In its six years of operation, Homeschool Theater Club has earned a reputation for high-quality, elaborate productions. This year’s play, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” featured an impressive set, an actual “Chitty” car and 20 musical numbers.

But those behind the scenes say the group is about much more than entertainment. Homeschool Theater Club has helped timid children tap into creative sides they didn’t know they had.

“It’s been neat to create an atmosphere where kids feel comfortable to explore that [creativity] without feeling judged. That’s something we’ve wanted to cultivate for them,” Director Suzie Wambeke said.

“We do this for the kids; we just love it,” she added. “We enjoy seeing them when they get up on stage, what they produce. That big smile across their face: It’s priceless. You can’t put a number on that.”

The club began when a few mothers realized something was missing from their children’s homeschool experience: a school play. So six years ago, they decided to tackle J.M. Barrie’s classic, “Peter Pan,” with a distinctly homeschool take on the play.

“We wanted to do the education thing; we wanted everybody to read the book and then try to write the play from the book,” Wambeke said. “It was king of interesting to see why playwrights and why movies veer from the book, because you really can’t put it on stage.”

Once students had written and edited the script to their satisfaction, the club got to work. Those who weren’t cast as actors in “Peter Pan” were involved in lighting, sound and other behind-the-scenes roles.

The play was a success — so much so that the club decided to make the homeschool production an annual event. “Narnia” followed “Peter Pan.” Then the group performed a Christmas pageant, “The Jungle Book,” “Oliver Twist,” “Les Miserables” and this year’s “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

Each production has grown more involved and attracted more students, Wambeke said. Seventy-six students were cast in “Les Mis” in 2011.

“Last year was too much,” she said. “We had them try out this year, to see what kids were really wanting to be there and to participate other than just kind of hanging out.”

Even with auditions, 54 kids were cast in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and about 30 more were involved behind the scenes, Wambeke said. The production itself was more elaborate than anything the club had ever done before.

“I never expected it to go this long and be this big,” Wambeke said. “We said, ‘Yeah, let’s do a school play,’ but I had no idea the ramifications of what that would do for our kids.”

The experience has transformed some shy students into fearless performers. Wambeke remembers a pair of siblings who stammered and shook the first time they tried out.

“Now they’re our leads,” she said. “You wouldn’t even believe: They were just amazing leads and just took off. They’re very comfortable with themselves and very confident.

“It’s just a neat thing to see that come about. The fruits of our labor definitely have been the children. ... It’s like a self-discovery.”

Sometimes that journey takes some time. Micah Hern, 18, said it took a few years before he was comfortable on stage. Even though his first two roles were small, he was always nervous during performances.

Then he was cast as Bagheera in “The Jungle Book,” the largest role he had ever played.

“I had to live up to it,” he explained.

Micah must have succeeded; the following year, he was cast as Jean Valjean in “Les Mis.” This year he played his first antagonist, Baron Bomburst in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

“It was the first bad-guy role I got” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”

Micah’s 14-year-old brother, Travis, also started out as a timid actor. When his siblings tried out for their first play with the group, he didn’t even audition.

“I didn’t even want to when they said they had an extra role for me to play,” he said. “My dad convinced me to.”

But that convincing didn’t help his nerves before his first performance.

“I felt like I was going to puke,” he said.

“I was sitting in a room, staring at the wall, breathing. I only had one line, but I was still nervous about saying it. It was something like, ‘Arrrgh,’ and I was supposed to die when I said it. I kept reciting, ‘Arrrgh, arrrgh, arrrgh.’”

Travis survived his first performance and went on to minor roles in the Christmas pageant and “The Jungle Book.” In “Les Mis,” he was cast as Marius, one of the play’s leading roles and love interest of Cosette, who was played by his sister, Jessi.

This year, the Herns played off each other again as the bumbling spies who plague the main characters in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

“It was really fun, especially since my sister got to be the other spy. Knowing the other person so well, it was really easy to act mad at her a lot,” Travis said.

“We could kind of bounce off each other really easy. I’ve found in other roles I had before, if I had anyone to bounce off, it was hard because I didn’t know them really well.

“I try to be funny a lot, and this play really gave me an opportunity to really be funny,” Travis added. “It was probably the most fun I’ve had in a play.”

Jessi agreed she had a great time playing opposite her younger brother, but admitted the play was a challenge for a different reason. In past productions, she had been cast as Cosette, a dancer and, in her first production, Lucy, the girl who discovers the door through the wardrobe into Narnia.

“I had to swallow my pride a lot” in this year’s play, she said. “I played a beautiful girl in all the other things. In this I had black pants, a black, baggy shirt and had to wear a mustache. It was terrible.”

She laughed, then added: “I really enjoyed it.”

Jessi got her start in the club when Wambeke ran into her at a skating rink. The club was gearing up for its production of “Narnia” and Wambeke had just found her lead.

“She said, ‘Your daughter looks an awful lot like Lucy. Can you come to auditions?’” said Jessi’s mother, Darcy Hern. “That’s how it started.”

The Herns have been involved in nearly every production since then, something Darcy Hern never would have guessed after that first audition.

“My kids were totally scared to death,” she said. “I could hardly hear them in that first audition. They had little tiny, tiny voices. My youngest son just clung to me; he wouldn’t even get up there.

“Now they’re totally different people,” she added. “They’re over-the-top crazy actor people. It’s all because of Suzie and what she brought out of them.”

Others have suggested it may be Hern’s influence appearing in her children; she grew up performing in community theater productions.

“People say, ‘They must have a lot of their mother in them,’” she said. “But I never know they were like that.”

While she is a biased mother who thinks the shows are fantastic, the actor in Hern appreciates the production value of the plays. She admits she didn’t expect much to begin with but has been pleasantly surprised.

So are other people, she said. Hern had tried for years to get certain friends to attend a homeschool production, but every year they had an excuse.

“They just thought it’s a hokey homeschool play,” she said. “But they came to see it this time and were absolutely blown away. They said, ‘I really thought it was going to be cheesy, but this was incredible. This was amazing.’

“‘I’ve been trying to tell you this for years,’” Hern remembers telling them. “‘Now you finally get it.’”

Kristi Albertson, editor of This Week in the Flathead, may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.