With the effort of five student writers, two teacher directors, twenty two student actors and the support of a small community, MSHS has set out to accomplish the goal of writing a completely unique musical this fall. Starting on Nov. 30 and ending Dec. 2 MSHS students and staff will be putting on an original production of “40’s Frolic” at the Manitou Springs Elementary School auditorium.
This year the production team has chosen to create an original musical from scratch because Abby Steen and Wendy Harms see it as a great opportunity. “We really wanted to give students the opportunity to have their hand in writing a script and get some experience with that,” Abby Steen, choir teacher and musical director for MSHS said. “And we knew we wanted to set the music for 30s and 40s, and so we thought, why not write it ourselves?”
“The only students that were invited to write the script are the kids who took the PBSC Theater Appreciation Concurrent Enrollment class last year and the students who are actively taking it this year,” Kai Jacobson (12) said.
The students writing the script also see this as a great opportunity to bring their own ideas to the table. “I like having some creative control,” Jacobson said. “I like being able to put my own ideas into a script and a plot and characters instead of having a script already done.”
The writing team has had some challenges with this process but are working as a group to overcome them. “The biggest challenge musically has been figuring out who’s going to sing what song because normally, the characters come first and they sing certain songs,” Steen said, “but we’re doing it backwards now, so we’re just plugging kids into places and then writing characters around them, that’s been really challenging.”
Meghan Taylor (12) said that the topic of the musical could introduce uncommon cultures to the community. “I feel like this isn’t something that a high school would typically do. We have 19 jazz standards that students will perform, and I think it’s a really good exposure to musical history,” Taylor said. “Especially African American history as well; that’s something that we’re not exposed to enough as the majority of us are white students.”
Students that participate in the musical feel a sense of community and enjoy the way it brings them together. “When we’re doing a musical, we definitely have to come together very quickly, get to know each other, get comfortable with each other throughout all the scenes,” Taylor said,and then it happens so fast, our friendships begin forming.”
The students and staff involved are all excited to put on a great show that they made as a team. “I’m really excited to see where this goes,” Taylor said. “And I can’t wait to see the results we come up with.”
