Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a night of mystery, magic, and good old-fashioned existential angst!
This year's musical has very little to do with the historical Pippin, the hunchbacked first son of Charlemagne, who lived a life of ignominy and strife as the disinherited and maligned offspring of a courtier in medieval France.
Instead, the subject of our musical actually has more in common with the young hippies and bohemians of the era that birthed him. Pippin was written in 1972, and reflects all the zeitgeist of that era both in its subject matter and musical style. Pippin, fresh out of the University of Padua with big ideas about the world and even bigger ideas about his importance in it, lives a restless life, always searching for higher meaning and ultimate fulfillment. Of course, he finds a dead end down every new street. He does so much striving to find out the secret of life that he ceases to actually live. When he finally begins to see the reality in front of him, to accept life for what it is, warts (or moles) and all, he's older and worn, but also much wiser.
The 1970s are often dreided as the "Me Generation," an era in which "finding yourself" became a full time occupation. Pippin is a perfect example of this brand of self-absorption, experimenting and exploring every occupation, every pleasure, and every identity. Ultimately, he arrives at the end of his journey empty-handed.
Now in 2015, we have inherited his worldview and mission; like Pippin, we often spend so much time trying to figure out the secret, indulging our whims and egos, that we often miss what's right in front of us. But this story, of a young person who grows older and wiser after trying on every hat he can think of, and who finally finds himself on a bare stage bereft of glitz and glamour but comforted by unadorned love, is a universal one. Like most of us, Pippin never figures out what he wants to be when he grows up. Life takes him for a ride, and he experiences its pitfalls and zeniths, its joy and anguish, and finds himself, in the end, happy, but not as a result of anything he expected or planned for.
It's heavy stuff for a high school musical, but a story that our students have worked hard on and believed in for the past three months. As always, unforeseen challenges have presented themselves, and we have done our best to avert and surmount them; like the United States Postal Service, we have braved snow and ice to bring you tonight's show.
We are blessed to have an administration and a board who values and supports the arts. THANK YOU to Mr. Brandstetter, Mr. Foster, Ms. Trulock, Mr. Blair, Kevin Malchine, Nancy Klemko, Jeff Santaga, Don Engler, and Dan Jensen. Thank you for all you do to make WUHS great.
I would like to acknowledge the astounding efforts of our adult leaders: Ms. Leslie Huntress-Hopkins and Ms. Jandrea Novak for their inspired staging of our choreography; Mr. Frank Korb and Mr. Andrew Feldner with the stage design & construction and art crew; Mr. Michael Nelson with the Pit Orchestra; and Mrs. Van Boxtel's and Mrs. Fitzgerald's work with the costumes and costume crew. We would like to express our gratitude to the parents of cast and crew members for supporting your children during this season of madness.
