Murrysville middle school's fall play is a lost-and-found story about learning to love

Franklin Regional teacher Christine Klemstine couldn’t have been more surprised when eighth grader J.T. Esposito performed his audition for the middle school’s fall play.

“He had half of the script already memorized,” Klemstine said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Memorizing 20 pages of dialogue is a big enough challenge for an eighth grader. But Esposito, 14, also is functionally blind.

“I use a cane and I have a vision teacher,” Esposito said. “I had someone read me the lines, then we just kept doing that until I had them memorized.”

He will play the lead role in “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,” where he portrays Edward, an expensive decorative rabbit made of china. Edward is vain and self-centered, uninterested in returning his owner’s love, but one day during an ocean voyage he is accidentally thrown overboard. His journey teaches him the value of being humble and being loved.

“I’m all stuck-up in the beginning,” Esposito said. “But by the end of the play, I learn to love and go on a journey with all types of people.”

Esposito is also in the unique position of being onstage along with the physical embodiment of his character. Edward is a decorative object that cannot interact vocally with any of the other cast members, and show organizers created several different stuffed “Edwards” to be used throughout the play in various costumes.

Klemstine said the original version of the play only calls for four actors, but actually has 20 roles.

“I wanted to get as many kids involved as possible, so we cast all the roles individually,” she said.

Klemstine came across the play because of her love for Kate DiCamillo, the American author who wrote the book that was adapted for the stage play.

“I’ve read just about everything she’s written,” Klemstine said. “This was one of my favorite stories ever. When I saw it was made into a play, I knew we had to do it.”

For Klemstine, this year’s big challenge is logistics.

“Last year we were a brand new club, and we did a play where there was no set needed,” she said. “It was literally a story about a middle school theater class.”

“The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,” in stark contrast, features about eight different locations as Edward passes from person to person along his trip.

“Last year was a lot simpler,” Esposito said. “But it’s great to be onstage interacting with the sixth- and seventh-graders and my classmates.”

There are about 50 students in the full cast and crew, Klemstine said.

“It’s a heavy show,” she said. “J.T. came to me one day and said, ‘This is really a sad show, why are we doing it?’ I told him he had to decide if he wanted to do it, and he kept coming back.”

Klemstine said it’s difficult for her to read DiCamillo’s book without tearing up.

Esposito’s mother agreed.

“If the kids do it well, there won’t be a dry eye in the theater,” she said.