Brooke Flood chats with the cast of ‘She Loves Me' during rehearsals for last year's Peninsula Association of Performing Artists' musical in Chinook. This year she will direct ‘Beauty and the Beast.'

CHINOOK, Wash. — “Beauty and the Beast” may appear like a delightful children’s story, but its core message is deep.

Brooke Flood is gearing up to direct the show on Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula. Auditions are next week and the show will open in July.

The play is based on an old French fairytale, but offers relevance about acceptance in today’s social climate. At times the villagers seethe with anger. One of the five chorus pieces is called “The Mob Song.” They sing, “We don’t like what we don’t understand — and in fact it scares us. … Let’s kill the beast!”

At an early rehearsal, Flood will share a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

“The real beast is Gaston,” she said, describing how the womanizing villain’s selfish behavior is condoned by an adoring populace so he acts as if entitled to take whatever he wants.

“The whole show is about finding the humanity in yourself. Belle is the human, coaxing it out of the ‘beast.’”

Flood’s story mirrors the heroine, a beautiful, bookish nerd who doesn’t appreciate her hometown until she is away from it.

The 25-year-old returned to the coast last year to have a baby and become a hands-on leader of Peninsula Association of Performing Artists, the group her mother founded.

Her parents, Gary and Cindy Flood, operate a 33-acre Long Beach farm, raising beef and training German shepherd puppies.

She attended Ilwaco schools and Clatsop Community College, and was a stalwart in local theater, notably in 2008 as milkman Tevye’s rebellious second daughter, Hodel, in a community production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” a role she reprised four years ago.

At George Fox University in Newberg, she studied acting and directing while earning credentials in technical theater and design. She appeared in “The House of Bernarda Alba,” an all-women show about repression and conformity, “Servant of Two Masters,” an Italian commedia dell’arte that showcased tumbling, and “Parade,” an edgy musical about a 1913 murder trial that exposes anti-Semitism.

After graduation, Flood spent a short while in Connecticut working as stage manager for a community theater before returning to the West Coast. She and her partner, Billy Phillips, have a son, William, who just turned 1.

David Immel, a retired professional entertainer who lives in Long Beach, played Tevye in PAPA’s 2014 production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” He described Flood as an asset to the theater community.

“She is very focused, that’s what’s remarkable about her,” he said. “She keeps everybody on point. It’s refreshing to me to see that kind of professionalism in this area in someone so young.

“She’s got it all — amazing talent and she’s beautiful. She’s more grounded now than ever with the baby.”

Flood began taking piano lessons from longtime PAPA director Barbara Poulshock when she was 6.

Poulshock will be musical director and Cindy Flood, a former Los Angeles dance teacher, will be choreographer.

“Beauty and the Beast,” the musical based on a Walt Disney movie, will be staged at the Fort Columbia Theater in Chinook in July and August.