T-L Photo/ ROBERT A. DEFRANK Martins Ferry High School students, from front left, Demitris Briggs, Julia Buck, Brooke Sansone, Jude Kutay, Allanha Spear and Julia Buck, seated in the center, prepare to present a play. Behind them, from left, are Emma McFarland, Kristin Savage, Anna Staley, Ash Williams, Meghan Mahan and Emylee Reed.

MARTINS FERRY — Performers and parents in the Martins Ferry City School District are eagerly awaiting the performance of a long-delayed musical.

Julia Wayne, director of music and theater, said they had been ready last year before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“April of 2020 was supposed to be the show, so we haven’t done one since 2019,” Wayne said.

“We are doing ‘James and the Giant Peach,’ the musical,” she said. “It is a great show.”

The show opens at 7 p.m. April 23 and will have another production April 24. There is an entry fee.

Wayne said the cafeteria stage venue is limited to 25 percent of its seating capacity.

“We don’t know if it’s going to be open to the public just yet. We’re thinking it’s going to be open at the very least to students and families of the students who are in the show, but we’re hoping that maybe they’ll open it up.

“There are desks out for lunches, and they’re already spaced 6 feet apart,” she said. “Right now it looks like the students will get two or three tickets apiece each night, but if people don’t use those then we’ll open up for sale.

“This is the show we were supposed to do last year. Unfortunately, our seniors from last year didn’t get to perform their show, so we did hold it over and hold auditions. The kids who had the parts that they had last year had the option of maintaining their part or auditioning for another role, but we ended up getting all the roles filled. It’s a smaller cast this year because of COVID, so we’ve got a lot of doubling happening in the show, but as far as rehearsals go, we’re rehearsing all of our choreography. Anything that they do coupled, they’re not touching. We do a swing dance number and they’re not touching, they’re just doing the motions. We rehearse with masks and everything. We will perform the show without masks, hopefully,” she said.

“It’s been safe so far. We’ve not had anybody contract COVID from within the group, and we’re just praying that that continues that way, because if one of us gets it we’ll probably all be quarantined,” Wayne said.

She added that her students put everything they have into their productions.

“We build our own sets, so we’ve been working on the sets, and we do most of our own costumes. We don’t rent from anywhere, we either purchase or make costumes. We do all the painting ourselves,” she said. “We’re kind of an in-house program as far as that’s concerned. We don’t hire somebody to choreograph, we choreograph ourselves. A lot of people throw in ideas and we put things together. I tell these kids they get a full experience of theater, not just the acting and performing side of it, when they join the program.”

Last year, Music Theater International that holds the rights to James and the Giant Peach, allowed everyone to postpone the contract so they did not have to pay for the rights again.

Wayne is speaking with MTI about whether livestreaming would violate copyright law.

“Otherwise, we are permitted to record it, just not post it places, so we might have to do a recording that we can allow people to access via DVD.”

Last year the cast was about 20. This year, they will perform with a cast of about 13. Wayne said none of the graduated seniors will be able to reprise their roles since most are in college or the military, but she hopes they can attend the show.