Post by title1parent on May 2, 2008 5:56:19 GMT -5
Time magazine to see West High's 'Rent'
May 2, 2008
By HEATHER GILLERS hgillers@scn1.com
AURORA -- The teen stars of West Aurora High School's musical are turning heads in the Big Apple.
The audience tonight at the school -- the first in the nation to perform the Broadway hit Rent -- is expected to include not only dads and grandmas but journalists from Time Magazine.
Rent will be performed today and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at West Aurora High School. Saturday's performance, however, is sold out. For ticket information, call (630) 301-5600.
The news reached drama director Donna Letzter Wednesday -- the day before the show's opening -- when she opened her e-mail account to learn about an interview request from Time.
"I freaked out," she recalled. "It was very shocking. You know you think of yourself as 'you do your theater and you do a very nice job of theater and the community seems to support you.' But you never think of national coverage. That happens to other people."
Rent adapts the opera La Boheme into a high-energy rock musical set on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The artists include the transvestite drummer Angel and his professor boyfriend; the buttoned-up videographer Mark; Mark's ex-girlfriend Maureen and her current girlfriend Joanne; and the scruffy songwriter Roger and his sometime girlfriend Mimi.
Time news director Howard Chua-Eoan said West Aurora is one of a number of high school that will be mentioned in the magazine piece, which will address student productions of musicals.
West is officially the first high school in the U.S. to perform the 1996 Jonathan Larson musical, which has played across the country and internationally, has been made into a movie, and has lent musical numbers to school talent shows and graduations in almost every city. (Other high schools may have piloted working versions in the past, school officials said.)
Letzter estimated that she spent 15 to 20 minutes talking with the Time reporter Thursday morning, just hours before the first show. The 60-person cast, she said, was "just as stunned as I am" by the news of the national media attention.
Letzter said she jumped at the chance to perform a show about three couples in which "one happens to be gay, one happens to be a lesbian couple and one happens to be a heterosexual couple" because, she said, the show teaches that "we are more similar than we are different" and high school is not too soon to learn that lesson.
"In fact," she added, "it should be sooner."
May 2, 2008
By HEATHER GILLERS hgillers@scn1.com
AURORA -- The teen stars of West Aurora High School's musical are turning heads in the Big Apple.
The audience tonight at the school -- the first in the nation to perform the Broadway hit Rent -- is expected to include not only dads and grandmas but journalists from Time Magazine.
Rent will be performed today and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at West Aurora High School. Saturday's performance, however, is sold out. For ticket information, call (630) 301-5600.
The news reached drama director Donna Letzter Wednesday -- the day before the show's opening -- when she opened her e-mail account to learn about an interview request from Time.
"I freaked out," she recalled. "It was very shocking. You know you think of yourself as 'you do your theater and you do a very nice job of theater and the community seems to support you.' But you never think of national coverage. That happens to other people."
Rent adapts the opera La Boheme into a high-energy rock musical set on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The artists include the transvestite drummer Angel and his professor boyfriend; the buttoned-up videographer Mark; Mark's ex-girlfriend Maureen and her current girlfriend Joanne; and the scruffy songwriter Roger and his sometime girlfriend Mimi.
Time news director Howard Chua-Eoan said West Aurora is one of a number of high school that will be mentioned in the magazine piece, which will address student productions of musicals.
West is officially the first high school in the U.S. to perform the 1996 Jonathan Larson musical, which has played across the country and internationally, has been made into a movie, and has lent musical numbers to school talent shows and graduations in almost every city. (Other high schools may have piloted working versions in the past, school officials said.)
Letzter estimated that she spent 15 to 20 minutes talking with the Time reporter Thursday morning, just hours before the first show. The 60-person cast, she said, was "just as stunned as I am" by the news of the national media attention.
Letzter said she jumped at the chance to perform a show about three couples in which "one happens to be gay, one happens to be a lesbian couple and one happens to be a heterosexual couple" because, she said, the show teaches that "we are more similar than we are different" and high school is not too soon to learn that lesson.
"In fact," she added, "it should be sooner."