playbill vip

I am excited to welcome you to this very special event at Legacy Visual and Performing Arts High School. In the early 1990’s, when I taught music at Huntington Park High School, I had the unique opportunity to create an original musical based on monologues my students wrote reflecting on their life experiences. Real Life was a treatment of the high school experience in a similar way A Chorus Line examined the lives of Broadway dancers. After a successful single afternoon performance, the show was revived two years later with additional performers, stories, and songs. Now, 25 years later, we are proud to present a new version of the show incorporating the characters, stories, and songs of the original and subsequent show with additional stories and songs based on the lives of our new cast, students at Legacy Visual and Performing Arts High School. The new show includes most of the songs and monologues from the the original shows plus new songs and new stories/monologues from the new cast. In all, we have a cast of 7 performers playing 21 roles including 15 all-original songs, 10 songs from the original show and 5 brand-new songs. The stories are compelling, the songs and powerful, and the musical does something we all need to do, give the students the opportunity to tell their stories with creativity, expression, and passion to build an understanding and compassion for us by experiencing a small part of what they have gone through in their short lives.

                                                                         Dr. Edward Trimis, VAPA Principal