The award was presented at the National Jr. Theater Festival.
The non-profit Moorestown Theater Company (MTC) received a Freddie G Excellence In Acting Award for its full cast at the 2017 Junior Theater Festival, the world’s largest musical theater festival for children, which took place Friday, Jan. 13 through Monday, Jan. 16 at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta, Ga. This is the third time in four years that MTC has received this award.
MTC’s 29 students, ranging in age from 9 to 16 years old, were cheered on by a group of 26 staff and family members as they performed a 15-minute condensed version of Disney’s Peter Pan, Jr. in front of two adjudicators. They were Broadway Music Arranger David Weinstein and Co-Founding Director of New Visions/New Voices, Deirdre Kelly Lavrakas.
“Your vocals and your overall ensemble work were incredible,” Weinstein said after watching MTC’s performance.
“I love the imaginative way that all of you told the story; very well done,” added Lavrakas.
Produced by NYC’s iTheatrics, the JTF is the world’s largest festival celebrating young people and the “transformative power of musical theater.” This year’s festival had 5,830 students, teachers and family members from 28 states and the District of Columbia, as well as theater companies from New Zealand and Australia.
There was a record-high 111 theater companies/schools participating at JTF this year. The Junior Theater Festival was founded in 2003 and became an annual event in 2010. MTC has now earned seven acting awards in its five trips to the festival.
MTC Producing Artistic Director and director of Disney’s Peter Pan, Jr., Mark Morgan accepted the Excellence In Acting Award, along with his daughter, 14-year-old Juliet Morgan, on behalf of the entire cast for its 15-minute performance.
“Just attending the Junior Theater Festival is a wonderful experience for our students, even if we don’t win any awards,” Morgan said. “But to win an Excellence In Acting Award for the third time in four years is amazing, and it shows the caliber of actors that perform with the Moorestown Theater Company.”
In all five trips to the JTF, MTC has condensed its entire show down to 15-minutes (as opposed to just performing various songs from a show to fill the 15-minute performing time). In past festivals, MTC was the only group of the eight in its pod to condense their entire show down to 15-minutes, but this year half of the eight groups chose the condensed-show option. Morgan explained that MTC does this option to highlight as many cast members as possible (instead of just a few lead performers), with every cast member getting a line.
