DANVILLE — They looked and looked, but Champaign theater buffs Cameron and AJ Cornell couldn’t find their own family dynamic — raising a son with autism — represented in any shows.
So they decided to write one.
“Really, the heart of the story is not the focus on the struggle; it’s focusing on the joy and the love that comes about through all of that,” Cameron said of “Let Me Fly,” which will be presented next month at Danville Area Community College’s Bremer Conference Center.
“Hopefully, people come away from it also seeing how the other characters also learn how to communicate with each other,” AJ added. “Where it’s not just the super obvious — learn to use a communication device — but also people who maybe we don’t think of needing to learn how to communicate, also learning to communicate with each other.”
The shows set for 7 p.m. Nov. 7-8 and 2 p.m. Nov. 9 are “workshop presentations,” meaning they’ll be stripped to the bare essentials: Actors wear black clothing instead of costumes, sets are minimalist, and few props are used.
“The idea of it is to be able to see how the story works and how the actors are able to tell the story on stage before putting it up for a fully-staged production,” AJ said.
AJ said theater has been a huge part of their lives, both from being in shows themselves and being “nerds and fans” in the audience. The couple’s first date was to see a play, and the day after they got engaged, they saw “Hamilton” in Chicago.
As the Cornells became parents and their son, Josiah, was diagnosed with autism, they discovered there weren’t stories that reflected his life or families’ experiences.
“It started really just kind of as this passion project that we wanted to do of what would this look like?” AJ said. “He wrote a few songs. We started talking about what the plot would look like.”
They gradually created the musical, melding their life experiences with their passion for theater.
As they wrote it, interest grew in making “Let Me Fly” public after several readings at the Station Theatre in Urbana.
The plot changed in between the first and second readings, based on feedback, and the cast of three grew to seven. They added and took away scenes and songs, and eventually wound up renaming the musical altogether after one of the songs.
After a third draft, they realized they needed to take the next steps to staging it — “put it up on its feet” and see how a crowd responds.
That’s when they approached friends Jordan and Kady Richey — both members of the Danville Light Orchestra Musical Theatre board whom Cameron had worked with on a couple of other shows — about partnering up.
Kady came on board as stage manager and producer for “Let Me Fly,” and Jordan stepped into the main role, the adult Sam, in the Cornells’ musical.
The musical features 17 songs — pared down from 40 — with Sam telling his story about growing up learning how to communicate and connect. As a child, Sam was non-verbal, but learned to communicate with an AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) device.
The musical, about two hours in length with an intermission, includes a few meltdowns and self-injurious behavior, which puts pressure on the whole family, Cameron said. (Audiences should know that strong language is used, akin to a PG-13 rating).
The show is not the Cornells’ personal story, they said, but it’s the world they live in.
Another adoption
AJ, who grew up in Urbana, and Cameron, who’s from down south, moved back to Champaign about two years ago after spending six in Chicago.
They met while in the theater at a small Bible college in Minnesota, got married right after finishing up and moved back to Illinois for work.
AJ is a case manager at Cunningham Children’s Home. Cameron is in nursing school at Parkland College.
Back in Chicago, they adopted their first child, Josiah, now 6, who’d “had a really tough journey,” Cameron said. “He ended up having a trach and was on a ventilator at our home for a few years. And we were his caregivers and learned how to operate a feeding pump and the ventilator and how to do trach changes and all of that. We’re his nurses.”
As if their lives weren’t happily busy enough, a month ago they received a text from the Chicago adoption agency that brought Josiah into their lives. Another family was looking to adopt a special-needs child who had a rough road ahead, one that included open-heart surgery.
“Would the Cornells be willing to mentor the couple?” they were asked and responded with a quick “yes.”
Then, in the same text exchange, the social worker who helped with Josiah’s adoption asked if they were thinking of adopting again.
They said they were but nothing came of the exchange.
Then the adoption agency reached back out with more news: the couple the Cornells had agreed to mentor decided they weren’t ready for a complex adoption and backed out.
Would the Cornells consider adopting this child, too?
The child needs a forever home now, AJ said, so of course they’d figure out how to make it work.
Part of that involves the financials of adoption, which add up to about $8,000. Family and friends have put together a fundraiser to help — it’s set for 5 p.m. Sunday at First Presbyterian Church of Urbana.
Given their passion for musical theater, that’s the theme of Sunday’s event, which Cameron said will include “a crazy good lineup of local performers.”
“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” he said, with a lineup of mostly Broadway tunes, with a few others woven in.
“It is our joy to adopt our new son, and we know that others want to support that, and so, we’re providing an opportunity for them to do so,” Cameron said.
‘He’s a cutie’
The Cornells have met 3-month-old Theodore, who was born almost three months early but is projected to have good outcomes following needed open-heart surgery.
“He’s a cutie,” Cameron said, pulling out his phone like a proud dad to show a photo.
Thinking about the heart of why they wrote “Let Me Fly,” Cameron told the story of another family with two autistic children who came to a second reading of their show.
The parents wept afterwards and shared that it was powerful seeing their lives represented.
“They were so impacted. It was such a sweet moment to see, “ Cameron said. “They felt seen.”
