A peek into The Secret Garden

Hands emerged from the rafters above a stage Monday night, guiding paper birds above the heads of the actors preparing to debut “The Secret Garden.”

Florida School of the Arts students threw on their costumes and guided the sets to designated spots for each scene for one of the last dress rehearsals before the play opens Thursday night.

Located on St. Johns River State College’s Palatka campus, the actors and large production crew will perform the show through Sunday. Tickets are $10 and showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

Come enjoy the classic Frances Hodgon Burnett book come to life in a musical that takes place in early 1900s England. A 10-year-old orphan, Mary Lennox, an English girl born and raised in British Colonial India must move to Yorkshire, England to live in a mansion with an uncle whom she has never met, St. Johns River officials said.

Lennox will soon flourish as she meets the manor’s other residents, and they rekindle a neglected garden.

“The show is filled with glorious music and a heartwarming story of the renewing power of a child’s love and courage, and the acting company brings a delight in storytelling to their work in this piece,” musical director and college acting professor Patricia Crotty said in a statement.

The college students sang for an audience of a technical crew and their peers, their voices carrying across the theater. Although there was no public audience, claps of support followed their rehearsals from their fellow classmates.

The school’s performance will be filled with “glorious music” – 30 songs to be exact – and the performers worked with the St. Augustine Youth Chorus to add some children’s voices into the production.

While 22 performers make up the on-stage cast, they sometimes work dually as the production crew, though they still need more hands for this production.

Technical crew members lined the rafters Monday; the sound crew’s boards glowed in the back of the room, and hidden people paced the catwalk with every cue and mark they needed to make.

Back on stage, the cast practiced seamlessly sliding each new set from scene to scene with the help of Crotty calling out suggestions.

The intricate backgrounds are made to reflect the curiosity of a pop-up book, which the college’s scenic design professor, Tim Castell, said was a challenge. He worked with lighting design instructor Torrie Sanders to use textures and different light colors to distinguish indoor and outdoor scenes and “instill a sense of wonder” into the sets that someone would feel when reading a pop-up book.

“We wanted to capture the innocence and magic that comes with turning each page,” Castell said in a statement.

Before taking their marks in dress rehearsal, the actors laughed together and admired one another’s costumes. Some sparkled, others bounced with lace detail but they each juxtaposed the modern clothing worn by the crew members mingling among the cast.

“In order to fully create the world of Yorkshire, England in the early 1900s, they have been in dialect rehearsals, as well as music and dance rehearsals,” Crotty stated. “Additionally, they have been learning the manners and movement required to wear the period clothing with ease.”

To help immerse the audience into a 20th Century England world, the cast learned elegant choreography and mixed it with abstract movements “signifying death (and) time-period waltzing,” the college’s dance and ballet professor Jessica Mayhew-Borrero stated.

Crotty told the actors Monday was a night to help one another, ask questions and work out their questions. Still, the cast performed as if it were opening night, stopping only to make set adjustments before picking up where they left off.

“It is a true ensemble piece and they are a strong, tight-knit ensemble,” Crotty said.

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