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High-Skill Musical
High-school theater productions keep getting better, inspiring students to act for life
by Jane Simons
Lizzy Stone, a music theatre major at Western Michigan University, said her parents enrolled her at Portage Northern High School specifically for its esteemed drama program. “My mom was raised on classical musicals,” Stone said. “She can’t sing, so she just raised me with musicals and movies. I started singing show tunes when I was four years old.” At six, Stone was performing in shows at a drama camp where she later became a counselor at age 14. Her last year there, she directed shows starring elementaryage students. But high school was where she began to refine her acting skills in productions with a high degree of professionalism. Stone said this was when she knew that acting as a career was something she wanted to pursue. She plans to move to New York City after graduating to “pursue the life of an actor” and also would like to incorporate teaching and directing into the mix. Ashley Bowen, director of Portage Central High School’s Theatre Department, said she sees the benefit for her students in working with professionals to meet expectations they didn’t think were possible. “We hire a professional choreographer and all of a sudden these kids, most of whom never took a dance class in their lives, are doing really professional stuff like tap dancing,” Bowen said. “Creating this level of performance really does support the kids and allows them to be even more
4A | REVUEWM.COM | May 2017
successful than they thought possible.” Joe Dely, who was a student performer at Portage Central, said his high-school acting experiences were a continuation of a passion that began for him as a child. “I didn’t get serious about acting until high school,” he said. “There was a summer when I went to Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp and was in a production of Godspell and that was the first time I really sang on stage. I knew I could sing, but I didn’t really know until I was in that production.” Now 27, Dely is a professional actor
Portage Public Schools' production of Shrek: The Musical. Photo: Brian Wolfe