Mars teachers "take a chance" on musical

Mrs. Kennedy sits at her desk, making phone calls and planning a calendar for a successful musical. Mrs. Kennedy has worked at the Mars Area School District in the music department for chorus, show choir, music theory, and other general music education courses.

Our goal right now is to do whatever we can so the kids have this experience. One of the things I told them is we are not guaranteed tomorrow, so savor every moment and every experience.

Ever since Disney’s blockbuster movie High School Musical, there has been a sudden awakening to this magical experience. High school students put in endless hours of preparation and discover the personal courage to get on stage and perform in front of hundreds of audience members. This incredible experience has been made possible thanks to the dedication and love of Mars High School chorus teacher Jennifer Kennedy and Mars High School arts teacher Sue Kaminski.

Musicals offer students the rare educational opportunity  to apply STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) skills taught in theory in curriculum. Students are responsible for historical research into costume designs, three dimensional construction and designing of props and settings, experience in acoustics and sound design, and the technologies associated with all of these endeavors.

“We have students who have never held a saw or operated a power drill in their lives creating wonderful sets by the end of this process.  We don’t bring in professionals, and we do everything from scratch," said Kaminski.

What is even more astounding for me as a parent in the Fox Chapel Area School District, known for vigorous community support of the arts, is the fact that all of this happens without any financial support from the Mars Area School District. With the exception of microphone rentals, all costs of the high school musical are covered by ticket sales from the performance the previous year. Add sales and advertising to the list of skills needed to make this whole operation run year after year.

This year’s musical will be Mamma Mia, which was originally scheduled to be performed in March 2020. When COVID-19 forced Pennsylvania schools into remote learning just one week before Mamma Mia’s opening night, the cast, crew, and directors were left with the heartbreak of not seeing all their hard work come to fruition. As it became clear that schools were going to reopen in the fall and extracurricular activities were set to resume, the district’s theater directors knew that performing Mamma Mia needed to be a priority this school year. 

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Sue Kaminski holds seating charts for the auditorium as she plans how to make a musical work in the age of Covid-19. Kaminski works as one of two art teachers at the high school and has been greatly involved in the musical with design.

Mars High School’s plays, directed by English teachers Rebecca Penn Hoffmann and Nicole Vozza, are funded the same way as the musicals - through ticket sales with no additional assistance from the district. While the school play typically takes place in the fall before the musical occurs, English teachers Rebecca Hoffmann and Nicole Vozza realized the need to take a step back this year for the good of the musical program.

"We were able to perform in the fall last year, so our budget is set for our next performance. The musical didn’t have that opportunity, and they deserve it,” said Hoffmann.

Fortunately, after last year’s cancellation of Mamma Mia, most of the students who were cast in the lead roles are still here at Mars as seniors. The challenges of rehearsing using Zoom calls when in-person practices were prohibited and now doing everything with masks are nearly impossible to imagine; yet, the students still consider it a life-altering experience under the able leadership of Kennedy and Kaminski.

"Our goal right now is to do whatever we can so the kids have this experience. One of the things I told them is we are not guaranteed tomorrow, so savor every moment and every experience," said Kennedy.
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For any theatrical production to occur, the rights, or royalty fees, for each show must be paid, and costumes and all materials for set design must be purchased. At Mars, these purchases are made by the directors using money earned from the previous year’s ticket sales. With no shows last school year, this is a unique challenge for the musical directors who have already spent their allotted budget preparing for Mamma Mia.

Normally the musical would have three shows with 1,000 tickets sold for each, but this year, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the musical will host 6 shows with about 120 tickets sold for each. This means that even if all tickets are sold, the program will receive less than one-third of their typical proceeds. In other words, this may be the last year that the high school musical exists in the Mars Area School District. 

Realizing this fact and knowing that without district support the musical is doomed to fall short of the funding needed to continue, I asked what drives these teachers. Why keep working with the students when you know the simple facts of math are aligned against this program?

Answering this question brought both teachers to tears in separate interviews, driving home the emotional investment they have made in our students. While the musical directors are doing their best to keep their focus on the here and now, they also expressed concern for the future of the program and how that will affect the students in the district. 

“We do it for the kids – they are the most wonderful group of kids, and to see the impact the rehearsals and then the performance has on each and every one of them is what drives me. We are like a family,” said Kaminski.

While attempting to bring any proposal for additional spending to the fifth wealthiest district in the state under a perpetual state of austerity is certainly dead on arrival, these two teachers put in an admirable energy and passion  into their roles. Kennedy and Kaminski estimate that they each clock over 900 hours of work on every production, and their biggest hope right now is that they will have the resources to continue to do so for many productions to come.

See how they pulled it off in this KDKA spotlight article! Mars Area High School Finds Way To Put On ‘Mamma Mia’ Musical
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