Both productions will be combined in a full evening of student performances in the Don Rand Theater of the Walter Breeman Performing Arts Center, at the North Country School’s Lake Placid campus. Stuart Little will begin at 5 p.m., followed by NCS’s Rock Band and other student performances. The evening will conclude at 7 p.m. with IMPACT.

Courtney Allen, who has been a theater teacher at NCS for 12 years, says collaboration and community are central to the school’s philosophy — and their theater program is no exception. This was a big shift from what she had experienced at other schools.

“I was completely amazed by what that really means at North Country School,” she said. “We do this big show, and everybody in the community comes together to help support it.”

At NCS, all of the fourth to sixth grade students take theater as one of their art rotations. Often the plays connect to their social studies curriculum. This year, the sixth graders have been studying New York state history, so Allen chose Stuart Little in part because the author, E. B. White, lived in New York.

North Country School theater teacher Courtney Allen directs during a rehearsal on Friday. (Enterprise photo — Grace McIntyre

All of the theater productions at NCS are very student driven. In the younger grades, students help with every aspect of the play, including set, lighting and sound design. This year, the stage manager is a fifth grader and the assistant stage manager is a fourth grader.

Students get to choose what part of the play they want to help with, Allen said, which gives them agency. With some guidance, and the help of some specific classes on things like lighting and costume design, she finds the students are able to step into leadership roles.

“If we assume the kids are able to do it, they’re able to do it,” she said.

For older students, theater is an elective that they can choose among many other classes. The IMPACT class has been around for about 10 years. In this class, students brainstorm ideas and issues that they would like to explore through a play, then write the script together.

“What are the messages you want to put out into the world?” Allen said, describing the starting place in their creative process. “What are the things you want your audience to walk away with?”

North Country School student Ivy Lea-Simons (in blue) plays a character who stands up to a bully.

This year’s class started with a long list of topics that they cared about as a group. They narrowed it down to LGBTQ+ rights, inequality in women’s sports, the impact of financial instability on families, racism and objectification of women.

The students tackled these varied topics by starting with a scene that takes place at prom where a character is being bullied. The play freezes, and the audience is whisked through a series of scenes showing various difficulties that the characters are dealing with in their lives.

Maria Viniegra Ocampo, a student in the IMPACT class, said one of the big lessons she wants the audience to take away from the show is the importance of standing up for others, in all sorts of situations. She said it’s important to have “that group of friends that are supportive throughout these things and to openly talk about it and to have some communication about it.”

Each of the scenes were written by small groups of students. Ivy Lea-Simons and Angelina Lin are two other students in the class. Both said the scenes they worked on were based on their own experiences with things like girls’ sports being cut or dealing with financial stress. Because the class is so focused on writing — they only meet twice per week for 40 minutes — they work with minimal set pieces and tailored their writing to the members of their class.

“It’s been really amazing to see what young people can have to say about things,” Allen said.

North Country School student Ivy Lea-Simons rehearses a play that she wrote along with her classmates at the school on Friday. (Enterprise photo — Grace McIntyre