Off-Beat Players will return to the Greenwich stage this summer with a production built around two ambitions: presenting a fully staged musical and creating a place where teens and young adults with and without disabilities work as one company.
The Greenwich-based organization will present “Footloose” on July 30, July 31 and Aug. 1 at the Greenwich Country Day School Kerrick Performing Arts Center. Each performance begins at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are available now through the group’s website.
Approximately 40 young people are participating in this year’s production. They will perform with a live orchestra, continuing an annual Off-Beat Players tradition that began after the nonprofit was established in 2008.
The musical is the public result of that summer work, but the larger community impact is contained in the structure of the company itself. Off-Beat Players brings together performers with different abilities and experiences, then asks them to contribute to one shared production. The model places inclusion inside the artistic process rather than treating it as a separate program or an explanation added after the curtain rises.
Each summer, performers with and without disabilities build one company, one production and one shared place on the Greenwich stage.
A fully staged musical depends on coordination. Actors, singers and dancers must learn their individual responsibilities while remaining attentive to everyone around them. A live orchestra adds another layer of timing and collaboration. The performance succeeds only when separate parts become a collective effort.
For Off-Beat Players, that process also serves an educational purpose. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable and educational group, and its annual summer production gives participants a defined project with a public goal. Rehearsals lead toward fixed performance dates. Individual work becomes part of an ensemble. The stage offers a visible place for each participant’s contribution.
That approach gives Greenwich audiences a chance to see inclusion operating through performance rather than being described in abstract terms. The cast is not appearing beside the production or being recognized before it begins. The cast is the production.
The choice of a large musical reinforces that point. “Footloose” requires a company capable of carrying a recognizable stage work with music, movement and coordinated performance. Off-Beat Players is presenting the musical as a complete theatrical production, with the same expectation that brings any cast together: learn the show, support the ensemble and deliver it to an audience.
The stage adaptation is by Dean Pitchford and Walter Bobbie and is based on the original screenplay by Pitchford. Music is by Tom Snow, with lyrics by Pitchford. Additional music is by Eric Carmen, Sammy Hagar, Kenny Loggins and Jim Steinman. The production is presented through an arrangement with Concord Theatricals.
The three performances also give the wider Greenwich community a role. An inclusive theater company needs an audience willing to attend, respond and recognize the work onstage. The gathering inside the Kerrick Performing Arts Center becomes part of the organization’s mission: performers and audience members sharing the same room, the same production and the same evening.
Off-Beat Players has spent nearly two decades making that experience a summer fixture. Its scale remains personal enough for approximately 40 young people to form one company, yet substantial enough to mount a complete musical with a live orchestra. That combination gives the program its distinctive place in Greenwich’s cultural life.
The community impact can be measured in the opportunities created each summer: a role to learn, a production to help carry and a public stage on which young people with and without disabilities are seen as fellow performers. The finished show lasts three nights. The work of building the company begins long before opening night.
Performances will be held Thursday, July 30; Friday, July 31; and Saturday, Aug. 1, at 7:30 p.m. at the Greenwich Country Day School Kerrick Performing Arts Center, 401 Old Church Road in Greenwich.
Tickets and additional information are available at offbeatplayers.org. Off-Beat Players can also be found on Instagram and TikTok at @offbeatplayers.
