DOWAGIAC — For the past two weeks, high school students have been immersed into the acting world at Southwestern Michigan College’s summer musical theater camp.

The theater camp is part of SMC’s Summer Institute, designed specifically for high school students to cultivate new skills and explore potential career options.

Performances of “Catch Me if You Can,” will take place in the theater of the Dale A. Lyons Building on SMC’s Dowagiac Campus at 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 26 and Saturday, July 27. A 2 p.m. performance will also take place on Sunday, July 28. Tickets can be purchased at swmich.edu/boxoffice. General admission will cost $10, tickets for seniors and students 18 years old and younger will cost $5. SMC students will be admitted free with identification.

This year’s show, “Catch Me If You Can”, based on the true-life story of Frank Abagnale, was selected by the show’s director and SMC Theatre Manager Marcus Roll because it was a musical he felt teens could connect with.

“I love that it’s a true story about someone who is still alive,” Roll said. “I think that the character is about the same age that these students are. It’s interesting for them to look at all the things that this person did, good or bad.”

Roll’s other attraction to the show was its modern style, which helped encourage students to audition, he said. This was particularly necessary for Roll, considering he calls Southwestern Michigan, a huge destination for theatre.

The musical, which is based on a hit film, has won numerous accolades and been nominated for four Tony awards, including Best Musical. It tells the story of a teenager, Frank Abignale Jr., chasing his dreams, all while trying not to get caught.

Roll has been involved in performing arts for his entire life and started doing band, choir, stage building and technical production, while he was in high school. He has worn three different hats during the summer camp, that of a director, producer and technical director. These roles would normally take three separate people, he said.

The summer camp has more than eight different schools represented: Coloma, Dowagiac, Edwardsburg, Lakeshore, St. Joseph and Watervliet, in addition to Indiana high schools and home-schooled students. In the past, as many as 13 schools have been represented, Roll said. Attendees range in ages from freshman in high school to graduating seniors.

The camp participants are not all actors, Roll said. The technical crew has started to grow. During the last cycle of the musical theater camp, only one camper was involved in the technical crew. This year, six campers are helping with everything from making props to painting the set, he said.

For the performances themselves, Roll’s involvement will be hands off, he said.

“[The students] will be running everything,” Roll said. “All of the sound, lights and backstage. Really once we start, the only professional staff that we have is the person who is directing the pit orchestra. Otherwise, it’s all the students.”

With the camp only lasting two weeks, the schedule has been more intensive than a normal musical. The campers are dedicating 10 hours a day to rehearsals, which in a normal musical would only be two-hour days, Roll said.

“They get really close, especially the second week,” Roll said. “It’s less about the nitty gritty details of learning the show and its more about polishing. They are still rehearsing, but the intensity of the focus has shifted a bit. I think they feel more relaxed and more comfortable with their characters.”

At the end of the first week of camp, the group was able to choreograph and block the entire show off. When entering the final week before the show, which is known as “tech week,” Roll said most musical casts would have already had eight weeks of rehearsals. The campers at SMC have only had five days. 

“I feel we are in the same spot with this camp as I would be with a regular schedule going into tech week,” Roll said.