Not just Broadway: LI high school musicals go dark

“The show must go on” was coined long before the debut of the coronavirus. Theater educators and students across Long Island are grappling with a scene change: Musical productions they’ve worked on for months are now at risk of being postponed or canceled because of the outbreak, which has closed schools statewide. 

Three districts had selected ambitious musicals this year — ones involving big casts, challenging scores, demanding choreography and plenty of set pieces. They are now left with a question mark on an opening night date and must rehearse from home until further notice.

Art and stagecraft teacher Clint Raynor works with the theater tech students at Eastport-South Manor Junior-Senior High School on its yearly musical productions. He said that he and Toni Borkowski, the director and a theater arts teacher at the school, were honest with the cast and crew when they found out they would have to postpone their performances of “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” which had been scheduled for March 27-29. 

“They all were just as on edge as everybody else about the show, and we told them about three minutes after we found out,” Raynor said. “They’re disappointed, but they also know that this is way bigger than a show.”

Raynor and Borkowski are currently looking into other ways to present the production. 

Musical Theatre International (MTI) is a theatrical licensing agency that issues the rights for musicals that community theaters and schools perform all over the world. MTI is working with anyone who used their agency to postpone or cancel their performances and return any rented materials, such as scripts. They are also offering limited licensing for certain shows to stream their performances in the future without a live audience, and Borkowski is inquiring about whether “Legally Blonde” is on that list.

In the meantime, she’s trying to figure out tentative new performance dates, but it’s hard to negotiate the busy district calendar.

“It gets really busy in the spring because there are concerts and other events,” Borkowski said. “So how do we move this without a domino effect of other events being moved around and postponed? So there’s nothing set in stone.”

With the cast, crew and orchestra pit, there are about 80 students involved in “Legally Blonde,” Borkowski says. She has provided videos of the choreography for the cast to watch while rehearsing at home, and encouraged them to keep going over their lines and music.

For Raynor, it’s a different story: theater tech students can’t build from their bedrooms. “Legally Blonde” has many set pieces — one 10-minute musical number, an upbeat power anthem where Elle Woods prepares to apply to Harvard Law School, involves three scene changes with no blackouts. Borkowski staged students dancing around the moving scenery.

“Even if we get back and get right into rehearsals, we’re starting the countdown already as far as when they get on stage and how much time is there,” Raynor said. “We’ve been pushing hard for over a month.”

At Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, students had been tap-dancing their hearts out in preparation for opening night of “Newsies,” which for now remains scheduled for April 23-25. The cast consists of 92 performers, including both high school and elementary school students. For this musical production about the Newsboys Strike of 1899, no news — about plans to cancel or postpone the show — is good news.

But director/producer Richard Olivari, who also teaches at a middle school in the district, says he’s fearing the worst.

“I’ve been talking to the kids, trying to come up with all the best-case scenarios to worst-case scenarios,” he said. For now, he’s asked some of the performers to record themselves singing their solos, and hopes to create a video compilation to post on the district website.

“They’ve worked so hard and it was really shaping up to be a very special show,” said Olivari, who has directed 38 productions in the Plainview-Old Bethpage district. “Certain shows, you have a certain feeling with, like, ‘Wow it’s really coming together,’ and this was one of those.”

Olivari’s message to his students is simple: “Stay safe, stay healthy and go over your stuff at home.”

On Shelter Island, the annual musical is “one of the cultural centers of the community,” says its director, John Kaasik. This year one-third of the high school is involved in “Matilda The Musical” (a cast of 35 students), and Kaasik said the decision to postpone it from March 26-29 to the end of April (with a backup date in June) was difficult.

“This is not a normal high school musical,” he said. “We have these really incredibly big production values and it becomes a real big part of the community.”

“Matilda” is known for its intricate harmonies and ensemble cast. Kaasik saw it as a great fit for his hardworking students.

“Because ‘Matilda’ is a harder show to produce, we have longer rehearsal schedules,” he said. “It even went into the weekends, which is something we don’t usually do, but it was because the kids wanted to get it right. They were all really into it.”

Franny Regan, the 15-year-old sophomore playing the title role, hasn’t lost hope. She’s been singing the songs around her house. Hearing of school cancellations for the rest of the year across the country has her worried, but she realizes the issue is bigger than the tiny, magical girl she portrays on stage.

“I’m just hoping that we eventually get to do it,” she said.

What’s going on with your school’s musical production? Let us know by emailing rachel.weiss@newsday.com.

By Rachel Weiss

rachel.weiss@newsday.com@RachMWeiss

Rachel Weiss joined Newsday in 2016. As a real estate/living multimedia reporter, Rachel writes feature stories and contributes to and appears in on-camera video packages. She was the lead reporter on Newsday’s LI Acts of Kindness series.