Millennial Theatre Company Director Joe Asente grew up with Easy Street Productions’ version of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

“That was one of the very first shows I ever saw,” he said. “This has been part of my musical theater personal history for a long time.”

Asente knows he’s not the only one. With MTC’s production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical, which opens July 11 for a two-weekend run at Youngstown Playhouse, he wanted to acknowledge that shared history without copying it.

“We went into this knowing that Youngstown audiences, when they think of ‘Joseph,’ are more likely to think of the Maureen Collins, Todd Hancock version than the Donny Osmond version,”

Asente said. “We wanted to make sure that we were with what people have come to expect from the show, but we’ve also kind of put our own spin on it as well.”

MTC decided to reimagine how some of the characters are portrayed. Some of those surprises he wanted to save until opening night, but one he was willing to reveal.

“Rather than making Pharaoh an Elvis-type character, we decided to take a spin on it and make the Pharaoh a Beyonce-like character,” he said. “Our Pharaoh is played by a woman, and we’ve kind of updated some of the background vocals to sound a little bit less Elvis and a little bit more Beyonce. ‘Joseph’ has always been about creative anachronisms in the way it’s presented, so we really wanted to push those as much as we could while still honoring the material in a respectful way.”

The musical tells the Biblical story of Joseph and the coat of many colors and is best known for the songs “Any Dream Will Do” and “Close Every Door.” The earliest version of the show predates Webber’s and Rice’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” but it was the success of that musical that led to “Joseph” expanding into a full-length production.

Making his MTC debut as Joseph is Samuel Darrin, who graduated with a music education degree from the University of Mount Union. When the original lead for MTC’s “Be More Chill” had to be replaced after breaking his foot, Darrin is one of the actors Asente reached out to, but he was unavailable. Asente said he was impressed by his performance in Kent State University at Trumbull’s production of “Legally Blonde: The Musical” and he knew he had played Joseph at Mount Union, so he encouraged him to audition.

Joseph may be in the title, but the main role may be the narrator. It initially was written to be handled by one performer, but it often is handled by two actors due to the vocal demands, Asente said. MTC decided to cast three vocalists — Colleen Chance, Kate Del and Holly Marshall — for its staging.

“We’ve had several instances where someone has gone ill, either during a final dress rehearsal or a performance,” Asente said. “After living through the panic of all of that, we made a decision that the more we could add understudies or people who could jump in and cover things the better. And we decided that, ‘What’s better than two narrators? Three narrators.’

“It also unlocked a lot of musical opportunities for three-part harmony. When I sat down with the music director and we kind of looked at things in two-part harmony, it always felt like it needed that third note. And the way that the score is written, there’s already three-part harmony for what was the children’s chorus in a lot of spots, so it was already written. We didn’t even have to embellish the score to make it work. All those factors combined, it was kind of a natural fit.”

The rest of the cast includes Terry Shears, Mikayla Moore, Ryan Stewart, Jillian Hibbard, Paula Stephenson, Ethan Blevins, Alex Chapman, Sam Campbell, Kali Davies-Anderson, Ben Doss, Liam Burk, Michelle Jalbert, Amelia Mihalik, Eli Shay, Kate Klug, Danny Stephenson, Ashley Tirak, Katie Kurdziel, Megan Delaney, Naomi Horvath, Natalie Horvath, Nora Horvath, Charlotte Anderson, Zoe Bayer, Carolina Carbon, Scarlett Carbon, Annabeth Davidson, Zaina Haidar, Riley Hibbard, Scarlett Hibbard, Sarah Horkey, Spencer Miller, Sawyer Miller, Aleeya Williams, Makenna Slipski and Amaya Slipski.

That it includes a children’s ensemble, and the opportunity to get younger performers involved, is one of the things that appealed to Asente about “Joseph.”

“We felt like there had been such a strong pipeline of feeder programs from high school theaters moving their kids into our productions, that later end of high school and into college,” he said. “After COVID, there seemed to be this dip — just the combination of not having school productions for two years and a lot of turnover in staffing — that kind of led to a slowdown in the number of young people that were interested in theater,” he said. “We felt like we wanted to pick a show that had some younger people in it to create our own pipeline of people moving up the ranks as they aged into MTC.

“This was a really great opportunity for us to do so, and we got a lot of talented kids from all over the area. People are driving from as far away as Pittsburgh to be in the youth ensemble of this show. The ability for us to be that first theatrical impression for the next generation is really cool.”

If you go …

WHAT: Millennial Theatre Company — “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. July 11, 12, 18 and 19 and 2:30 p.m. July 13 and 20

WHERE: Youngstown Playhouse, 600 Playhouse Lane, Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $27 and $25 and are available online at experienceyourarts.org and by calling 330-259-9651.