Steve Marcus

After a long day at school, it’s dress rehearsal night for the young actors at Rainbow Company, which is extra exciting because it’s the first time they get to try on their costumes and makeup. The restrooms at the Charleston Heights Arts Center have been turned into makeshift dressing rooms where boys and girls are carefully transformed into a Tortoise, a Squirrel, a Dog, a Hare (with two gigantic buck teeth painted over his lower lip) and a Crow, played by Alexis Phillips, 13, seen here having her beak adjusted by Molly Rautenstrauch.

By Joe Brown

Fri, Jun 13, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Can you feel it? That hopeful energy in the air signals the end of the school year. It’s also the end of a season for the moonlighting student-actors at the Rainbow Company youth theater, who have spent their precious after-school hours preparing and performing plays. They’re getting ready to take the stage Saturday and Sunday in “The Great Cross-Country Race,” a variation on “The Tortoise and the Hare.” Currently in its 30th season, Rainbow has been producing five plays a year, one of which is designed to tour to elementary schools throughout the valley. The drama will start all over again with auditions in mid-August — along with a new semester.

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Steve Marcus

“Oh my gosh, you are so badgeresque!” jokes 15-year-old Michaela Geldmacher, the Rabbit, simultaneously teasing and complimenting Devin Bozzelli, 18, who is expertly applying her own makeup, working from a sort of paint-by-numbers sketch. “I’ve been in this company for seven years, so it’s kind of like going to a different school,” Bozzelli says. “We’re here about three hours each night during the six weeks of rehearsals. We started staying till 9:30 recently, so it’s a long day.”

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Steve Marcus

Rainbow draws students from schools all over the valley — some from as far away as Pahrump — hoping to join its ensemble, a group of 40 dedicated young people ages 10 to 18 selected from highly competitive open auditions. “I’ve tried out four different times,” says Derylle Spears, 12, another first-year ensemble member, who plays the Cricket in the current show. “When I got that phone call the fourth time, and they told me I was in the company, I literally collapsed and fell on the floor. I didn’t give up because this is something I wanted to do.”

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Steve Marcus

Ensemble members take classes and act in every Rainbow production, including Kyra Lehtinen, 17, and Jeremy Boone, 14, who play the competitive Tortoise and Hare in “Race.” The kids also learn to stage manage, construct sets, props and costumes, run lights and sound, and work backstage and front of house. “I really liked the idea of working onstage,” says Jared Rush, 13, who plays the Water Rat. “I’ve been in plays and stuff before, but I really wanted to try the crew side — making the set, hanging the lights and all that. It’s really rewarding to see it all coming together now, after all that work we put into it.”