The Discovery Cube Orange County children’s science museum’s annual holiday attraction is back again this year with an expanded educational musical produced by a local Tony Award-winning team that is drawing bigger crowds.
“We’ve already seen just in the beginning this year double the attendance,” said Tim Kashani, who co-created the production, “Winter Lights: A Journey Home,” with his wife, Pamela Winslow Kashani.
“It’s starting to now feel like a legacy piece.”
The stage used for the holiday-themed show, which debuted last year, has been home to the science museum’s popular annual “Bubblefest” attraction, but it could be seeing much more productions as the museum branches out to the arts to help with its mission.
Discovery Cube CEO Joe Adams’ “vision from day one once the theater was built was how do we continue to put content there that inspires,” Kashani told City News Service.
“The idea is to use that space and other spaces year round,” he added. “And `Bubblefest’ is such a great anchor.”
The story takes place in Santa Ana with a budding scientist, Lumina, a high school senior pushing to finish a science project when something goes awry and she and her younger sister are transported to a magical place where they meet a science fairy who helps Lumina rediscover her youthful passion for science to inspire a solution for her experiment.
Sophia Ruiz, who starred as Lumina last year as an Orange County School of the Arts student, returned for opening night Friday to reprise her role. She’s now a freshman at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio studying musical theater.
“She’s in college now but she got back a week before the show to open it,” Kashani said. “And we changed the script — not significantly — but about 20% is new, which is almost harder for an actor who knows it in one way. But she’s phenomenal. She’s going to work (in the industry) her whole life.”
The show has several extra actors to fill in when some of the students are in school or happen to fall ill, Kashani said.
Winslow Kashani and Katrina Murphy play the science fairy, QED.
Danielle Torres, an Orange County School of the Arts student, will play Lumina some nights. Erika Mireya Cruz is available to play Lumina or Alex, the younger sibling. Noella Larson, Amelia Fischer, Kalani Jules and Cameron Avery play Alex.
Another new attraction is at the museum’s gift shop with a plush toy based on the robot Lumina built. The robot — Jean Luc — is played by puppeteers Danny Montooth and Louis Pardo. The name for the character was inspired by the filmmaker Jean Luc Godard and the “Star Trek” character Jean-Luc Picard, Kashani said.
“My wife was on `Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ and if you put the two together that’s her homage to both worlds, and I went to film school so obviously that name has great resonance in both worlds,” Kashani said.
Winslow Kashani “came up with the concept” for the show “and had the idea of a toaster that’s turned into a robot, and Lumina was inspired by her watching science fiction with her dad.”
She worked with Adams on outlining the story and its themes, Kashani said.
“Joe wanted to have a family feel to it,” Kashani said. “We also didn’t want it to be too easy for Lumina. We wanted to show the struggle that goes into something along those lines.”
The show was intended to debut three years ago, but got interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and found its way to the Discovery stage last year.
“The biggest change this year is thanks to the Samueli Foundation we have a large LED video wall” in the production, Kashani said.
That allowed for the projection of more images such as some of history’s greatest scientists and an image of a science center where Lumina would go as a child, Kashani said.
Lumina at one point “paints a landscape of nature” with borrowed magic to illustrate the connection between “right brain and left brain” as art can be linked to science, Kashani said.
The montage of scientists’ images comes with a teaser to the museum’s next exhibit in January that will feature images from the James Webb telescope, Kashani said.
The show’s creators also worked more on unifying the musical with the activities elsewhere in the museum, Kashani said.
Some of the scenes from the show are echoed in exhibits in the museum.
“Last year we were under the crunch with the first time the big show was put on,” Kashani said. “But the time between then and this year to think about it really paid off.”
The annual tradition of the Gingerbread house exhibits was also more closely tied to the winter-themed attraction.
Cherie Whyte, the museum’s vice president of marketing, said Discovery will also offer “sensory friendly” productions of the musical this year.
“We’re making special accommodations to make it more comfortable with people who struggle with sensory overload,” Whyte said.
Productions of the show will be presented each day at 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. through Jan. 7, except Christmas Day when the museum is closed.