Who: Students of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts
What: First-ever livestream of all-school production
Where: LaGuardia High School online
When: February 13, noon & 5:00, February 16-17, 7:00, free with RSVP
Why: Instead of watching Fame next week, Alan Parker’s 1980 fiction film about teens auditioning for coveted spaces at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, you can watch the read deal when the institution, now known as the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, performs its all-school musical, streaming it live for the first time ever. Because of the pandemic, the show was canceled in 2020 and 2021; the 2022 production will take place at the school, which is located on Amsterdam Ave. at Sixty-Fifth St., in front of a limited audience of students, faculty, cast, crew, and family members. Four of the six performances will also be available as a free livestream.
The students will be presenting All Shook Up, the rousing musical that premiered at the Palace Theatre on Broadway in 2005; it features the music of Elvis Presley, with book by Tony winner Joe DiPietro, who has also written the book and lyrics for such shows as Memphis, The Toxic Avenger, Diana, and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change and the book for Nice Work If You Can Get It and They All Laughed. The show will be performed by fifty-one students from across all five boroughs, with eleven students in the pit orchestra and another ninety-one working tech in addition to choreography by three 2016 graduates, Dharon Jones, Adriel Flete, and Victoria Fiore. Everyone onstage and off- will be wearing masks. “It’s so exciting to see these kids have this opportunity to revisit their passion for onstage performance and to watch them recapture the love and talent that’s so much a part of them,” LaGuardia drama teacher and show director Lee Lobenhofer said in a statement.
All Shook Up is set in the summer of 1955 in, according to the script, “a small you-never-heard-of-it town somewhere in the Midwest.” In the Shakespearean plot, parents and children, the sheriff and the mayor, and the rest of the townspeople confront segregation and racism and battle over the Mamie Eisenhower Decency Act while mechanic Natalie swoons for leather-jacketed parolee Chad, Dean has the hots for Lorraine, and Sylvia runs the local honky-tonk, but everyone faces obstacles that threaten their freedom in different ways. The first act is heavy with Presley hits, from “Jailhouse Rock,” “Love Me Tender,” and “Heartbreak Hotel” to “Follow That Dream,” “It’s Now or Never,” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” while the second act does a deeper dive into the Elvis songbook.
There will be two casts; “Rock” features Aaron Syi as Chad, Elena Salzberg as Natalie, Isaac Braunfeld as Dennis, Mairéad O’Neill as Sandra, Nolan Shaffer as Dean, Camille Henri as Lorraine, Eason Rytter as Jim, Cipa Frost as Matilda, Nigel Swinson as Earl, and Avery Palmer as Sylvia, while “Roll” has Michael Sanchez as Chad, Kahlea Hsu as Natalie, Jaxon Ackerman as Dennis, Charlotte Compo as Sandra, Carter Van Vliet as Dean, Bailey Emhoff as Lorraine, Otto Grimwood as Jim, Ani Kabillio as Matilda, Conor Picard as Earl, and Savannah Alvira as Sylvia. The livestreams are scheduled for February 13 at noon and 5:00 and February 16-17 at 7:00, free with advance RSVP here. You can also donate to support the musical by participating in a raffle starting at twenty dollars; among the prizes you can win are tickets to the Metropolitan Opera, Aladdin, or Come from Away, gift certificates to Charlie Palmer Steak or Ellen’s Stardust Diner, a ten-minute call with Mets world champion Dwight Gooden, and other items.