Although Tommy fails to get the part of Peter Rabbit in the kindergarten play, he still finds a way to be the center of attention on stage.

Allie's theatrical hopes are crushed when, instead of being cast as the princess, she is given the role of the evil queen in the fourth-grade class play.

Nick, a sixteen-year-old runaway, is selected for training at a secluded mansion to become one of the elite of living statues, actors who can live a life of ease if they are willing to train hard enough and please their mysterious benefactor, but who may be destroyed if they do not measure up.

Libby Dodge, the youngest inmate at Sherborn Women's Prison in Massachusetts in the early 1900s, gains insights into her past and future after she becomes a member of the prison choir and participates in the production of the operetta "The Pirates of Penzance."