VOORHEESVILLE — Robert Whiteman sat next to his aunt as she lay dying, slowly, over the course of 10 days. He read, at her side, through possible scripts for the musical he would be directing at Voorheesville’s high school in the spring.

“My aunt was very dear to me. She was in hospice, passing slowly,” Whiteman said. “I was sitting by her bedside when it hit me — she was my Mary Poppins. She never married; she helped my parents raise the five of us.”

Teresa DelVecchio, he said, was “a magical person in my life; she provided us with great adventures.”

Whiteman recited a lyric from the show’s finale — after the nanny has done her work for a family that needed her but is now on her way:

“With every job when it’s complete

There is a sense of bittersweet

That moment when you know the task is done

Though in your heart you’d like to stay

To help things on there way

You’ve always known

They must do it alone.”

Whiteman interpreted the lyric on two levels: He would go on alone after the death of his beloved aunt; and the high school cast, many of them seniors, would go on after the show.

The three leads — Jaynie Parmenter in the titular role; Carl Treiber as her friend Bert; and Noah Robinson as George Banks, the head of the household who employs Mary Poppins to care for his children — are all seniors, acting for the last time on the Voorheesville stage.

Parmenter and Treiber are best friends in real life and co-presidents of the high school drama club, the Dionysians.

Next year, Parmenter will be studying music education at the University of Vermont. Inspired by her music teachers at Voorheesville, she said, she wants to follow in their footsteps. Treiber will pursue liberal arts at the State University of New York College at Geneseo.

“At the end of the second act, when we have to say goodbye,” Treiber said, at rehearsals, the two feel like they can laugh about it. But at the last show, when the true-life friends are playing the stage friends, he said, “At the Sunday matinée, that will be a real moment.”

The story is familiar to generations of readers from a series of books written by P. L. Travers: A proper nanny comes to care for children in a middle-class London home, 17 Cherry Tree Lane, with parents who are preoccupied with their own pursuits. Mary Poppins and her magical qualities — allowing adventures like a tea party on the ceiling or a birthday party with zoo animals — transforms the family.

In 1964, Walt Disney made a musical out of the stories, his only movie to be nominated for Best Picture for the Academy Awards. The cast of the Voorheesville production together watched “Saving Mr. Banks,” a 2013 movie depicting the filming of the Disney “Mary Poppins.”

Disney had pursued the film rights to the Mary Poppins stories for decades, which Travers refused, fearing her character would be corrupted. On the brink of financial ruin, she relented and traveled to Los Angeles for the filming.  The story of Mary Poppins is deeply personal to Travers, rooted in her past; she objects to the sentimental portrayal Disney has in mind.

“I’m not playing it the Disney way,” said Parmenter of her Poppins portrayal. “That’s not what P. L. Travers wanted.”

Her Mary Poppins, Parmenter said, is “put-together, proper, and full of herself.”

“Jaynie has a mixture of being demure and mature,” said Whiteman. He also described her as “the whole package” — good at singing, dancing and acting.

“She takes risks in her performance.” She portrays Poppins as “ a very complicated character,” Whiteman said. “She has the directness the Banks family needs but she’s also encouraging.”

Whiteman, too, spoke of Travers and the “hardness of her life.” Her father was a failed bank manager and an alcoholic who died young. Whiteman reprises a scene from “Saving Mr. Banks”; the titular character is Mary Poppins’s employer and also a banker.

“P. L. Travers speaks with Walt Disney, who is condescending, thinking Mary Poppins comes to 17 Cherry Tree Lane for the children. ‘You think Mary comes to save the kids,’ she says. ‘No, she comes to save their father.’

“It gives a deepness to the show — it’s entertaining on the surface but the kids get to explore complex relationships,” said Whiteman of his actors.

Robinson, who plays George Banks, sees the play, like Travers did, as centering on his character’s transformation. Robinson will study music production next year at Schenectady County Community College. He likes hard rock, especially Rush, and would like one day to work the sound board for live concerts.

So how does he manage to play a bourgeois man of a century ago, complete with mustache and wearing a three-piece suit? Robinson says he “fell in love” with theater when he was in fifth grade and played a dragon in Mulan Jr.

Playing Mr. Banks is his biggest challenge yet. “He goes from being a grumpy middle-aged man who ignores his kids to someone who pays attention to them,” he said. That transformation, at the urging of Bert, is Robinson’s favorite scene.

Robinson said he had little from his own life to draw on in playing the part since his own father, a master sergeant in the Air Force “pays attention to me.” So how does he manage to carry it off? “I try to get really mad,” he said.

“We are acting to tell the story and just get into it,” Robinson concluded.

Treiber plays the musical’s other leading man, Bert. “Bert’s a song-and-dance man,” said Whiteman. “His relationship to Mary is not romance; he’s her ally...He’s the intermediary between Mary and the real world. His character is very animated and has a lot of energy.”

Treiber says he has no problem taking on roles of characters that are a different age or from a different era then he. As a sophomore, he played Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“You have to make it your own,” he said.

Both Parmenter and Treiber said that acting has helped them explore different parts of themselves.

“Being in the Dionysians helped us grow as humans,” said Parmenter.

“And as actors,” said Trieber, finishing her sentence.

“Whatever the role, you run with it and create your own character,” said Parmenter.

“When you experiment,” concluded Trieber, “you find yourself.”

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“Mary Poppins” will be performed at the Lidia C. Tobler Performing Arts Center on Friday, March 24, and Saturday, March 25, at 7:30 p.m., and on Sunday, March 26, at 2 p.m. The center is located at 432 New Salem Rd, at the Voorheesville secondary school in New Scotland.