Needham Student Theatre Shoots for the Stars
July 28, 2025
• A student-run summer theater program leans into American bluegrass and folk for its upcoming production of “Bright Star.”
A train bound for Asheville, North Carolina will ride through Needham High School this weekend.
Needham Student Theatre’s production of “Bright Star” will be the troupe’s third consecutive summer show and its fourth as a rebranding and reconfiguration of St. Joseph Summer Theatre. The show takes audiences through the American South, featuring some unusual theatrical numbers typical of the time and place.
“A lot of people in the Needham theater [community] like it. The music is really awesome,” Director Amiya Tess said. “The story is very interesting. It’s not one note at all, and people just have wanted to do it for a long time.”
The show jumps between 1920s and 1940s North Carolina, following Alice (portrayed by Amelia Broderick) as she navigates trauma and reflects back later in life as a successful literary editor. Global conflicts, namely World War II, serve as a backdrop to the story.
Co-written by Edie Brickell and comedian-musician Steve Martin, “Bright Star” debuted on Broadway in 2016, making the show a newer addition to the NST canon. Several of the musical’s 19-member cast entered rehearsals without knowing much of the music, including Assistant Music Director Max Scott.
Scott, who also plays Alice’s 1920s love interest Jimmy Ray Dobbs, said he enjoyed teaching his castmates melodies and harmonies he himself was learning fresh. The setting and time period inform the show’s score, which breaks from the traditional theater pattern.
“It’s super fun to tackle a new music style. It’s such a different style of music than you would hear in normal theater,” Scott said. “We’re going to have a banjo in our pit [orchestra]. It’s going to be a real type of different bluegrass style thing.”
Thanks to a sizable donation, NST will fund its first ever live pit orchestra for the show, composed mostly of student volunteers with some professional musicians. Since its first show as NST in 2023, the group’s artistic budget has steadily increased, allowing for more elaborate sets and costumes, Tess said.
This will also be NST’s largest production by cast, who are accompanied by a steady group of technicians and coaches, also all students. NST is entirely student-run.
As with previous shows — namely last summer’s “Heathers,” which contained dark themes, even in its teen edition — NST chose “Bright Star” in large part due to its more mature subject matter. Tess said school-sponsored productions may hesitate to put on “Bright Star,” meaning its student actors wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to perform in the show.
Still, the show is accessible in ways other productions may not be, Tess said.
“It’s not like a [Stephen] Sondheim show where you kind of have to like musical theater to be there,” she said. “It’s fun and it’s funny at times too. I’d say it’s definitely very entertaining.”
While ultimately “heart-warming,” Act One’s central crux centers around teen pregnancy and the heartache that follows, said rising NHS junior Amelia Broderick. Alice’s bubbly persona as an adolescent contrasts with her hardened, professional adult self, mirroring back that difficult period she endured, Broderick added.
“That [situation] kind of builds her a wall, where she doesn’t really trust anyone anymore, and when she gets older, she spends her life trying to find her baby,” Broderick said. She ensured audiences that Act Two ends on a family reunion of sorts.
Levity rests in the 1940s magazine staffers of the Asheville Southern Journal, where Billy Cane (portrayed by rising senior James Casale) joins as its newest writer. His big music number, “Bright Star,” follows him as he boards a train to pursue his writing dreams.
“I think, especially in Max’s time period, his character’s in the ’20s, some of the scenes with him and Alice can get pretty dark,” Casale said. “But when we jump ahead to my character, it gets very light-hearted.”
Casale is joined by 2025 NHS graduate Lily Katz, who plays magazine editor and “sassy comic relief” Daryl Ames alongside 2024 NHS grad Julia Goldman’s at times flirtatious editor Lucy Grant.
While “lighter on the surface,” the 1940s scenes reflect back much of the themes presented in the 1920s, Katz said.
“You see Alice talking to Billy about finding stories through the things he’s gone through and his struggles, which is what she does in the 1920 scenes. Or you see Alice talking about [being] isolated, and then you flashbacks when she was fun,” Katz said. “You also see a lot of little foreshadowing.”
“Another Round” offers musical reprieve and serves as the quintessential, pint-raising musical drinking song, and “Whoa, Mama” — where Jimmy tries to smooth talk Alice — early in Act One appeared to be a fan favorite among cast members.
“I love it because it’s such a playful song, very flirty. I get to run around the stage back and forth, which is my forte,” Scott said. “A big thing about this show is that tunes get just stuck in your head. People will walk out of this show, if all goes well, singing these songs for days, because that’s what has been happening with this cast.”
“Bright Star” runs Friday, Aug. 1 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Aug. 2 at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. at NHS. Tickets are available on NST’s website.
