By AARON MUELLER
Vigilant/Argus

When the 29 cast members of the Barn Swallow Theater’s children production of Willy Wonka first met at the first rehearsal, they were very quiet.

They came from all across the area, and very few of the children knew each other.

The first several weeks of rehearsal, I was concerned they did not know each other very well,” director Bev Smith said. “The rehearsals were very quiet. They just sat and read their scripts.”

But by the fourth week of rehearsals, the cast had become very tightly knit.

And now I can’t get them to be quiet,” Smith said with a laugh.

The production, which opens today and runs through Sunday at Southwestern Michigan College in Dowagiac, is a children’s version of the Wonka Broadway play.

The audience will recognize tunes from the classic score in “The Candy Man,” “Pure Imagination” and “Oompa Loompa.”

Smith said part of the reason the play drew children from Cassopolis, Edwardsburg, Constantine and even Granger is that children love the Roald Dahl tale.

Smith has enjoyed watching the children become friends and even like family.

“The cast has been working together beautifully,” she said. “The experienced ones have been helpful to the newbies. I am charmed by how everyone in the cast has adopted the youngest members and been really like a family.”

Smith encourages people from throughout the southwest Michigan area to come out and support youth theater.

A live play has much more power than stories told by a flat screen like a movie or TV show,” she said. “By coming out to see this, people are supporting the talents of they youth of their community, which is also a very powerful vote of confidence in our future.”