They bag groceries, sort mail, tear movie tickets, shelve books. They live with their parents and on their own. Some go to school, and at least one earned a Hope scholarship. None has a driver's license. They're driven by parents or carpools, or take public transportation.

Then they arrive each evening at Jerry's Habima Theatre at the Marcus Jewish Community Center, in Dunwoody, and they become something else.

Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)

Hamption Whatley helps Seth Kaiserman with his tie.

Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)

Evan Dewey (from left), Casey Brennan, Josh Newhard, Stacy Anderson, Coker and Stephen Odom rehearse before the opening of 'Footloose' at Habima Theatre.

Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)

Mary Beth Coker (, who plays Ariel, fixes her makeup during a costume change.

Jenni Girtman/AJC (ENLARGE)

Casey Brennan (front) Evan Nodvin (center) and Josh Newhard rehearse 'Footloose' at Habima Theatre.

"I'm a bagger by morning," sums up Katie Rouille, 26, "an actor at night."

This week's Habima musical production of "Footloose," like the plays that have preceded it for 14 years, is likely the purest piece of theater on any Atlanta area stage. Laughs are bigger and eyes well up more than anywhere else. It's never perfect, but always perfectly realized. Sometimes it's profoundly hilarious, other times just profound.

All but five of this year's 41 cast members are adults with developmental disabilities. The diagnoses include autism, Down, Fragile X and combinations simply labeled "a syndrome."

It's all some of the actors can do to find their way onto the stage, yet once they get there, it's like they've found a home. For every blown line or late entrance, there's a faultlessly timed comedic bit or a stirringly warbled duet that reminds the audience why theater exists in the first place.

"It's a cross between an elementary school production and high art," says Kim Goodfriend, the center's arts and entertainment director and the theater's founding producer.

"These are the people behind the bakery counter in Publix or bagging your groceries who you may not have noticed until they came here and are under the lights," she adds. "It does for them what theater does for anybody. The shy checkout girl who takes a theater class and finds her voice. This is as unpretentious a process as you'll find in the theater."

For some, it's even more than that.

"I do it for the same reason real actors do it: to get away from who I am and be someone else," says Linda Danzig, at 57 the oldest actor in this year's show. "It's challenging every day to do things. But this shows people with disabilities 'you can do it.' "

Danzig is talking backstage minutes before Wednesday's opening night. The theater's 250 seats are nearly filled. She says another actor told her he couldn't go on tonight, that he was afraid he'd blow it.

"I said: 'Don't you say that. You can't say that in life and be successful.' He said, 'But I'll mess up.' I said: 'So what? Every person messes up.' "

Scene I. In which actors, once lost, are found.

Hollie Meglio, associate stage manager, lines up a half dozen actors backstage during rehearsal. Realizes one actor is missing.

"Where's Seth?"

No answer. Opens door to hallway, spots Seth Kaiserman, 27, standing there. Leads him through the door, nudges him onto the stage. It's Seth's first Habima play. Meglio exhales. But only for a second.

Then: "Where's Anna?"

Like a lot of actors, they have quirks. They tend to be literalists. When a director once told a cast to "paint pictures" on stage, one actor slowly waved a hand up and down, as if it were a brush. She was painting pictures. Even traditional opening-night calls to "break a leg" get nervous backstage glances.

They want to get it right as much as they don't want to get it wrong. Just like actors everywhere.

"There are more similarities than differences," says Dina Shadwell, a local actor before becoming the theater's director. "Every actor is sensitive. They're ripping their chest cavity open and exposing themselves to failure.

"These are people who have spent their whole lives trying not to stand out, and I'm trying to get them to stand out," she adds. "Some I have to draw out. Some I have to reign in."

They began rehearsals in January for this week's five-performance run. They show up as often as five days a week.

Yet while Shadwell sees her role as part nurturer, she's also the director. She demands a lot. She cuts actors off when their questions aren't on point. She doesn't put up with off-stage drama, of which there can be plenty, with two engaged couples and several other more recent pairings – real Broadway stuff.

"I feel maternal and protective, but I'm not easy on them. I expect high standards for my work, and I expect the same from them," Shadwell says. "If they say, 'I can't do it,' I ask if they've ever tried.

"Some think they have more limitations than they have. People around them often don't expect things."

Most of the actors have experienced those lowered expectations outside the theater. Many have endured strangers calling them, as Katie Rouille puts it, "the R-word."

Cynthia Outman, 31, earned a diploma in educational paraprofessional training from DeKalb Technical College in 1999. But department heads and teachers, both at the college and at a paraprofessional course she took in high school, she says, told her someone with Down Syndrome couldn't handle the work.

"I told them I could do it and had to prove it," Outman says.

She passed her high school course with a B average, got her college diploma and now works as a librarian's assistant at the Coralwood School in DeKalb County — the same special needs facility she attended as a preschooler.

"I've always thought of the upside of things," Outman says. "Instead of Down Syndrome, I say Up Syndrome. What you can do depends on your perspective. A lot of people say I can't do something, and I just say I can. I'm determined that way.

"You know that song 'The Impossible Dream'?" she continues. "I always wanted to be an actress. It was a dream for me. I wanted it to come true.

"And it did."

Scene II. In which an actor reveals what it's like to perform in front of an audience for the first time — just before he performs in front of an audience for the first time.

First dress rehearsal, before about 100 friends of the director and the other theater professionals — stage managers, designers, technical people — who help with the production. Show has begun. Actors stand in the hallway, ready to enter stage right.

Seth is one of them. He's where he's supposed to be. He's just not sure what's next.

"It's like getting on an airplane for the first time. The pilot knows where he's going, but you don't know where you're going."

They used to have "shadows" — someone assigned to every actor who was disabled to make sure he or she did the right thing. They then had prompters — a director or stage manager who whispered forgotten lines from near the stage. Some years they wore ear buds, which let the prompter speak to them directly when they ran into trouble.

Shadwell has now dumped the prompters altogether.

"I just told them they had to remember their lines."

The first play was "The Fifteen Minute Hamlet," an abridged Shakespeare with about a dozen actors that ran about 45 minutes. The plays, the casts and the roles for the actors with disabilities all grew. Among the other shows the theater has produced: "Fiddler on the Roof," "Oklahoma!" and "Honk!"

This week's production of "Footloose" runs about two hours, with intermission. The theater also won last year's Spirit of Suzi Bass Award, for local community enrichment, given by the city's only professional theater awards organization.

"We worried for a long time we weren't going to live up to what we wanted to do, which was a dignified theater production," Goodfriend says. "A trust had to be built. Now it's there."

Many of the actors have performed at the theater for years and grown with it. Parents talk about self-esteem soaring.

"She gets the applause she's always wanted," says Stacey Coker, whose daughter, Mary Beth, 21, plays the vamping preacher's daughter in "Footloose," a major role. "A lot of times these kids don't get that. They see somebody else get the awards because they have better skills.

"This is a time for Mary Beth to shine. To be the star."

Scene III. In which the point of the story is made.

Backstage, dress rehearsal, line of actors waits for start of Act II. In the darkness, somebody whispers to somebody else, asking if he's ready. The other person whispers back, "Yes!" Standing nearby, Seth nods in agreement. He has Act I under his belt. It's no longer his first flight.

Talking to nobody in particular, Seth says out loud in the backstage darkness and the pre-act quiet: "Life's too short to waste, right?"