COVID-19 has left a lot of permanent marks on the world, but not all of them are bad.
In Livermore, five students with a love of theater found a way to turn months of the COVID-19 lockdown into a musical. The play is called "[INSERT future HERE]."
The students said their musical is a compelling plot and some very passionate actors, with a theatrical look at the issue that's defined the past two years of many people's lives.
“It’s about basically these seniors, who graduated in 2020, looking back at their high school experience,” said Naomi Zika, a student at Granada High School in Livermore.
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According to the students at Granada and Livermore high schools, it all started with an idea. Then, a collaboration among the five high school students, who felt like their lives had been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown.
“We were building off of each other’s experiences, that we’ve had during the pandemic and throughout our high school career, said Calvin Shawler, a junior at Granada High School.
“You feel like you have no access to anything,” said Dorothee Catipon, a junior at Livermore High School.
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All five students said the lockdown led to their meeting and for months, over Zoom, they wrote, composed and created a musical that students everywhere can relate to.
“After more than a full school year of distance learning and hybrid learning and a lot of time spent on the computer, all of these wonderful students came to me and our drama director carol and said, 'We wrote a musical!' And we kind of didn’t believe them at first,” said Chris Filice, choir director at Livermore High School.
But shortly after, Filice received a massive Google Drive folder with 22 songs, demos and a really long script. Flice said he loved it.
“We need to produce this, its amazing," he said.
The students later selected the cast and produced the winter musical at Livermore High School.
“I had people come up to me after they’ve seen it and say that 'this show gave them the closure they didn’t know they needed,'” Zika said.
Since then, the praise for the group and their musical has only grown with other schools now asking to perform it. The students said they now plan to record the soundtrack.
“I feel like a celebrity,” said Shawler.
It's dream come true for these students, aspiring to a COVID-free future, where they can become actors, screen writers and composers.
