Mamaroneck will have its moment on the big screen on Thursday when “School Play” — a documentary about the Mamaroneck Avenue School’s 2005 production of “The Wizard of Oz” — gets its hometown premiere at the Clearview Mamaroneck Playhouse.

There will be two screenings of Rick Velleu’s award-winning film — at 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. — a fund-raiser for the school’s theater program. After the late show, a reception will be held at Cafe Mozart, with 25 percent of the dinner tabs going to the theater program.

For those in the film, “School Play” is a chance to see themselves as they were at a vulnerable time in their lives, when they were, as then-fifth-grader Isabel Azevedo puts it in the film, “too big for play dates and too young for hanging out.”

Now 13 — she’ll turn 14 next week — Azevedo says the movie is a real blast from the past.

“When I saw the movie, all those fifth-grade memories came back to me,” she says. “Other things, I can’t believe I said on camera.”

Produced and directed by Mamaroneck parent Velleu and his business partner, Eddie Rosenstein, “School Play” follows five members of the cast — Joey Angilletta, Azevedo, Elizabeth Gale, Jeffrey Slater and Nick Viagas — as they navigate auditions, rehearsals and performances, all while in the throes of growing pains.

It shows the work of parents and of musical director Steph Chinn and director Laurie Gage.

There are some indelible moments:

• Angilletta sweeping his father’s auto-body shop, humming “If I Only Had a Brain”;
• Azevedo learning that she has won the part of Dorothy;
• Gale singing “Lollipop Guild” in the library, mugging for the camera;
• Slater bonding with his father; and
• Viagas working with his speech therapist, trying to master his lines and overcome his stutter.

Velleu, who shot 200 hours of film for what became a 70-minute film, said he honed the story in the editing process.

“You can only have so many main characters in the film,” Velleu says, “but casting is just as important in a documentary as it is in a feature film. You need to find characters who you’ll fall in love with.”

Velleu, it seems, was everywhere over the three-month shoot, at rehearsals and at his subjects’ home for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He followed kids to their parents’ businesses — and even to a dentist appointment.

Along the way, there were surprises, like when Nick Viagas passed out in health class when he and the other 10-year-old boys were learning about the female reproductive system.

“Nick passing out in health class is known in the business as gold,” Velleu says, laughing.

Viagas, now 13, recalls the day.

“He came to me afterward like a giddy schoolgirl, saying ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’” Viagas says with a shy smile.

Viagas says that after Velleu’s cameras stopped rolling after closing night, he didn’t hear about the film for a long time.

“Then one day, Rick called and said, ‘Hey, the movie’s finished. Do you want to come over to see it?’ We watched it and we were like, ‘Wow! This is professional.’

“It’s like a really, really, really good home movie,” he adds.

Viagas has followed the film to two film festivals, in Santa Fe and Queens.

At the Big Apple International Film Festival, “School Play” won best-documentary honors.

Audience responses have been positive, even if people can’t pronounce the name of the place where the documentary was shot.

“Nobody ever knows,” Velleu says with a laugh. “Usually, they say it ‘Mama-ROE-neck’ or they start to say it and you have to help them finish it.”

If they can’t say Mamaroneck, they’ll certainly see it: Velleu caught glimpses of local icons Harbor Island Park and Sal’s Pizza.

And he caught kids being kids, playing videogames, riding bikes, playing dress-up.

He also caught the chaos of rehearsals and some raw emotion, something Gage sees all the time but which can be jarring for theatrical novices.

“When people come to rehearsal, I can see it on their faces,” Gage says. “They watch rehearsal with a puzzled look, like ‘What is she doing? What’s going on? Nothing’s going on.’”

Ninety percent of the time it doesn’t look like anything until it comes together, she says.

“We know what it’s going to look like. A parent recently sent me an email about the process that summed it up so well. It read:

“What was going on was theatre. All theatre is unique to its environment, and cast, and logistics, and a million other forces, but at the core it is just good old theatre. To the uninitiated the process often looks chaotic, mundane, or maybe just insane, but you did such a great job of building that show and getting those kids to understand that THEY were building it too…”

In “School Play,” all of the backstage drama, all of the preparation, leads to a video montage of Opening Night. Makeup is applied, girls spin backstage, costumes are put on, parents chat, the audience fills in, Azevedo has a bit of a meltdown and then bounces back, and Opening Night comes and goes.

Velleu set the montage to a Cat Stevens song called “The Wind.”

Stevens — who now goes by the name Yusuf Islam — has seen “School Play,” Velleu says, adding: “He wouldn’t give us the permission for the song unless he blessed it. We sent him the movie in Bahrain, where he was recording an album.

“He’s an idol of mine and we made the mistake of falling in love with that song for the end of the film.

“People said ‘Are you guys idiots?’ All of the record label people who owned the other songs told us we’d never get his permission.”

But after a three-week search, asking everyone they knew, they found Islam, sent him the film, and got his blessing to use the song.

The Mamaroneck Avenue School play is open to third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. For fifth-graders, it marks a milestone: the closing of a book on their elementary-school experience and an opening to the world of middle school.

That was what drew Velleu in.

“We knew deep down that this wasn’t really ultimately about the play,” he says. “The play was a vehicle.”

He and his Rosenstein “were dying to do something to get back to the love of filmmaking,” Velleu says, “and there’s magic that happens in my backyard, with these musicals. I didn’t know what was there, but I knew there was something.”

That “something” is kids growing up as the camera rolls.

“It’s why Laurie’s able to make magic every year, no matter what the play is,” Velleu says. “Because it’s the glue and the point where the kids are in their lives that is the generating machine for the magic. They’re literally on the cusp between little kids and teen-agers.”

Slater says the first time he saw the movie, he was glad to see himself delivering his lines just as he’d rehearsed them.

Azevedo says she was thankful that most of her 45-minute-long pre-show backstage “spasm” was left on the cutting-room floor.

Viagas was surprised that, of all the strange things they filmed him doing, Velleu chose to show him brushing his teeth.

Slater’s father, Jeffrey Slater Sr., is featured in the film, too. He says he’s not “a camera-type guy,” so he was embarrassed watching himself on film.

Viagas, in the film, captures the drama of Opening Night and its consequences: “After the play I’m probably going to feel crushing pain because I’m going to feel old and I’m never going to be in an elementary school play again.”

For director Gage, the film is “the best little gift.”

“I know that these things happen and I’ve known these people in Mamaroneck for so many years,” she says. “In my mind, I know exactly what happens behind the scenes, but now I get to see it.”

At one point in the film, frustrated by the cast’s lack of focus, Gage reads them the Riot Act.

“You guys know as well as I do. It’s not just any school play. It’s special. This is big.”

Next Thursday in Mamaroneck, it’s even bigger.

“School Play”
Where: Premiering at the Clearview Mamaroneck Playhouse Cinema, 243 Mamaroneck Ave., Mamaroneck.
When: Screenings at 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. A reception after the 7 p.m. screening will be held at Café Mozart, with a free glass of wine with your ticket stub and 25 percent of dinner proceeds going to the school’s theater program.
Tickets: $10 in advance; $12 at the door. Available in advance at Cafe Mozart, Main Hosiery and Lingerie, The Quilt Cottage, and at Mamaroneck Avenue School, 850 Mamaraoneck Ave., Mamaroneck.
Web: schoolplaythemovie.com.

Photo by Peter D. Kramer/The Journal News: Filmmaker Nick Velleu, left, is joined at the Mamaroneck Avenue School in Mamaroneck by some of the people featured in his award-winning documentary, “School Play.” Clockwise from Velleu’s left are: Laurie Gage, the play’s director; Nick Viagas; Regina Slater; Jeffrey Slater Sr.; Jeffrey Slater Jr.; Anthony Slater; Isabel Azevedo and Maria Azevedo.