The 8th Annual Mini-Musical Festival was a fresh zephyr that came through CSArts– with music and talent blowing through hair and moving the hearts of many. This year, 8 conservatories collaborated to create Mini Musicals.
12 Creative Writers, Dominic Anaya-Gulaya, Antonio Aviles, Levy Butler, Ren Carr, Miranda Cervantes, Ari Dawson, Mariam Ghazaryan, Jonas Hellings, Linhly Harwell, Delight Kim, Sienna Ng, Ada Schmidt, and Jolene Tang, wrote this year’s musicals with the help of music supervisor, writing advisor, and Creative Writing instructor, John Blaylock. Save Junkie, Racing Hearts, Boiled, A Trage-tree, Personal Connections, and Jeopardized dazzled the stage with comedy, mystery, and a wake-up call to serious issues.
During the fall semester, writers collaborated and workshopped numerous drafts of these mini musicals, going to the lengths of writing the music themselves. “The scripts go through three or four different revisions in the fall semester…they go through many workshops,” Blaylock said. He said collaboration with so much diversity can bring challenges, but the outcomes are beautiful and extraordinary.
No stage production is possible without CSArts’ Production and Design Conservatory. P&D worked with the directors and actors to help bring out the best in the musicals. Students created a black box style stage, which made the mini musicals more immersive and allowed the actors to interact with the audience. The lighting added depth while the props brought the scenes to life. For example, in the deep yet hilarious “Boiled”, a musical where actors personified different types of pasta, like bowtie and spaghetti, to explore themes of toxic relationships, P&D crafted giant hand props that dramatically “snatched up” the pasta characters! It added comedy to a serious topic and was visually appealing.
Ada Schmidt, a senior in Creative Writing and writer of Personal Connections and A Trage-Tree, said, “I love music. I love writing music. I always have, and it was fun to explore a genre I’ve never really been in before.” She said that with Personal Connections, she started with the music and developed the plot with her partner, Linhly Harwell. Meanwhile, Miranda Cervantes, a junior and a writer of the comedy Racing Hearts, said, “My favorite part of writing it was writing the dialogue. I feel like a lot of it was like really silly and it has a lot of funny jokes in it.” Miranda imagined it as a Grease-inspired highschool romance, while her partner, Mariam Ghazaryan, pitched in with writing the music.
The Mini Musicals would not be complete without CSArts’ talented actors and directors bringing them to life. Kristina Miller-Weston, Producer of Mini Musicals and Assistant to the Chair of School of theatre says casting is particularly rewarding. “I love to see, especially with mini musicals, we get to audition more than just musical theatre and acting students. So we get to see what other kids in the school bring to the room…We get to discover new talent, and we get to learn from them, and it’s always my favorite to see the personal stamp that different actors put on work.”
The actors played a crucial role in bringing the scripts to life. Vivienne Pableo in the mystery Jeopardized, said, “Working with the writers was such a pleasure because they are so, so kind, but they were also very helpful with communicating Dakota’s(the main character) motives and her goals to me… At the beginning of the process, we were mostly experimenting with different dialogue and blocking, and I was privileged to see how they shifted certain things and compromised on particular moments in the show.” Jeopardized was written by Levy Butler and Jolene Tang. Vivienne described how she connected with her character Dakota through the determination she feels when she is given an opportunity for something wondrous, much like Dakota when he is assigned a case.
It’s safe to say that this year’s Mini Musicals were creative, compelling, and created memories and relationships that will last a lifetime.
11th Grade Showcase