Brendan Gaul, global chief entertainment officer at the advertising agency McCann, is a film producer whose work has been featured at festivals around the world. However, despite all the success and awards, one career goal was still missing: Gaul had never directed a film.

As he approached his 50th birthday, Gaul attended a La Salle College High School alumni event in Wyndmoor and bumped into Colleen Durkin Lapowsky, the former musical theater director at the high school.

Not long after the duo reconnected, Gaul was on a long international flight and checked his email to find that Lawposky was being inducted into La Salle College High School’s Arts Hall of Fame. An idea instantly came to mind.

“Impulsively, I texted [Jessica Bender, another film producer and La Salle alum] and said, ‘What do you think? I saw Colleen is being honored. What if we reach out and see if she would be up for us making a short documentary about her?’” Gaul told the Local. “And Colleen responded immediately with a big, colorful ‘Yes!’”

“Show Mom,” Gaul’s first project as a director, tells the story of Lapowsky, a performer-turned-educator who spent more than 20 years inspiring high school students through the performing arts. After premiering at the Cleveland Short and Sweet Film Festival in March, “Show Mom” will have its Philadelphia premiere at the FirstGlance Film Festival on May 9 at 5:45 p.m. at Film Society Bourse (400 Ranstead St.).

‘Star power’

Throughout the roughly half-hour runtime of “Show Mom,” Lapowsky’s ebullience and charisma are on full display. From her early days as a theater performer through her transition to an educator, the film depicts someone who is made for the stage.

In “Show Mom,” viewers not only hear directly from Lapowsky, but also a handful of the people she has influenced. For example, Frank DiLella, host of “On Stage” on Spectrum News NY1, describes his experience as a student of Lapowsky and how it positively impacted his career. The audience also gets to see Lapowsky in her familial role and hear from her children Issie, Tim, and Mollie.

“Colleen is someone that has such star power and she turned that star power into a support system, putting gas in the tanks of all of these people that are now out in the world doing wonderful and creative things,” Gaul said. “I wanted to make sure that people understood that.”

The film details how Lapowsky operated as a director, bringing students from all backgrounds into the theater.

“I would take a lot of shy kids and really turn it around for them and let them know that they could go into their lives with a sense of confidence,” Lapowsky said. “My son Tim was in the shows. … We brought in a lot of his ‘jocks,’ the athletic guys that he hung with. He was a baseball player. At the very end of it, some of them said, ‘With everything we did, that was my favorite part of high school.’”

In addition to the highlights of her life, “Show Mom” also describes the nerve damage Lapowsky suffered in her leg, which causes her to need to extend her leg when sitting and walk with a cane. The film details how she worked around this limitation.

From the stage to the screen

Lapowsky said she was “flabbergasted” when Gaul and Bender came to her with the idea for “Show Mom.” The pride she feels in her former students made it an easy answer.

“I now have had this handicap for the past 25 years, so my life is very physically limited,” Lapowsky said. “It has gone from a really big world to a smaller world, so to drop [this movie] in, there was some panic. ‘How the heck are we going to do it?’ But every bit of it was just a delight.”

Trained in the theater, Lapowsky was not used to typical film production methods — large cameras, constant cuts and retakes, and a full film crew in her living room. However, if there’s one thing Lapowsky does know about, it’s how to give a captivating performance.

The heart of the film comes in the final scene, when Lapowsky sings “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” on the La Salle College High School stage. According to Lapowsky, filming the scene was “a terrific challenge” but adrenaline pushed her through it.

“It was just wonderful,” Lapowsky said. “To do it on our very raw La Salle stage was just unbelievable.”

‘A wonderful legacy’

For Gaul, filming “Show Mom” made him reflect on his own life. During the movie shooting, Gaul had a son with his partner and also lost his mother.

“My mom passed away a year ago while we were in production,” Gaul said. “She never got to see the movie. But that brings a focus on the strong women that impact your life and it helps me frame the maternal aspect of Colleen’s personality in a way that could be a tribute to not only her, but to my own mom and all moms out there that are supportive of their children that want to go off and do crazy creative things.”

“Having my grandchildren see this and them only knowing a grammy who spends 99% of her time either in a recliner or in bed and letting them know this was who I am and is who I am is a very wonderful legacy,” Lapowsky said.

Gaul is excited for more viewers to experience “Show Mom” following its premiere.

“It feels so good to have audiences be able to engage in Colleen’s story and understand the impact she’s had on so many over so many years,” he said, and audiences also will see “her light and the star that she is.”

For more information about the FirstGlance Film Festival, visit firstglancefilms.com.

Maggie Dougherty can be reached at Margaret@chestnuthilllocal.com.