High School Musical

by Megan Lomax

This Spring, I worked on High School Musical at the Bronx Academy of Letters, helping to vocal coach not only students from my year-round vocal club, but also other students who were involved in dance, acting, and theater tech. I got to meet a lot of new faces and teach them about vocal music and help them get to where they needed to be for their show.

The performances had their technical difficulties (as all live performances do), but I was incredibly proud of how my students kept marching forward amidst screeching mic feedback and other common theater “oopsies.” As a professional artist and performer who has been on Broadway, I know how difficult it is to ignore technical challenges and just keep on performing, but the students were resilient and that was so heartwarming to see.

One of my vocal students from the after school club played Gabrielle: the lead! She's only been in America since the beginning of the school year. English is her second language and up until 8 months ago, she’d been living in a Spanish-speaking country. It was her first time doing a show entirely in English, but she really threw herself into this role and she nailed it. By the end, she realized she might even want to consider doing theater as a career!

When I hear our students say, “Hey, I'm good at this and I think I want to take this into the rest of my life,” I am filled with pride. My goal as a teacher isn’t to create the next generation of Broadway performers (even though that would be exciting), but what I loved this most was seeing her become a leader in the cast. She helped other people with their lines and memorization. She would run lines with people, run songs with people. It was so rewarding to see that kind of confidence and growth over the past eight months.

My student truly exemplified what it means to live in the orange!!