Little Orphan Annie and the California State Fair are two things Katie Fogg will always remember about the Summer of 2011.

Her award-winning photograph – she won first place in the statewide photography competition in her age group – will be on display at the Cal Expo in Sacramento for the duration of the state fair from July 14 to 31. The other two photographs that she entered in the competition will be on display as well.

The Nile Garden School fifth grader is also starring as orphan Annie in the SCT, Jr. summer production of the Stockton Civic Theatre. The Annie, Jr. show will take place Aug. 3-7. Show times will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, with matinee shows at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Heather Fogg said her daughter snagged the starring role for the popular and beloved comic strip character by enrolling in SCT’s youth summer program. Each summer class concludes with a full-length complete production of a stage show. This summer, the selected play was Annie, Jr.

Auditions for the role were made open to the students of the summer program and Katie won the starring part.

“She was one of the youngest (finalists),” Heather Armstrong Fogg said.

While this is Katie’s first starring role on a stage play at SCT, she has been featured in the previous two summer productions of SCT, Jr. Three years ago when she first started in the SCT, Jr. summer program, she was in the Beauty and the Beast. She also had “bit parts” in last year’s summer production.

Katie was in third grade when she started going to SCT, Jr. She and her family were introduced to Stockton Civic Theatre by a co-worker of Heather Fogg at the San Joaquin County Office of Education where she works at Venture Academy charter school.

“She’s always liked to do monologues and stuff,” Heather Fogg said of her daughter.

While Katie was in the John Robert Powers modeling and talent agency in Elk Grove, she took some of the classes offered which included monologues and public speaking. Those served as sessions for talent agents to select the candidates that they would send to San Francisco.

But, said Heather Fogg, “We got tired of going to these cattle calls – they call them go-sees – where you go and they look at you, and nothing was happening. We were constantly going to the Bay Area, so we just dropped out of that. But she enjoyed the classes that she was taking – she was taking monologue classes and public speaking.”

That’s when her co-worker told her about the Stockton Civic Theater’s junior summer program, and Katie has “participated every year since then.”

During the first two years, Katie carpooled with Colten Harris, another student at Nile Garden who also attended SCT’s youth summer acting program. The two were both in the Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin summer shows. Colten is now in high school.

For her starring role in Annie, Jr., Katie has to attend rehearsals every week day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“These are seven-hour rehearsals so I just bring lunch. It’s definitely different,” the 10-year-old says of her role in the play. “My mom helps me (memorize the lines),” she added.

“She doesn’t get paid, but she likes it. She has a really good time, and she’s met some really nice people. I think she just enjoys it,” said Heather Fogg about her daughter’s time at SCT’s youth summer program.

Since she’s on summer hiatus from her teaching job with Venture Academy where son Andy, her older child with husband Ken, will be a freshman in August, Heather Fogg has made herself available as a volunteer at SCT “doing leg work for certain props and for things that they need.

“I have to have something to do. I’m a workaholic,” she said with a laugh.