. She hopes that the school's health teachers screen it in their classes because it shows the effects of drug abuse.

As director of the Creative and Performing Arts program in Livonia Public Schools, Gail Susan Mack works with students who are often passionate about singing, dancing and acting on stage.

For the past year, she's seen a handful of those students transform -- into a pyromaniac, a shoplifter, a drunken driver, a drug addict and more -- on screen. Collectively, they are all cast members of Juvie, a feature-length film based on the original play by Jerome McDonough. Mack said she believes the story was meant as a "vehicle for kids to learn the consequences of their actions."

"Basically, it's the story of 13 juvenile delinquents who have their own problems, obviously, and a particular crime lands them all into the same jail," Mack said.

She adapted the story into a screenplay last summer, keeping the dialogue true to its original form. By August, Mack held auditions for the film project, the first full-length movie ever created by CAPA students.

Juvie will premiere at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the Carli Auditorium, Churchill High School, 8900 Newburgh Road in Livonia.

"All of the characters are totally different," said Annie Cutshaw, first assistant director and a Churchill senior. One character portrays a rather typical teenager who accidentally hits a child with her car, then flees the scene. Another is a drug addict who lives on the street.

Churchill student Emily Osborn portrayed Phylly, a pyromaniac. Of the cast of delinquents, she said, "You wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley."

At the same time, many of the characters possess traits to which most teenagers can relate, Cutshaw added.

For Churchill student Ethan Hedeen, playing a cocky drunken driver named Skip posed quite a challenge. Rather than being the type of person who "picks on the defenseless, nice kids," Hedeen said he was more likely to be "one of the kids who got picked on," which made his character difficult to play.

Filming began last summer, starting with beach and outdoor scenes. Throughout the school year, the cast and crew filmed indoor scenes, including about one-third of the film, which takes place inside a prison cell.

Cast members were literally locked up inside a holding cell for a full day of filming at the Detroit House of Corrections, at Five Mile and Beck roads.

For students, like Osborn, the experience was nothing less than "terrifying." As a result, she said she plans to go out of her way to obey the law.

"We were the only ones in there and it was scary," said Sarah Andrus, third assistant director on the film.

Hedeen noted that the cell was "filthy" and really got the point across that it was "not where you want to be."

Filming on Juvie was held sporadically throughout the school year, after classes and on weekends. The project gave a group of stage actors and crew members their first film experience. And it held a strong message.

"It was an experience that opens your eyes and makes you think twice about hanging out with your friends and doing things that teenagers aren't supposed to be doing," Cutshaw said.

Mack said students learned that their emotions "had to be much more subtle" on film. And they got used to filming scenes out of sequence, rather than completing a full play from start to finish.

"The whole experience was just amazing," Andrus said. "It was so much different than anything on stage. It was just as much fun, if not more."

Tom Wright served as director of photography, and used state-of-the art recording and editing equipment for the film.

Mack said she and Wright will team up on another CAPA Pictures project. She plans to write an original screenplay this summer, which could serve as the basis for the next movie.

Cutshaw said she hopes a lot of people have a chance to see Juvie because "it's going to be a real eye-opener."

For more information about the premiere, or to watch the trailer for Juvie online, visit www.starringcapa.com.