JENNI Cain, Milly Bayona and Sam Shepherd might each have different reasons for taking part in Play On! as it prepares to launch to the public on Thursday, but they’re all united in one thing – they’re having a great time.

The trio are the youngest actors in the CEMA Theatre Group’s long-awaited production, but each has come to the cast of 10 via a different path.

Director Karl Hatton has been impressed, not just by the fact they’re mixing well with the rest of the cast but the bond they’ve formed with each other.

“They all get on well with the adults but they all worked together well in the short plays,” he said.

Jenni, 18, is in Year 12 at Bayview College where among other things she is enrolled in Theatre Studies.

But even though her mother Terri also appears in Play On!, this is no following in the family tradition type of thing.

“I hated drama until my football coach got me into it,” Jenni said.

That football coach was the Theatre Group’s own Corey Williams and Jenni agreed to come to the group to have a look in 2019.

She has acted in a short play as well as Between the Lines, directed by Mr Williams.

“I’m very against improv(isation), I hate improv,” she said.

“The whole idea of this is very structured and I like that.”

And now she enjoys what she’s doing.

“It’s better than football,” Jenni said.

“I’m not allowed to do football any more anyway so it’s kind of like my go-to now.”

But there’s a bit more to it than that.

“I found out there aren’t many people with autism who do acting,” Jenni said.

“I started watching The Good Doctor when it came out (where the main character is autistic) and I thought that was really cool.”

Her mother also got roped into acting when she brought Jenni in to see Mr Hatton and that pair have helped her in other ways on set.

“Mum and Karl helped me in trying to adjust in figuring out the lighting and sounds because I found they were hard to manage,” Jenni said.

“I started off wearing sunglasses, I couldn’t handle the lights.”

Play On! is a play within a play, with the plot involving an amateur theatre group trying desperately to produce a play called Murder Most Foul, in spite of maddening interference from the eccentric author (herself a member of the theatre group), who keeps revising the script, despite the fact that opening night is rapidly approaching.

Jenni plays Louise, a stagehand in the play, while Terri Cain plays the director of Murder Most Foul.

If Jenni’s path to the production was unconventional then Milly’s was less so.

The 15-year-old is a Year 10 student at Portland Secondary College who only moved to the city (from Lara) in 2019.

She acted in the production at her previous school before moving but has been a bit quieter on the theatrical front since the move.

However she has excelled at public speaking, as does her younger sister April, and attended a theatre workshop last year.

Mr Hatton saw a video monologue she did and was impressed enough to call Milly’s mother and ask if she would be interested in acting.

“It was just a normal day, I got home from school and Mum says ‘somebody named Karl Hatton has rung and wants you in his short plays’,” Milly said.

“I’ve always loved being in theatre – I need somewhere for my words to because I talk a lot.”

She ended up doing two short plays, including one directed by Mr Shepherd, and has enjoyed Play On!

“I love it, everybody’s been so lovely,” Milly said.

“It’s a great community, the short plays really went fantastic and I really hope this production goes just as well.

“And I’m really learning every day.”

Milly plays awkward teenager Marla ‘Smitty’ Smith in the play, a character that is obsessed with her mother, and in Murder Most Foul she is the maid.

She would like to act in a big musical someday.

“I love musicals, they just really interest me, the dancing and the singing and the acting,” she said.

Mr Shepherd, who is stage manager Alex in Play On!, would be familiar to anyone who attended Portland Secondary College productions a few years ago.

The 22-year-old is now back living in Portland studying for a computer science degree after starting it off at Melbourne University.

He actually has an exam at 10am on Friday, after opening night and before treading the boards again that evening.

“When I was at Portland Secondary College I was in every school production that I could go in and I loved it,” he said.

“I did a little bit of public speaking at school and went on lots of drama camps.

“For the first couple of years after leaving school, when I moved to Melbourne, I didn’t get into any theatre, I was sort of busy with uni, but now I’m back in Portland I did the short plays with CEMA last year.

“That was also my first directing experience ever (he directed both Jenni and Milly).

“I was glad Karl trusted me to do that, he was a mentor director for me to do that.

“Directing always interested me but I didn’t really think about it that seriously.”

Mr Shepherd has used a bit of what he learned from that in his role as the stage manager.

“I’m really enjoying it, everyone’s been really nice.”

And he has been impressed with Jenni and Milly.

“I think it’s great when young people, younger than me, get involved with community theatre,” he said.

“I was dragged along to after school drama classes because I was a very shy kid, and I cried for the first session.

“One of my favourite things about acting is you’ve sort of got to be up there and you don’t have to be yourself because it’s being put on for an audience.”