The forecast for “Be More Chill” had the musical making its area premiere long before this weekend.

Millennial Theatre Company announced the show for a season that was supposed to start in 2020 at the Robins Theatre in Warren. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down live performances just a few days before the first show in that season was supposed to open.

“Because it was part of the season that we had launched, we had already paid for the rights to it,” director Joe Asente said.

When theaters started opening back up, “Be More Chill” was booked for a national tour and an extended run in Chicago, which led to the rights being pulled from non-professional theaters such as MTC. The theater group finally will get the opportunity to stage the show starting Friday at Hopewell Theatre for a two-weekend run.

“It’s very exciting for us to finally be able to do this one, because it’s kind of felt like the last little bit of COVID hanging over our heads for the last four years,” Asente said.

“Be More Chill,” featuring music and lyrics by Joe Iconis and a book by Joe Tracz, is the story of an outcast teen named Jeremy who ingests a SQUIP (Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor) to help him know how to interact better with his classmates and become more popular. But like many teens who crave popularity at any cost, it’s not as satisfying as he hoped and comes with unintended consequences.

The musical had a non-traditional path to Broadway. The show made its debut in New Jersey in 2015 and didn’t generate much initial interest, but young theater fans discovered the songs online, particularly “Michael in the Bathroom,” and that viral enthusiasm led to an Off-Broadway run in 2018 and a Broadway debut the following year.

Asente described it as a “sci-fi musical” and that non-traditional path is one of the things that appealed to him initially.

“Looking at that trajectory, the viral sensation of it all, it felt very much like something that we should latch onto, given our programming that tends to lean more toward the next generation of theater goers and makers” he said. “Unfortunately, I think ‘Be More Chill’ definitely crested and lost its viral sensation (status) over the last four years due to COVID and closing the Broadway production.”

But the ideas and feelings expressed in songs like “Michael in the Bathroom” echo themes that have resonated with young audiences for generations and remain relevant today.

“I think the show itself deals with someone who feels like an outsider, who feels like they don’t belong,” Asente said. “And I think a lot of theater people, especially young theater people, go through that at some point in their life, that they are not part of that in crowd, they are not the popular kid, and they feel kind of isolated and alone at some point in their lives, until they find that tribe that raises them up.”

“Be More Chill” brings several technical challenges with it. With short scenes and lots of set changes, MTC is using projections to help with some of those sets and transitions, but that also required figuring out the best way to project those backgrounds in a theater with a light system that wasn’t designed to accommodate them.

The score is a blend of live music and prerecorded electronic sounds that Asente compared to a video game soundtrack, so those elements need to be synced.

SQUIP takes on a human form after Jeremy takes the pill, and Asente wanted to dress the character in clothing that lit up and flashed similar to the stage lighting at various points in the show. He and costumer Ty Hanes tried several options before finding something that worked to their liking.

“We ultimately landed on a woven, LED, fiber-optic cable that is integrated within the seams of the costume, so he glows from within, and it is able to be remotely powered and also remotely operated,” Asente said. “When he is glitching or malfunctioning, his lights will strobe just the same way as the lights on stage will strobe. It will cycle through color-changing lights just the same as the lights on stage do. It’s a really cool effect on stage.”

Not all of the challenges were technical. The actor originally cast as Jeremy broke his leg and had to be replaced by Tom Milllsap-Kijauskas.

“He’s had just three weeks to learn a part that is truly demanding,” Asente said. “I think of all the leads that we’ve had for all the shows that we’ve done lately, this is one of the most demanding. Jeremy does not leave the stage at all in act one. The amount of material that he had to learn in the last three weeks has been staggering.”

The rest of the cast includes: Brianna Rae Quinn, Finn O’Hara, Sam Early, Ryan Stewart, Ben Doss, Ryan Lamb, Karlina Wander, Hannah Sinclair, Karina Moran, Andy Scott, Landon Eli, Lucas Mitchell, Kate Congo and David Santiago.

Cari Auth is the music director and Danielle Mentzer is the choreographer.

If you go …

WHAT: Millennial Theatre Company — “Be More Chill”

WHEN: 7:30 Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through May 4

WHERE: Hopewell Theatre, 702 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $25 and are available online at millennialtheatre.org.