Maple Grove Youth Stars in Stages Theatre Company Play

He’s been acting for eight years and has aspirations to become a director or movie star some day. So, for 12-year-old Jack Alexander, performing in the Stages Theatre Company’s “Diary of a Worm, a Spider and a Fly" is all par for the course.

“I love acting because it’s really fun,” Alexander, a student at Maple Grove Junior High School, said. “I love that fact that I can entertain other people.”  

The play, inspired by Doreen Cronin's popular series of bug books, began on Jan. 18 and runs through Feb. 17. Joan Cushing wrote the play and, in a press release, said that it gives audiences an inside look at what a worm, a spider and a fly really think about the world around them.

Alexander said that he’s been practicing five days a week for more than two hours each day since December.

“This is the most I’ve ever practiced for a play,” Alexander said, noting that he’s performed in a handful of community and school theater plays, but never with Stages. And out of all the plays he’s performed in, he’s never played a bug.

In his role as army ant, Alexander said he has quite a few lines and shows emotion through a wide display of facial expressions.

“He has just been one of those kids who, since he was very little, just likes to perform,” Karin, Alexander’s mom, said. “Whether it’s writing his own plays, or practicing, he just loves it.”

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