Summer of shows

It’s been a summer full of drama around our house.

And that’s just the way we like it.

There once was a time when summer was nothing but sleeping late, snacks, and cartoons for our boys, but since our youngest son, Carlton, was bitten by the acting bug back in 2020, our summer has become prime time for theater.

In a little more than four years, he’s managed to build an impressive career doing musical theater, performing in 21 shows, mostly at Smoke Rise Academy of Arts. The math would indicate there have been overlapping productions, and you can imagine that was taxing on a young teen.

This summer, though, has been perfect. His schedule has been back-to-back shows with little overlap. After a busy freshman year in the theater conservatory at the Gwinnett School of the Arts at Central Gwinnett High School, he did a little of the traditional sleeping-late-with-nowhere-to-go routine before jumping into drama camp at the Lawrenceville Arts Center the first week of June.

That was a three-week intensive in which he and a cast of teenagers staged a production of “Sister Act Jr.” He was cast as Monsignor O’Hara, the parish priest at Queen of Angels Cathedral in Philadelphia, the hideout for blues singer Deloris Van Cartier who enters police protection after witnessing a murder.

Wrapping up conveniently before our family beach vacation the week of July 4, “Sister Act Jr.” rehearsals conflicted only a few times with the beginning of Smoke Rise Academy of Arts’ summer teen production of “The Drowsy Chaperone.”

In a 180-degree turn from portraying a fundraising-focused, hype-man priest in “Sister Act Jr.”, Carlton was cast in “Drowsy” as Adolpho, the Latin Lothario called upon by a desperate director to break up a wedding of his show’s lead actress who was planning to leave the stage upon her nuptials.

The show opened at Smoke Rise Baptist Church in Stone Mountain July 19. If you get a chance, you should definitely see it this weekend (Showtimes are at 2 and 7 p.m. July 20 and 2 p.m. July 21. Tickets are $10 for adults/$5 for kids and are available at the door.)

I love seeing Carlton perform. He has been cast in many memorable supporting roles that draw on his strengths as a performer: strong singing voice, comedic timing and physical presence. I particularly relish seeing Carlton’s brothers enjoy his performances. Impressing a room full of strangers is certainly an accomplishment, but getting laughs out of your siblings is a challenge at a whole other level.

We’re no strangers to busy summers. Over the years Carla and I have navigated schedules full of Scout camps, church camps, Vacation Bible School, band camps, and lately, summer jobs. Carlton’s summer theater is so much fun because there’s an immediate payoff. When Barron and Harris, our older two, participated in Parkview’s marching band, it would be weeks if not months before we saw the finished show and witnessed the full implementation of hours and hours of practice. With summer drama camps and theater intensives, we get a brand new show in just a few short weeks.

People ask if all this theater is exhausting for Carlton. I’m sure it is – physically. On every other level, it is exhilarating for him. He loves spending hours each day with his friends. He has fully embraced the theater mantra of “the show must go on,” and all the ups-and-downs and ins-and-outs of staging a show appeal to him as he grows as a performer.

Besides, that old saying about idle hands and the devil is true, and if the pandemic lockdown taught us nothing, it showed us that isolation is dangerous for teenagers. He does better mentally, physically and emotionally when he’s working on a production.

It’s show week, and we’re all tired. I’m challenging myself to stay in the moment, soak in every detail and appreciate that this season of life will not last forever. After all, we thought we’d be band parents forever, and that season has ended.

So I say “break a leg” and pass the popcorn. The more summer theater Carlton can do, the better for him, for our family and for the fortunate patrons of local theater who are able to enjoy his performances.