Coty Forno gets goosebumps when she talks about her next show. Not because of the cast or the songs, but because of the people. Strangers, mostly, who hear what she’s planning and ask the same question: How can I help?
“It gives me goosebumps talking about it,” said Forno, executive director of Beyond the Stage. “The overwhelming care and love and support from complete strangers that I have never met before. After every call, someone has reached out to me again to say, hey, how can we help with this? How can we make this more accessible?”
The show is Dear Evan Hansen, the Tony Award-winning musical about an anxious, isolated teenager and the lie that pulls him into a grieving family’s life. Beyond the Stage is presenting it at the Garrett College Performing Arts Center Nov. 13 through 15. And while it is a full professional production, with a paid cast, paid designers and paid directors, Forno is quick to say the effort is about much more than what happens on those few nights on stage.
“For me, theater saved my life,” she said. “It was my mental health outlet. It gave me community. It brought me my tribe.”
That is the idea behind everything she has built thus far, and it is why she wanted this show in particular. Forno saw the original Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway in 2017, six months pregnant and about to become a mom herself. The story of a struggling teen, and of parents trying to figure it out as they go, stayed with her. She waited years for the licensing rights to be released, and the moment they were, Beyond the Stage applied.
The timing feels even more urgent now. In conversations with local health departments and hospitals, Forno kept hearing the same number: one in five teens is struggling with anxiety or depression. A couple of years ago, she watched her own young son work through anxiety, despite two involved parents, a strong school system and plenty of people around him.
“That’s what kind of woke me up,” she said. “If my kiddo is having a hard time, how many other kids are having a hard time that do not have resources or community?”
So, the production is built to reach past the footlights. Beyond the Stage is partnering with local behavioral health programs and hospitals to set up resource tables at every performance, so audiences can meet the people in our own community who do this work every day. A licensed professional counselor will lead a talkback after the Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. And on Thursday, students from Garrett and Allegany county schools are invited to a dress rehearsal with their own talkback and resource tables.
The show does deal with heavy topics like suicide, grief and depression, and Forno is upfront that this is meant for teens and adults, with parental guidance. But, despite the tough topics presented, she wants audiences to walk out with something hopeful. “It’s okay to ask for help. We need to ask for help and we need to lean on our community. It’s okay to not be okay.”
She also wants people to bring tissues. “The human experience is both brutal and beautiful,” she said. “One minute you’re gutted, and then there are moments where you’re laughing so hysterically.”
This is where the community comes in, and Forno has a list. The first ask is simple: buy a ticket and come to see Dear Evan Hansen. The second is to buy a ticket for a student who otherwise could not go. Not every teenager who needs to see this show will have the means to get there, and a donated seat closes that gap. Beyond that, the production needs volunteers, donors and sponsors, and Forno welcomes anyone who wants to be part of it but isn’t sure how.
The production is also the launch of Pathways, a new Beyond the Stage program that puts high school students alongside working professionals. A Northern High School student is in the cast, another high schooler serves as the swing for every teenage girl’s role, and students are working on the technical crew. Each student follows a weekly curriculum, meets with a mentor from the production and finishes with a portfolio, reel or directing book they can take to college auditions or job interviews. Forno hopes portions of ticket sales and donations can grow into scholarships for future Pathways students.
All told, 25 to 30 people are working on the show, and every one of them is paid, including a director and choreographer in their mid-20s who are getting the break young artists rarely get.
Forno grew up in Garrett County and graduated from Northern High School before heading to New York City, and she remembers how much she would have benefited from those connections a little earlier.
“Not everybody’s gonna end up on Broadway,” she said. “But everybody will end up with life skills that will make them a better human.”
There is room in Pathways for students who never want to sing a note, too. Forno lights up describing the stage manager, the organized, spreadsheet-loving person who calls every cue and keeps everyone on time once the director’s vision is set. “Once the director’s got the vision set up, the stage manager runs the show,” she said. Front of house, box office, marketing, advocacy, lighting, sound and projections all need people too. High school students interested in helping with this production can still reach out.
Beyond the Stage didn’t start out this big.
In 2013, Forno was living in San Francisco with a conservatory job waiting for her when a friend’s wedding brought her back home. Her parents asked whether she had ever thought about opening something of her own. She sat at the kitchen table with her dad, a poster board and a pile of sticky notes, mapping out a class schedule and her academy, Mountain City Center for the Arts, was born. Initially opening with just 25 students the academy kept growing and her dad’s motto carried her through the lean stretches and the pandemic saying: “Coty, failure is not an option.”
Today the academy teaches dance, musical theater and music to students from age 2 through adulthood, drawing families from Garrett, Allegany, Mineral and Somerset counties. Its pre-professional students have competed at the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta since 2017, and in 2023 they premiered 13 JR. in front of 6,000 people.
The academy started as Forno’s own business. But, in 2016 she and her husband founded Beyond the Stage, a nonprofit that began as a scholarship fund honoring his father, a superintendent and lifelong lover of the arts. Over time the work outgrew the business model, and today everything operates under the nonprofit. The academy, now called Mountain City Creative Academy, is one of three legs of the stool. Pathways is the second. The third, Outreach, is the one Forno says she could talk about for hours.
“You think I love Pathways,” she said. “I love JumpStart Outreach even more.”
JumpStart Theatre is a national program of the Educational Theatre Foundation that helps schools with no theater program build one from scratch. It started in Cincinnati, mostly in city schools. When a suburban school there drew 75 kids to its first musical, organizers began wondering what rural kids would do with the same chance. In 2019, after a rigorous interview process, Beyond the Stage became JumpStart’s only rural partner. It joined a short list that includes La Jolla Playhouse in California, the University of Michigan, Cincinnati Children’s Theatre and the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.
The model is built so a school can say yes without a budget or a theater background. A school needs a team of three or more teachers who are willing to try and an administration that backs them. “Zero theater experience required,” Forno said. “Passion and purpose are number one.”
For three years, Beyond the Stage covers everything. A mentor teaching artist works on site with the teachers, and the teachers attend three day-long boot camps where they learn to stage scenes, teach choreography and teach music to young performers. Music Theatre International provides the show kits free for up to five years. Those kits are scripts, director’s guides and music adapted by iTheatrics into 30-minute or one-hour versions for young voices, and they can cost $500 to $1,000 on a school’s own dime. Broadway Media supplies microphones and projectors. Beyond the Stage adds $1,000 to $2,000 in technical stipends, plus a phone call whenever a teacher hits a problem they don’t know how to solve.
The program was designed for middle school, and Beyond the Stage helped launch programs at Northern Middle and Southern Middle, along with schools in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Then Forno started thinking younger. Elementary students, she noticed, will try almost anything before middle school’s social pressure sets in.
Accident Elementary became the first elementary JumpStart school in the nation, and the national program has since been rewritten to include elementary schools everywhere. Six schools have graduated from the program, and all of their programs are still running. Five more are being mentored now, three of them set to graduate this year. Broadford Elementary, now in its second year, is next up. The Broadford Broadway Bobcats will stage Shrek The Musical KIDS at the Garrett College Performing Arts Center Nov. 20 and 21 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 22 at 2 p.m. (the weekend after Dear Evan Hansen).
The results go well beyond the curtain call. Teachers have pulled Forno aside to tell her about a child who had never spoken in school, standing on stage singing a solo for the entire student body. Others report better attendance and better grades. “You’re creating a space of belonging in school,” she said. Families pitch in with pizza parties and cast T-shirts, and the whole school rallies around the show.
Every spring, Beyond the Stage brings all of its JumpStart schools together at the Garrett College PAC for a JumpStart Celebration. Students from Accident and other schools meet, take workshops, rehearse on the big stage with real lights and microphones, eat pizza from Brenda’s Pizzeria in the lobby and perform for one another. Forno compares it to a line from Frozen. “Instead of coronation day, I’m like, it’s JumpStart Celebration Day,” she said. This year’s celebration is planned for April 5.
The next step is a gentler on-ramp. Beyond the Stage is piloting a “year zero” with the Educational Theatre Foundation for schools that want a program but can’t launch one this year or next. Applications for new schools open in March, and teachers who are curious now can reach Forno directly. “I would love to,” she said, when asked about expanding beyond the tri-state area. “Winchester (Virginia) is only about an hour away.”
Forno knows firsthand what one teacher can do. A teacher started a drama club at Northern Middle School in 1996, and it changed the course of her life. “We don’t know what’s gonna do that same thing for these kids,” she said.
This is the academy’s 13th year, and Forno likes to borrow a line from that 13 JR. premiere: “I’m thirteen years old. And I’m just getting started.” Her goal now is to make sure Beyond the Stage outlives her and to continue growing long after she hands it to someone else.
For now, that future depends on the same thing Dear Evan Hansen does: a community that shows up. “People want to help,” she said.
“They’re not always gonna be the loudest on social media. But it just kind of gives me this renewed faith in our community that I always knew was there.”
Get Involved:
- See the Show: Dear Evan Hansen runs Nov. 13–15 at the Garrett College Performing Arts Center. Tickets are at beyondthestage.org. Recommended for teens and adults.
- Join the Talkback: A licensed professional counselor leads a discussion after the Sunday 2 p.m. matinee.
- Sponsor a Student Seat: Buy a ticket for a student who couldn’t otherwise attend.
- Volunteer, Donate or Sponsor: Support the production and help fund Pathways scholarships at beyondthestage.org.
- High School Students: Front-of-house, ticketing and advocacy roles are still open. Email Coty Forno at coty@mymcca.com.
- Teachers: Want a theater program at your school? JumpStart applications for new schools open in March. A new starter option for schools that aren’t ready yet is coming soon. Email coty@mymcca.com.
- Visit the Studio: Beyond the Stage is on Mechanic Street in Frostburg, open 3 to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Pay-what-you-can adult classes are available.
- Cheer On the Next Generation: Broadford Elementary’s Shrek The Musical KIDS plays the Garrett College PAC Nov. 20 and 21 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 22 at 2 p.m.
From the November issue of the Lakefront Magazine.