playbill vip

"A mirror is a story that reflects your own culture, and

helps you build your identity. A window is a resource

that offers you a view into someone else's experience."

-Emily Style

National SEED Project

The beat goes on, we got the beat…you can’t stop the beat. Directors and actors refer to a beat of a moment, a shift, today’s youth also invest in the beat. The beat of change.  Theatre is a mirror to our own experiences, our cultures, but it is also a window. A window into others’ lives, hopes and suffering, a window of empathy that needs to be kept wide open. The phrase “now more than ever” seems somehow more urgent as our society wrestles with immediate global viral challenges from an external pandemic, but also ongoing painful internal realities as well. And our youth want and need a space to work things out and begin to heal.

Theatre and theatre classes often provide more honest and braver spaces than other environments for youth to share, connect, unburden, build together, work and process what is uncomfortable or perhaps joyful, fostering both personal and collective reflection and growth. Tonight’s inspired virtual production excerpts reflect the professionalism, the focus and the passions of student with diverse backgrounds and identities who came together with at least one common goal—to tell stories, and build bridges. Under widely challenging circumstances, each student artist found time and space to rehearse and record their individual performance on smartphones and laptops so everyone else could enjoy their artistry and collaboration.   

We gather as a small, global community to honor and celebrate over 160 creative public high school students and their theatrical productions from across New York City. This year’s sixth annual Shubert High School Theatre Festival highlights excerpts from five wonderful HS companies who welcome us into the worlds of their musicals and their productions that affected them and moved audiences.  

Theatre, at its best, provides a welcoming place for artists and audiences to feel, to listen, to reflect, to invest, to pause, to laugh, to argue, to observe, to empathize…to heal. We celebrate the next generation of motivated young artists who collaborate to produce theatre.  Beyond their performances, these students share a peek into production page windows that reveal a bit of their journeys. Theatre also entertains. Tonight we feature outstanding student performances that weave message and artistry. Leading up to what would have been a March Festival on Broadway, professional theatre artists and artist educators attended and