BEAT Children’s Theatre swings into Summit High tonight with its latest large-scale musical theater offering, “Tarzan.”

“This is the Broadway show straight from New York City,” said director Jonathan Shepherd. “The musical is very faithful to the Disney movie. So it’s a lot of the same songs. Phil Collins did the compositions for each one of those, and the stories and characters are the same.”

That 1999 film and 2006 Broadway musical were themselves inspired by the 1914 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, of course.

While it’s based on Burroughs’ vision of Tarzan, an English child orphaned in Africa and raised by gorillas, “Disney evolved the story quite a bit to make it into the movie, so it’s not nearly as dark or as violent,” Shepherd said, “It’s still a little bit dark and violent for certain parts of it, but not as consistently.”

Shepherd is directing his first show, which happens to have BEAT’s largest-ever cast: More than 60 young actors ages 7-21. They’re backed by a live band featuring 12 instruments — make that 13 if Shepherd, a musician who’s served as musical director of past BEAT shows, decides to join.

“‘Tarzan’ appealed to me because it’s Phil Collins, and the music is terrific,” Shepherd said. “It’s scored for three percussionists, which is pretty unusual for a pit orchestra, so I just wanted to have a rousing sound, a live band — some elements we don’t include very often in BEAT productions. The band is of a scope and size we’ve never done before.”

While those may be enough reasons to break out your best Tarzan yodel, BEAT is also celebrating 10 years of introducing young minds to the theater world.

“This show will also mark BEAT’s official 10th birthday … (it’s) a very special celebration for us. The show will be huge and beautiful and joyful,” said Bree Beal, executive director of BEAT.

Asked about the nonprofit’s goals in years go come, Craig Apregan, chairman of the BEAT board, said, “We want to continue doing what we’re doing and maintain the high quality of productions. That’s one. Two, we want to expand our outreach. In other words, we want to expand and be able to expand our offerings to different under-served populations. I’ll just give you an example: We did our first bilingual theater production last summer, which was incredible. I’d never seen a bilingual play done in English and then again in Spanish, simultaneously.”

Apregan has a ready example of someone who’s benefited from getting involved with BEAT.

“We had a daughter who was interested in musical theater, and now she’s studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland,” he said. “What it did is it helped instill a passion in her. The thing that BEAT does so well — and I’m clearly biased — is it’s great for kids that are interested in theater.”

“But more importantly,” he said, “it teaches them things outside of theater. It teaches them self-confidence. It teaches them how to work with people in groups, adults and other children. It teaches them a sense of teamwork.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com