Finding Home Onstage: Putnam County Middle School Presents ‘Dare to Dream Jr.’

Twenty-nine students. One theater teacher. Six months. Over 126 hours of rehearsals. A bit of extra help from the art teacher, the chorus teacher, a math teacher and front office support staff.

That’s what it took for Putnam County Middle School to present three nights of the Disney musical revue “Dare to Dream Jr.”

“We rehearse this for months and only get one weekend of performances,” said Seth Wicker, theater teacher at Putnam County Middle School. “A lot of people don’t fully understand the time commitment that goes into it.”

Wicker himself is a graduate of Putnam County Middle School.

“When I was in middle school, we didn’t have a musical theater program,” Wicker said. “We did when I got to high school, but there were a lot of students who didn’t have a home.”

For the past five years, Wicker has been the theater teacher, working with students — both on and behind stage — to produce about two productions each year.

“It’s always good to build that relationship — that director-student, teacher-student relationship,” Wicker said. “Because I had teachers that did that with me and I still talk to them to this day, and those are memories I’ll have for the rest of my life.”

Wicker said he hopes that, especially for adults, the performance gives audiences a brief respite from the world.

“There’s a lot going on in the world right now,” Wicker said. “The world needs a little bit of fun. The world needs silly. The world needs — like the show — they need to dare to dream.”

Bridget Goodman is a 2026 graduate of the University of Georgia who participated in the Woodall Weekend Workshop in Putnam County in March. Goodman is heading to Georgetown University in the fall to pursue a law degree.