Hero’s journey

NEWPORT BEACH — Daniel Yu came a long way to get the lead role in his school play this year.

The sixth-grader had recently moved to Newport Beach from South Korea and spoke limited English when he arrived. He started the year at Lincoln Elementary School testing at a second-grade reading level. That wasn’t his biggest obstacle, though. In his native country, Daniel had grown used to strict, by-the-book classes — and when his teacher at Lincoln announced tryouts for the class play, he wasn’t sure what she meant.

“We were having the play tryouts and he came up to me and said, ‘Mrs. Ratfield, what’s a play?’ ” said Claire Ratfield, his teacher and the director of Lincoln’s production of “Annie Get Your Gun.”

Daniel found the answer soon enough. The 11-year-old went to the Newport Beach Central Library and borrowed a DVD of the musical, then bought his own copy and watched it over and over again. In December, he was among 72 Lincoln students auditioning before a panel of outside judges who knew nothing of his past.

One callback later, he was Frank Butler, the sharpshooting hero of Irving Berlin’s classic musical.

“It was pretty scary,” said Daniel, who will play the lead in two of the four performances, March 22 and 24, at Lincoln. “I just had the feeling that I wouldn’t be the lead.”

His teacher hadn’t seen it coming either — at least, not until she witnessed Daniel’s Old West swagger and drawl for the first time. During Daniel’s first weeks in class, he rarely talked at all, and Ratfield guessed that he was struggling with the language. In reality, he was studying those around him and honing his vocabulary. He listened to his friends on the playground and picked up American slang.

That’s how it had been back in South Korea, where Daniel studied English in school and taught himself words by watching “Cats” and other musicals. When his father decided to move to Newport Beach in June and enroll in business classes at UC Irvine, Daniel jumped at the chance to immerse himself in American culture.

“He’s just a very bright kid and turned out to be this great mimic,” said parent Patrice Apodaca, a co-producer of the play. “The teacher would say something to him and he would repeat it back to her. It just caught on really quickly.”

After getting the part, Daniel worked overtime to memorize his lines, reciting them almost every night after dinner.

He also had to practice singing, something that he had never done before. It was grueling work, but still a world removed from his experiences back home. In South Korea, Daniel said, teachers often whacked students with a ruler as punishment for wrong answers in class.

“They just push people to study,” he said. “They have the textbook, and the teacher teaches it.”

On Wednesday, Daniel and his fellow cast members donned their costumes for the first time in Lincoln’s multipurpose room to be photographed for the play’s program. “Annie Get Your Gun,” made into a 1950 Hollywood musical, tells the story of a young sharpshooter who travels with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show — and meets his match in the tomboyish Annie Oakley, who becomes both his sweetheart and his rival markswoman.

Caitlin Cohn, 12, who plays Oakley, said working with her costar had been a pleasure.

“He hasn’t been naughty yet,” she said.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Annie Get Your Gun”

WHERE: Lincoln Elementary School, 3101 Pacific View Drive, Newport Beach

WHEN: 7 p.m. March 21 to 23, 6 p.m. March 24

TICKETS: $10

INFO: 949) 515-6955