The two girls appear to be around 13, but you can’t call them jaded teenagers. Once they see “The Oxydent Hour of Smiles” logo that’s painted on the wall in front of them, both give out with a sound that’s partway between an “Ahhhh!” and an excited scream.

The mural neither commemorates a genuine product nor an actual program. But as any Broadway aficionado can tell you, “The Oxydent Hour of Smiles” is the fictitious radio show on which Oliver Warbucks spreads the word that he wants to find Annie’s parents.

Both girls run their hands over the mural, just fleetingly, but enough to reconnect with the time they either did Annie or perhaps even played Annie (or at the very least played the original cast album or soundtrack). Then the taller girl turns around, takes in the vast hall around her and softly says with profound emotion, “This whole place brings back so many memories.”

It’s the type of remark we usually hear from a much older person, but this young girl probably has her fond memories from returning time and time again to one of the most remarkable events that can be experienced by a tween or teen who’s interested in Broadway musicals: The Junior Theater Festival, held each third weekend in January at Atlanta’s Cobb Galleria Centre.

On this Friday night, the girls continue their stroll down the hall and, in the process, Memory Lane, too. They pull out their cell phones not to make calls, but to take selfies at the various displays that celebrate musicals. One snaps a photo of the other holding the pom-poms provided at the High School Musical booth; then they trade places for another selfie before they corral an adult to snap a photo of them both in cheerleading positions. The gentleman then graciously offers to take more pictures of them, and they take him up on his offer before thanking him profusely. (If there’s one thing that Junior Theater Festival kids are, it’s polite and well-mannered. Being involved in the lofty world of musical theater does that to a kid.)

Soon the girls are posing with Milky White in the Into the Woods diorama before moving on to put a hand on each side of the glass bell jar that covers the rose in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. They also aren’t above getting on their hands and knees and taking a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other in front of the Annie unit.

While they enjoyed them all, their laughter is loudest when they tackle The Little Mermaid booth, for here Ariel’s tail has been provided, but it’s up to each kid to lie down and fill in the rest of her body. No question that they’re taking the advice that the Newsies stand proclaims: “Seize the Day.” (It’s good advice as well as an inadvertent spelling lesson; seeing “SEIZE” in print serves to teach kids that “’I’ before ‘E’ except after ‘C’” is not an exact -- and here’s another example – science).

Nearby is “Musicals, Inc.,” the gift shop, with mugs, T-shirts, key chains, and plenty of other items sporting logos if not quite from A to Z, then at least from Aladdin to Xanadu. You’ve heard of Legoland? Well, this is Logoland.

Students from PS 124 performing Fiddler on the Roof JR. (Photo by Marcus Woollen)

Shirlee Idzakovich, who’s helping to run the emporium, points to some empty bins and tells me “You have no idea how quickly the Hamilton merchandise flew off the shelves. I’ve never seen anything like this Hamilton phenomenon,” she says as she gives a grand gesture to the sea of kids around her. “Every one of these kids here can sing you a song or two from the show.” When I look dubious –- after all, how long has the Hamilton cast album been available? – she reaches out and grabs the sleeves of two young passers-by. They’re both from Lexington, Kentucky -- a good 700 miles away from where Hamilton plays – but Vivien Kurtz immediately starts “My Shot,” and two words in Kieshaun Butts joins her. Soon a third passer-by joins in and all are word-for-word complete. I’m astonished, just as I am after I leave the shop and overhear a young girl clad in a Hamilton hoodie tell a friend “I figure if I wear this when I get home, everyone might think I actually got to see the show.”

Somewhere between 10 to 20 times during the weekend, I pass by the table labeled “First Aid,” where a man is stationed – always sitting alone and checking his iPhone. Good! We don’t want anyone hurt! And getting through the weekend without a mishap isn’t a certainty, because there are 5832 kids here.

Mathematicians will tell you that 5832 is the largest four-digit number that is equal to the cube of the sum of its digits. Fine – but here’s betting that 5832 is not the highest number of students that the Junior Theater Festival will ever host. In fact, the entire enterprise has become so big that next year there will also be a Junior Theater Festival West in Sacramento from Feb. 10-12.

Not bad for an event that hosted all of 16 groups when it began in 2003. “And we thought that was terrific,” says Timothy Allen McDonald, the founder and CEO of iTheatrics who launched JTF. “Now we have 115 student performing groups from 29 states as well as South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. This festival is actually hosting more people here today than live in my Northern California hometown.”

Yes, for we haven’t even included the teachers and chaperones who accompany each group. Go to any theme park, and you’ll find parents yelling at their kids to “Get over here now!” or “Listen to me when I talk to you!” or “Because I said so!” For two solid days as I pass by hordes of students and adults, I never hear a single rebuke or even see an eyes-to-heaven grimaced face of frustration. But we’ve known all along, haven’t we, that those who get involved in drama programs overwhelmingly turn out to be the good kids, don’t they?

They’re not just here to attend book signings from Andrew Keenan-Bolger (who has a l-o-n-g line of kids waiting patiently for him to sign his Jack and Louisa books), Mary Pope (Magic Tree House) Osborne and Jodi Picoult, who’s writing a musical with McDonald. Attending a concert by Darren ("Glee") Criss will be great, too, but that’s not why they’re here. The real raison d'être is to perform on Saturday morning. Each group will do a 15-minute excerpt of the musical it either performed at home in the fall or will do in the spring.

More than two dozen of the groups are from Georgia, but some faraway troupes paid tens of thousands of dollars to get here. Yes, Musical Theater International (more chummily known as MTI), Playbill and Disney Musicals do chip in to defray some costs, but there is that tariff for transportation, hotel rooms and meals which teachers must find a way to pay. That’s a quite a few bake sales, car washes and entreaties to local fat cats.

All for 15 minutes of performing, you ask? Well, there’s a great deal more to the Festival than that. Why wait to be an adult to network? Lord knows how many lifelong friendships are being made this weekend, be they ones forged by students and/or teachers. How many sets and costumes will now be shared? How many ideas will be stated that will improve others’ productions?

The 5832 make a colorful group, too, and that doesn’t merely mean that boys suddenly break out in singing “Luck Be a Lady” from Guys and Dolls or girls start to dance when they hear the vamp to Hairspray's “Good Morning, Baltimore.” No, they’re dressed colorfully, too. That doesn’t mean costumes – actually precious few are used in the presentations – but T-shirts of many different hues abound.

Some directors opt to put their kids in shirts that reflect the color that they’ve been assigned and attached to each function room – “pod” is the preferred term – so we see blue, charcoal, chocolate, gold, green, lilac, lime, magenta, maroon, navy, orange, purple, red, silver and yellow. If the festival keeps growing, how long before fuscous (a dingy brown), luteolus (a shade of yellow) and zinnober (a chrome green) are pressed into service?

Godspell JR. during the Broadway JR. Retrospective (Photo by Marcus Woollen)

Other directors have opted for T-shirts that sport the names of their shows. So boys may be wearing Annie and girls The Lion King. Many who wear Shrek shirts (“Believe All Ogre Again!”) accessorize with chartreuse headbands that sport those horn-like ears for which the animated character is famous. There will be 14 productions of SEUSSICAL to SHREK’s nine, but there are hundreds of greenish headbands in evidence and few red-and-white barber-pole top hats that are The Cat’s preferred headgear. Oh, well – does anyone still wear a hat? 

Full disclosure: aside from Hamilton, I haven’t really given you the accurate names of the shows the kids love or will perform once the Saturday morning sessions are underway. The abbreviation “JR.” follows almost each one.

The reason is that middle school kids – which constitute most of the 5832 here – might find mounting a two- or three-act musical a little daunting. You have to walk before you can run – today, The Phantom Tollbooth, tomorrow The Phantom of the Opera. So Music Theatre International’s Broadway Junior Series gives teachers the option to do condensed one-hour-or-so versions of shows that have played Broadway (such as Once on this Island), off-Broadway (Fame) or regional theaters (Honk!). Other one-hour versions may not have as impressive a pedigree, but these are musicals of famous books (Dear Edwina) or films (101 Dalmatians).

Can it be an accident or coincidence that MTI’s Broadway Junior series started in 1996 and JTF followed only seven years later? Each has clearly aided the other, so this 20th anniversary of the Broadway Junior series is a particularly piquant one. We’ll see the many ways that some groups celebrated the landmark anniversary in a report next Friday.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com. Check out his weekly column each Monday at www.broadwayselect.com, Tuesday at www.masterworksbroadway.com and Friday at www.kritzerland.com. His book The Great Parade: Broadway’s Astonishing, Never-To-Be Forgotten 1963-1964 Season is now available at www.amazon.com.