Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Fifty-eight teenagers from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas will culminate their participation in Mississippi State’s Summer Scholars Onstage Camp on July 19 and 20 with family-friendly performances in the university’s McComas Hall theater.

Free to all, Friday’s performance begins at 7 p.m. A matinee performance takes place at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Under the supervision of a creative staff of playwrights, musicians, drama teachers, technical theatre staff and authors, 28 campers began a weeklong writer’s camp in June, creating an original script and music for the on-stage production. Over the past two weeks, those campers and 30 others have been developing their talents in music, dance and drama, and participating in full rehearsals and dress rehearsals as part of a production camp leading up to this weekend’s performances.

Titled “The Pitch,” the three-act musical comedy focuses on three book pitches with different motifs. The first is a pitch for a fantasy monster high school novella, followed by a psycho-analysis of a small town utopia. The final act is a murder mystery inspired by the mind of a child and a compilation of his favorite board games.

“This show is filled with comedy, mystery and original songs written by the campers who also are the stars. They have worked really hard, and I know they will do a good job. You don’t want to miss it,” said Joe Ray Underwood, an MSU alumnus and Summer Scholars director.

Underwood, an MSU professor emeritus of counseling, educational psychology and foundations, founded Summer Scholars in the early 1980s. The tuition-based camp is sponsored, in part, by the Mississippi Arts Commission.

For the Summer Scholars program’s 38th annual performance, campers have been receiving production guidance from T. Kris Lee, an MSU communication/theatre graduate and former Summer Scholars participant now serving as an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus.

Starkville Area Arts Council Executive Director John Bateman, a Starkville High School graduate and an award-winning published writer, has served as writing director. Cody Stockstill, assistant professor and theatre concentration coordinator in MSU’s Department of Communication, teaches the class responsible for the production’s set.

Learn more about the Summer Scholars Onstage Camp at www.summerscholarsonstage.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.