The Starlight Mountain Theatre opened in 2000, realizing a dream for Eddy Davis who always wanted to open his own theatre, he decided Crouch was the place to do it so he moved his family from Atlanta back to Idaho.
"My dad was a college professor and he taught theatre speech and drama," said Skye Davis, Eddy's son who has helped take over this family business as his parents got older. "He just wanted to have his own theatre, he was turning 40 and he realized if he didn’t do it now he might never do it so we took a leap of faith."
More than two decades later, the Davis family helps people enjoy the mountains in a unique way as the cast puts on a live performance Monday through Saturday night at 8:00 p.m.
Starlight cycles through a number of different plays, this year they started with Cinderella, currently they are performing the Little Mermaid, Calamity Jane and Pirates of the Penzance Goes West, in August they will add the Play that Goes Wrong.
"I mean my favorite thing is singing, it’s what I love doing," said Maddie Jorgenson who plays Ariel in the Little Mermaid. "But I love doing it as a character, I always say acting is just playing make believe and we get to wear pretty costumes while we do it and bring other people into the story, which is just a fun thing to do."
The Starlight Mountain Theatre recruits young adults who bring youthful energy to shows, but it is also a chance for them to gain confidence, build their resume and spend the summer in the mountains of Idaho.
"We have a lot of talented kids here at the theatre," said Davis. "We travel the country during our audition tour in January and February to find all these kids, bring them out here and we are thankful they keep coming back,"
Jorgenson will return to southern California for her senior year as she looks forward to graduating with a degree in voice performance, but she will always remember her summer in Garden Valley.
"Absolutely, I’m from Nampa so it is a little bit hotter every time every time I go down the mountain," said Jorgenson. "I love being up here by the trees, by the river I go for drives all the time and just smell the mountain air, I feel really lucky."
Jorgenson enjoys taking tickets and helping people to their seats, it's all part of the job at the Starlight Mountain Theatre that mixes the magic of the mountains with the magic of live performances in a intimate setting that seats up to 300 people.
"It’s a blast I love that we seat everybody at Starlight so I get to see a lot of the people come through and talk to them before the show," said Jorgenson. "In the pre-show we don’t have lights on us so we get to make eye contact with the people in the audience and then just looking up it’s fun when I sing about the sun as the Little Mermaid, I actually get to gesture towards the sun."
Disclaimer, in out video we showed clips from the pre-show, we weren't able to record any video of Calamity Jane because like most plays at Starlight those have copyright restrictions, but I can tell you it was a very enjoyable performance.
For more information on tickets and a calendar of performances click here.
