Exponential potential

IT’S a noisy and emotional opening-night party for a new musical, the kind of bash you’d expect for most Broadway or off-Broadway shows: The beaming author enters the room to cheers and applause. The director happily accepts congratulations from the crowd, and the choreographer looks serenely content.

But the jubilant cast members, who are enmeshed in a sea of hugs, make this night different. Most will be leaving soon -- and not to hit the downtown clubs. Their parents will be giving them rides home because they’re much too young to drive.

“Omygod!” says one teenage actress, gobbling a cookie as she heads out. “We did it!”

When “The Gumball Gang: Crime-Solving Kids” premiered July 5, it marked yet another triumph for TADA! (Theater and Dance Alliance), one of the nation’s most distinctive youth theaters. Unlike the vast majority of these companies -- which feature adults performing for children, or a mixture of adults and children -- TADA! commissions and stages new musicals that are performed entirely by a multicultural kids’ ensemble. These shows, produced by full-time professionals in a small theater 14 blocks from the Great White Way, are played in front of paying audiences and typically run for 30 performances, far more than a regular high school musical.

Children’s theater is enjoying a renaissance across the nation, with highly praised groups in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, New York and Washington, D.C., to name just a few centers. But TADA!’s tradition of putting children squarely in the spotlight, with sophisticated professional support, “is highly uncommon today, very unusual,” said Teresa Eyring, executive director of Theatre Communications Group, a national service organization for American nonprofit theaters.

At a time when growing numbers of kids are bitten by the performing bug, lured by the promise of “American Idol” celebrity, plus TV, movies and Broadway itself, the little nonprofit theater on West 28th Street has a different priority: It wants members to thrive as actors -- and young people -- in a community. And the goal is not to turn them into stars.

“We try to make this as professional an experience as possible,” said Janine “Nina” Trevens, the artistic and executive director who co-founded the group 23 years ago. “But I also wanted TADA! to change kids’ lives -- to give them a second home. They often don’t get this in school, and we’re like a second family for them.”

Getting into the group’s 79-member ensemble is a rigorous process. This fall, kids ages 8 to 18 will spend two days auditioning to show off their dancing, acting and singing skills. Those who are called back enter a weeklong workshop, where their personal drive and ability to get along with others in a group will be screened. Some 400 to 500 children are expected to vie for 10 to 20 spots. And even that doesn’t guarantee they will have a role in a production, because separate tryouts are held for each of the three shows TADA! performs each season. For those who are cast, there are rehearsals of 17 hours a week, including weekends. But the price is right: All of the instruction they get, plus outings to Broadway shows, is free.

Trevens, 46, an alternately soft-spoken woman and passionate advocate for children’s theater, doesn’t suffer fools. She runs the group with a nurturing heart and a firm hand. If kids are late for too many rehearsals, they’re out. If they don’t respect each other and their teachers, they’re history. “When you cast a show, you create a family,” she said. “We push the kids hard, but we also care about them as people.”

‘Love you!’ they shout

IT’S June, and rehearsals are beginning for “The Gumball Gang.” TADA!’s cramped offices are swarming with children from all corners of the city. They’re classic theater kids -- passionate, pent-up, over-the-top -- who spend any spare moments humming show tunes, reviewing dialogue and practicing ballet steps. They gossip about who got what part in the show. It’s a beehive of camaraderie and competition.

“Love you!” they shout, after the rehearsals. “Call me tonight!”

Some would go home to pricey co-ops, others to housing projects. They come from African American, Latino, Asian and white families, a jumble of kids who have become each other’s best friends. While other children their age enjoy a more leisurely summer outdoors, these kids are spending their time in a darkened theater, rehearsing a new show.

“Without TADA! I don’t know what I’d do,” said Robert Aviles, 13, one of the stars of “The Gumball Gang.” Blessed with a sunny smile and a lyrical singing voice, he’s been in the company for two years. For Robert, it’s a badly needed escape: He lives in a rough part of East Harlem and his school is plagued by gang violence. His single mom works hard to raise him, an older sister and a younger brother who has cerebral palsy. Four weeks ago, his grandmother died. He was grief-stricken but still showed up to rehearsals. “I don’t want to let anybody down,” he explained.

Helping kids like Robert was one of Trevens’ goals when she co-founded the group on a shoestring budget in 1984. She’d been smitten with theater early; her mother was a drama critic. After working as a stage manager in New York, she jumped at the chance to produce a children’s musical at a Manhattan drama festival.

“In the beginning, we didn’t know anything,” she says, recalling TADA!’s origins. But the group won seed funding and began to recruit writers to create new musicals. Along the way, Trevens overcame personal obstacles: She fought off cancer twice, in 1985 and 1989, and her Hoboken, N.J., home burned down in 1996. Like heads of other arts groups, she fights for every penny; the company struggles to get by on a $1.7-million budget, with fluctuating private and government support.

As its 25th anniversary approaches, TADA! faces big challenges. It needs a larger rehearsal space for its shows. “The Gumball Gang” cost $250,000 to stage, nearly half the production cost of an off-Broadway musical. The troupe also offers instruction to 35,000 children in public schools, a program funded by grant money, and it offers private classes for other students, for a fee.

“The energy and devotion this requires is extraordinarily high, and only someone with Nina’s imagination, energy and dedication would be able to pull it off,” says Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the lyrics and music for “Wicked,” “Pippin” and “Godspell” and is a member of TADA!’s artistic board, which makes recommendations on its creative direction. “It’s amazing she’s been able to carry on presenting original shows for and with children for such a long time, and with consistent high quality.”

Notable alumni include actress and talk show host Ricki Lake, Josh Peck (from Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh”), Kerry Washington (“Ray”) and Mizuo Peck, who played Sacajawea, the Indian princess, in “Night at the Museum.” Songwriters including Winnie Holzman (who wrote the book for “Wicked”) and Eric Rockwell (“The Musical of Musicals”) also have contributed material to TADA!’s stage productions.

“I was 11 when I first auditioned for them, and I sang ‘The Lady Is a Tramp,’ says Mizuo Peck, now 29. “The years I spent there made me what I am today. We were just a bunch of crazy kids then, but we showed other kids they could do this too.”

The life of adult actors, she notes, is harshly different: “It’s us against the world, and there’s no one to depend on for support.” If Peck has any regrets, it’s that her idyllic years at TADA! had to end. “I want to go back,” she says. “Who wouldn’t?”

Time to pull together

LESS than a week before “The Gumball Gang” opens, the mood is anything but idyllic. The cast hasn’t learned its lines, songs are being reworked and the scenery -- including a colorful candy store on wheels -- is still being fine-tuned. From a perch in the audience, Trevens and her crew insist it will come together. But they have a cast of kids, mostly middle-schoolers, who can’t help being kids.

“Stop the talking, stop the talking, how can you talk when we’ve got so much work left to do?” says production stage manager Beth Slepian, speaking over a microphone. During a brief lull, the entire cast of 27 children has lapsed into idle conversation. Some are hugging each other, others whisper in one another’s ears. A few keep talking, even after Slepian’s plea for silence. Finally, they calm down.

The new show was written by Jim Colleran, TADA!’s irrepressibly upbeat musical director. A veteran of children’s theater and a graduate of the prestigious BMI musical workshop in New York, his rollicking musical tells the story of kids who moonlight as detectives and hang out in a candy store. During the hourlong show, they hunt down thieves who have stolen a famous painting. In the end, they save the day and show the power of working together.

There were only so many parts available, and some ensemble members were devastated they didn’t get in. TADA!, Colleran says, has become a “wonderful caldron of emotions, and saying ‘no’ is one of the hardest things we have to do here.” Life in the ensemble can be a bubble, “but it’s also toughening,” adds choreographer Joanna Greer: “We push the kids in a positive way. We love them all, and we also want to give them a sense of the reality of being an actor in a show -- especially in this town.”

Less than two hours before opening, Trevens watches the final run-through. “Great job,” she tells the cast. “But you’re still not delivering every song. You’re not a bunch of cute kids trying to do a musical. You’re more than that!”

That night they prove her right. Cheers rock the second-floor theater, as lines that had been spoken haltingly now land with confidence. Colleran’s songs ring out, and Greer’s jazzy dances electrify. As the musical’s final line is sung (“We did it!”), the cast takes its bows and sings the TADA! theme song.

Then the party begins.

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josh.getlin@latimes.com