“Building a Community… the Theatre Way!”
HISTORY OF OUR PROGRAM
Our Theatre Program was started 3 years ago by Richie Grasso. He was 16 years old in high school and wanted to start directing his own musical. He knew that working with the Parish would be a great idea to help raise money and get many people involved in doing good for the community.
In the Summer of 2007, we put on Annie Jr. a one-hour version of the classic musical in our parish hall. We had 65 kids involved along with lots of helping parents. We had auditions in May and continued until the show went up in August. After all was done, we raised a total of $8,000 and used part of that money to buy a new electric piano for the hall to be used for masses and for our program.
In the Summer of 2008 we produced “Willy Wonka Jr.” and our numbers literally doubled in the amount of kids on and off stage. We had 120+ kids and teens involved in the musical. We also started a new program, which was our summer theatre day camp. The staff taught the kids singing, dancing acting and arts and crafts, also giving teens a chance to become C.I.T.’s (counselor’s in training). Each session had a theme for the music and dancing including High School Musical, Hairspray, and a Cabaret of Broadway show tunes.
After that summer, we raised $20,000 for our organization. We used a portion of that money to purchase a new door structure for the front of our facility. In the Summer of 2009, our musical Production was Lionel Bart’s OLIVER! From all of the money we made from this and our parish carnival, we put towards our MISSION: PRAYER FOR AIR 2009 campaign and raised enough money to air condition our parish hall facility!
This past summer, we performed Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.”
DO I HAVE TO BE CATHOLIC OR A ST. LAWRENCE PARISHIONER TO BE A PART OF THE PROGRAM?
No. Our program is open to anyone from anywhere! Feel free to contact us and get involved!
MASCOT
The St. Lawrence O’Toole Mascot is the lion and our colors are red and white, so we wanted to incorporate this into our logo and program as best we can. Larry the Lion is the name of our tap-dancin’ soul-singin’ friend in our logo who is sure to help boost our program and spirits!
We hope you will join us this year in working hard to bring our community together while having lots of fun! See you at the stage!
