If Disney made a "Middle School Musical," it would probably look something like "The New Kid," the theater production featuring actors ages 10-16 that entertained Ridgebury Elementary School students on Friday morning.

The young actors—including East Ridge Middle School sixth grader Alexandra DiGiacomo—sang and danced through an hour-long performance about a school where the students are divided into cliques that are all vying for Zack, the new kid, to join them.

At first Zack tries to hide his true self and join a cool group. But by the end he comes around, telling his new classmates that "people are people, and everyone is different."

The production, meant to teach children to take a stand against bullying and peer pressure, is the travelling arm of Random Farms Kids' Theater, a youth theater company based in Elmsford, N.Y. The Ridgebury PTA sampled a "New Kid" performance in Chappaqua and decided to bring the troupe to town this year for the first time.

The young actors had strong, impressive singing voices and looked confident on stage.

"It's mostly just a great message and really important, especially in elementary school," said Cynthia DiGiacomo, Alexandra's mom, who has seen the performance about once a month since the fall.

And to hammer home the message, company manager Ellen Flaks led student viewers and performers in a discussion about what bullying is and how to avoid it after the performance. She used the cast to spur discussion, asking one of the "gangsta" characters why kids might act like bullies and then eliciting additional responses from the audience.

As students filed out after the post-performance chat, Principal Liz Smith—who before the show instructed the kids to be "the best audience" the cast had ever seen—seemed satisfied with the decision to bring Random Farms to Ridgefield.

"I thought it was wonderful," she said.