The best and brightest stars of the stage - and a giant plant with an appetite for blood - will show their talents under the spotlight in two blockbuster shows playing in Ballarat.
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BLOC will bring the competition of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to life over seven performances at Mount Rowan Theatre, and the talented senior musical theatre students from Ballarat Centre for Music and the Arts will battle wits with a carnivorous bloodthirsty plant in Little Shop of Horrors at the Gay E. Gough Theatre at Mount Clear College.
BCMA has invested $4000 to hire the massive plant puppet central to the storyline of the popular rock musical.
"We have worked on the show for six months so it's a nice climax to finally get delivery of the plant puppet," said BCMA director Paula Heenan.
"It's such a life-like plant, it's scary, but a very friendly looking plant. While the show comes with some thematic warnings and the puppet is quite scary and gory because it eats people, at the same time it's fun to have that professional puppet."
The students themselves voted last year to mount a production of Little Shop of Horrors, and fundraised to cover the cost of the hire of the puppet through running sausage sizzles, movie nights and other fundraising drives.
"Presenting Little Shop of Horrors has been a very different journey for the Musical Theatre Senior class, including having some heavy debate about the themes and how to present them in a manner that reflects the intention of the writers, and the underlying morals or the story, but without offending, or even scaring, audience members," Ms Heenan wrote in the director's notes for the production.
"The content raised issues and many different opinions were heard, considered and worked through as a team."
BLOC's production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a smaller scale to some of their previous shows, with a cast of nine.
The musical comedy is centred around an eclectic group of six mid-pubescent teens vying to take home the spelling champion's crown.
Director Oscar Wilson said the stage was set for a seven-show season, with the cast and crew having worked on the show since June.
"It's a bit of a hidden gem of a musical," Mr Wilson said.
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"On the surface it seems very innocent and quite nice, but as the story progresses, as the show progresses, you begin to learn the experiences of these individual spellers through all the jokes and mayhem that happens.
"You have these little gems of interest about identity and growing up and that very awkward transition period into pre-adulthood."
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is at Mount Rowan Theatre (Mount Rowan Secondary College) from September 22 to October 1. For tickets visit spellingbeeballarat.com.
Little Shop of Horrors is on September 23 and 24 at the Gay E. Gough Theatre (Mount Clear Secondary College). For tickets visit events.humanitix.com/little-shop-of-horrors-presented-by-bcma-s-senior-musical-theatre-students
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