<p>Thank you for the kind comments and positive vibes!</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t do musicals (except for the YEAR BEFORE I ARRIVED, when they did Man of La Mancha and The Wizard of Oz) but I’m already excited to be done with shows at my school. Nobody takes them seriously, they’re student-directed, which means nobody knows their lines until a week before a show, and all my friends (except one) who did them freshman and sophomore year had quit during or after junior year, which was the year I didn’t audition, opting instead to do Macbeth at the community theater. I am really excited for our fall production, because it’s the first year since I’ve been in high school we’re doing a full-length production in the fall instead of a one-act for VHSL. We’re doing Cinderella in the spring, a non-musical version, possibly as a drama class production, which means I have a good chance at scoring the lead, since the only reason anybody takes drama class in my school is to fill an elective. </p>
<p>What I wouldn’t give to go to an arts high school, even for a day. :(</p>
<p>owlybird - my daughter can totally sympathize with you, for sure. In her high school there are at least a couple of other kids who do take theater fairly seriously. But it’s just a tiny handful. AND, none of those kids are planning on majoring in it either. In the four years she’s been at that high school, there’s been maybe 3 other kids go on to major in drama.</p>
<p>She is SO ready to be around other kids who want to work at it like she does!! It is very frustrating for her. Theater is about team work and one hard working person can’t do it all.</p>
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<p>That’s true at D’s school as well, and so far when she’s had the chance to work with other serious theatre people (regional productions, vocal studio, state and national competitions, summer programs, etc.) she has LOVED it.</p>
<p>I do wonder, though, how difficult it is for kids like ours to adjust to college, where they stop being a STAR and start being just yet another serious theatre kid. I would think that some kids don’t make that transition to being “average” successfully. </p>
<p>In D’s case, I think she’s about to face that transition both theatrically AND academically… all in the same year she moves away from all her home support systems. Sounds like an emotional strain, to me, but do most MT kids thrive on the challenge?</p>
<p>My D had no problem with it when she got to college. Yes, at her high school, she was the so called “star” and here, too, only one or two students go into theater in college per year. But for one thing, she had plenty of taste of theater and talent pools outside of HS, like your D, MomCares…community and regional theater, professional theater, and a summer program away from home that was filled with top talented kids from all over the country. She actually prefers that sort of environment where others not only love theater but are talented and serious about the work.</p>
<p>She was realistic to understand that once she got to college, the competition would be far more challenging than in HS. Again, she prefers that. Also, she is a leader type and so even in college, she took on leadership roles in performing arts and this didn’t stop just because HS ended. </p>
<p>So, yes, my kid did thrive on the challenge and prefers to be challenged and be with like minded and like talented peers. There was no emotional strain. Also, my girls experienced no homesickness or anything like that, and this is likely partly due to having been away from home every summer and being very eager to start college, and they are social and not shy. </p>
<p>Also, academically, while they stood out in their local pubic school and then were mixed in with a lot of very academically talented kids in college, they liked this actually. It is stimulating to be with others on your academic level. Even so, they were able to achieve academic and artistic recognition/achievements at their respective selective colleges even in that pool of kids and so they surely were not intimidated, but thrived in such an environment. </p>
<p>All kids are different. this is just my response based on what I observed with two kids in college in reply to your question.</p>
<p>PS…for anyone seeking a career in MT, the sooner you understand the “competition” and the odds, the better. I’m glad my kid was exposed to that at a young age. This is what it is like now (but magnified even more) professionally speaking in NYC.</p>
<p>“I do wonder, though, how difficult it is for kids like ours to adjust to college, where they stop being a STAR and start being just yet another serious theatre kid.”</p>
<p>No problem for my daughter. Her teacher…well, it’s a long story, but my daughter has not been “the star” of the program. Not because of lack of talent or dedication - and she did finally get the lead as Tracy this year in Hairspray and did every bit as well as we knew she would, which was brilliant and the rest of the school is pretty impressed with her even if her teacher isn’t!! - but her teacher has, for the past 4 years, found that my daughter’s other activities (namely, dance lessons and voice lessons) were an *inconvenience<a href=“which%20she%20tried%20to%20talk%20her%20into%20quitting%20because%20%22I%20don’t%20understand%20why%20you%20need%20to%20take%20dance%20lessons%22%20%20%7EDON’T%20GET%20ME%20STARTED!!”>/I</a> and those extra 4 hours a week made it ENTIRELY too complicated to even think of trying to work out a rehearsal schedule (this is what the woman told her…she was “too busy” to be cast…the first time in my life I have EVER run across a director who wasn’t happier than a cat in a ten acre sand box for a cast member to be getting dance and voice training and perfectly willing to work rehearsal around something as reasonable as that) so she picked kids who did not have the encumbrance of private dance or voice lessons to be the leads in every other show they have done.</p>
<p>It probably sounds like I am making something that outrageous up but I am not. It’s a real head scratcher.</p>
<p>(and the reason she got the lead as Tracy this year is because she was LITERALLY the only girl in the program who could both dance AND sing who wasn’t five foot eleven…not that she wasn’t perfect for it, she was, so I guess those waste of time dance and voice lessons maybe came in a LITTLE bit handy, ya think?)</p>
<p>Don’t get me started. Anyway, my daughter is used to working hard but her teacher has picked the other kids every year to be her little pet star pupils. (none of which have gone on to major in theater…)This teacher’s casting decisions have left everyone scratching their heads about 4 out of 5 times. The happy news is that the woman has quit and they will be getting someone new next year who maybe makes some sense some of the time. The sad part is, too late for my d. The good news is that by comparison, her college theater experience will probably be an utter delight. My D has never had any issues like this, nor have I, with any of the other half dozen directors she has worked with, so I have to conclude it’s her, not us. Especially as every other parent and kid at the school feel the same way…</p>
<p>Anyway my D realizes that the competition for parts will be because of valid reasons, not because of a crazy teacher, lol, when she gets into college and the real world, but emotionally, it’s something she’s already quite used to.</p>
<p>snapdragon…what you describe is something that we have seen go on a lot because each director, coach, teacher, etc. tends to get upset if your kid is in something else. They feel that their activity is the most important one and that a kid should only do one thing ever it seems. </p>
<p>My kids had schedule conflicts all the time. Some would be understanding and some very much not. At the dance studio, where my D trained about 13 hours a week, I had to go over with the dance teachers that there were times during a run of a show my D was in that she might miss some dance classes, but we could not drop dance for the entire year because my D needed dance as part of her training as a MT performer heading to colleges for this field. I realize that most others at the dance studio fell into two camps: pursuing dance in college or dance was a hobby. My D’s situation was different as she was going into MT and so dance was one of several areas she had to keep up. They pretty much worked with us, but we were at the dance studio for ten years between both my girls. But it did take a lot of advocating. </p>
<p>As far as the school musical, each year of high school, my D could not attend rehearsals on Friday afternoons (rehearsals were every afternoon and some Saturdays) because every Friday afternoon was also the rehearsal for the select dance repertory group my D was in at her studio (not in town), whereas all the other dance classes were in the evenings and weekends and didn’t conflict with the school musical (but did conflict when my kid was in adult shows). The school director was willing to work with the Friday conflict even though my kid was a lead in every show. He obviously didn’t want to give her up and also like you say, they need dancers in the musical. What he did was to cast an understudy for my D’s lead roles. I recall in tenth grade when D was Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, he gave the understudy the matinee performances which we thought was very nice. The understudy stood in on Friday afternoon rehearsals too. Actually, it was a good thing that he started to develop understudies for the leads (which hadn’t been done previously) because in my D’s final year, she was rehearsing as Ado Annie in Oklahoma when she was severely injured in a car crash and hospitalized and out of commission as far as performing for many months and luckily there was an understudy (her best friend) who was learning the role. Anyway, these few people did work out these conflicts. </p>
<p>However, we ran into some others who would get very angry about any conflicts. I recall a few incidents with D1…one was she had been on softball teams as her spring sport for nine years but the softball coach was very against her ever missing for the dance recital or when she got into All States on clarinet (which was required by school to attend if she was selected). So, in tenth grade, she switched her spring sport to tennis where she was the number one seed singles player and the coach was said to the audience at the end of year banquet when my D got an award, “D defected to our team from the softball team” and the main reason was that the tennis coach was someone who supported our D being in her annual dance recital and in All States for music which she was selected for each year. I also recall the hip hop dance teacher getting very angry at D1 (one of the few times I ever had to intervene,even though D tried to handle it on her own first) because D was going to miss a class/rehearsal due to being in All States (which again, she had to do for school…band is a class for a grade) and she already had learned the dances and so wasn’t missing the choreography and these were not the final rehearsals and she was going to take her out of the annual show. However, my D did dance in the final show and the dance director overrode this particular dance teacher. My D had been reliable for years at that studio. What was she supposed to do, not attend All States?</p>
<p>I truly get the importance of commitments but sometimes reasonable conflicts arise for students in high school. And as you say, the conflict in particular between musicals and dance/voice lessons should be a bit understood as someone who is pursuing MT can’t give up one for the other. They must keep training. It is not the same as missing the MT rehearsal due to soccer practice, where one may have to choose to be on the sports team or be in the musical during a season (like my D1 had to give up being in the HS musicals due to conflicts with the ski team). We really had to explain to our dance studio that our D could not give up being in musicals, nor give up her dance training but sometimes conflicts arose where for a short period of the year, she might miss one style of dance but keep up in the others and so on. It was NOT the norm for a kid at our dance studio to be pursuing a college degree or career in MT whereas some other girls gave up stuff as dance was their only thing. A MT performer must keep training in dance, voice, and acting. </p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t miss the schedule conflicts that my kids had. I also don’t miss the sometimes over the top (just a few people) heads of an activity who could not understand that these kids were in high school, and while committed to the activity, might occasionally have a reasonable conflict (such as getting into All States which they were required to attend, which they should). Oh…I don’t miss any of this stuff!</p>
<p>exactly, soozie. I could understand if she was asking to be off for many hours every week to be in half a dozen varied activities but after all everyone knows her thing was MUSICAL theater and it was ONLY a few hours a week for music and dance…it was reasonable. But the teacher, was not. hah! No, we won’t miss this nonsense. In college, her voice and dance will be part of her class schedule, not outside activities, and I’m sure college theater professors must have figured out how to deal with that or they would literally not have anyone they could cast. ~and I think having understudies or even sometimes double casting is a win win solution for many situations.</p>
<p>D’s last High School Musical just ended on a great note, with her school garnering lots of nominations in the state’s awards program, including a best actress in a leading role nomination for her. Happy days! And their final play opens on Thursday.</p>
<p>The actual end of school is starting to appear more real day by day… and I’m guessing in some states it may almost be here!</p>
<p>Bumping this for jeffandann in case there are any tidbits here for surviving/enjoying that final high school musical even while in the midst of college applications.</p>
<p>It’s fun to look back on this thread a year later, as this weekend D is opening in her very first college musical… HOORAH!</p>
<p>What I miss the very most about high school musicals is that they happened in our very own city, where all of us could go and watch them. Enjoy that while it lasts!</p>
<p>It’s funny, D has had 3 shows this past fall/winter and life has been absolutely nuts. She had determined to take the spring musical off just so that she would have a rest, then do the local summer musical for her last “hurrah.” </p>
<p>But just this morning she was looking at the calendar and realized that the bulk of her college auditions will be finished before auditions for the spring show even happen. So now she’s thinking that with no shows and no auditions, she’ll be bored for the rest of the semester with nothing to do, so she’s going to do it after all! Hm…have I raised an adrenaline junkie?</p>
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<p>You have raised an MT kid so I assume the answer is, by definition, a resounding YES! ;-D</p>
<p>The ONLY time my son opted out of a musical during high school is when he had his tonsils out! Thank goodness they love it! That’s how you know they’re “right for the job”.</p>
<p>Currently in rehearsals for my last musical, which happens to be Legally Blonde! So bittersweet. </p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>@jpraderio - It’s exciting that your high school does musicals as current as Legally Blonde. I think Secret Garden was the newest thing D’s school ever did, and it was at least 9 years old at the time.</p>
<p>Have big fun!!</p>
<p>Opening my last musical tomorrow- Phantom of the Opera. We’ve raised $60,000 for it, and it’s truly a masterpiece. I can’t even believe it :’(</p>
<p>Alexxmichele - break a leg. And congrats on raising $60K - Wow!</p>
<p>Already did my last HS musical (The Wedding Singer) and I’m sad it’s over. We all had so much fun with that show - had a packed audience every night! My PA HS is doing a straight play this spring, so that will be my last HS performance. Am really excited I get to use an English accent in this production (The Rivals). </p>
<p>It’s fun to read all the great shows going on right now. Break legs, seniors!</p>
<p>My sons’ final musical in HS will be “Fiddler on the Roof”. Exciting b/c the school has just opened a brand-new, gorgeous performing arts center and their show will be the first production. A wonderful way to cap off their HS career.</p>
<p>Don’t have musical theater in high school, but I’m always involved with the local light opera. We’re doing Miss Saigon this spring.</p>