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."

Eleven-year-old Johnna, who is deeply involved in the sixth grade Halloween pageant although her family views it as a celebration of an un-Christian holiday, decides that she must follow her own beliefs.

During World War II in England, three motherless children, whose father is reported missing in action, go to live with their grandmother in London and join the members of their talented theatrical family in a school for stage training.

After many years of retirement, an old Kamishibai man--a Japanese street performer who tells stories and sells candies--decides to make his rounds once more even though such entertainment declined after the advent of television.

Topher Blakely gets the lead in the eight-grade play, but unfortunately the play is "Rumpelstiltskin," the class bully picks on him relentlessly, and his beloved cat dies, all of which teach him a lot about compassion, friendship, and life.

Even though Hal is gay and Chuck is straight, the two fifteen-year-olds are best friends and set up a blog where Hal records his budding romance with a young Frenchman and Chuck falls for a summer theater camp diva.

Zoe, chosen to lead her whole class in the Bunny Hop at the end of the school play, faces a crisis of self-confidence when Winifred laughs at her, causing her to lose her hop.

Everyone believes that sophomore honors student Ethan Lederer is a top-notch scholar and a great guy, but a new student helps Ethan to discover and disclose that he is just acting a role, even as she reveals her own mental instability.

Chet and his partner, Natalie Attired, take on a case involving an actor gone missing from the school musical.

When the new boy at her school turns out to be the son of a Hollywood power player, Jessica, a small-town sixteen-year-old with stars in her eyes, a job at Wal-Mart, and a bit part in "West Side Story," sets out to get Jordan's estranged father to attend the production--but her drama teacher's politically correct hatchet job on the script threatens to turn her "big break" into a disaster.