AUBURN – It’s local theater’s perfect storm.

Debut the Community Little Theatre’s “Godspell” and Lewiston High School’s production of “Once Upon a Mattress” on the same weekend. Add a one-act play contest at Auburn’s Edward Little High School, a production of “The Secret Garden” in Monmouth and “Guys and Dolls” at Oak Hill High School in Wales.

Finding somebody to run the lights or sit in the orchestra can feel almost impossible.

“You call kids, and they’re all busy,” said Suzanne Carbonneau, the producer of the Community Little Theatre’s “Godspell.” “Every single one of them.”

One query came back with the reply, “He’s in Madrid.”

“I said ‘Madrid, Maine,’ and I heard back, ‘No. Spain,'” said Carbonneau, who will preview “Godspell” tonight for a benefit audience.

“I wanted everything all set weeks ago,” she said. Instead, she was still lining up some help last weekend. “Finally, I’ve got what I need, but it’s been such a roller coaster.”

The story is the same for Jim Raymond, musical director of Lewiston’s production. While he was working to fill his orchestra he was solicited by Oak Hill to play trumpet for their show. He was forced to turn them down and shrink plans for his orchestra. He worried until Sunday, when he heard the actors perform with the musicians for the first time.

Of course, each show will go on as planned.

In a way, Carbonneau and her fellow theater leaders are victims of their own successes.

Five years ago, the Community Little Theatre was one of the few places around for young people to be part of live theater.

That changed when it began running programs aimed at kids. The mother-son team of Linda and Colin Britt wrote shows specifically for kids and began teaching the fundamentals of auditioning and stage performance.

Then Carbonneau and Raymond, a music teacher at Auburn’s Park Avenue and East Auburn elementary schools, formed the Central Maine Children’s Theater Project. The project gathered kids from around Lewiston-Auburn at Leavitt Area High School in Turner for musicals including “The Music Man.”

The first show, “Honk,” drew about 30 kids, from the third to eighth grades. For the next show, “The Music Man,” 45 kids were cast and some were turned away.

“It’s booming,” said Raymond, a 26-year-old who grew up in Auburn. “We’ve got momentum.”

It’s something he sees in the two schools where he teaches. He runs a chorus, a Tuesday morning Broadway sing-along and audition-only chamber singers where fifth-and sixth-graders perform complicated harmonies.

Between the groups and his regular music classes, some of his kids see him four or five times a week.

Raymond credits the local renaissance to lots of folks, including Rebecca Poppke, Lewiston High School’s vocal director.

“It’s a group effort,” he said. “The kids are responding.”

One change is needed: fewer overlapping productions.

“We can do a better job of finding those times when there’s not a show in production,” he said. If so, shortages like the current one won’t happen.

Carbonneau is still proud of all the productions and the way the work has blossomed. As the kids in her programs age, they’ll help grow programs in high school and beyond.

“Is that not fantastic?” she asked.