Earlier this month, 24 students from the Nightingale Theater Company attended a matinee performance of The Great Gatsby on Broadway for a reduced ticket price of $22.
Mr. William Lacker and Mr. Kevin Schwab, both English teachers and co-advisors of the Nightingale Theater Company, were able to secure the tickets through a program with the New York City Department of Education, who provide reduced cost tickets to high school students.
“It’s a priceless opportunity that we need to take advantage of,” said Mr. Lacker. “We’re being exposed to culture and art. Musical theater is a crossroads of acting, dance, music, and design.”
They used this trip as a way to expose students interested in musical theater to working Broadway professionals, and to give them a once in a lifetime opportunity to see “magic unfolding in front of them, without the use of CGI,” said Mr. Schwab.
“Seeing [musical theater productions] usually inspires beautiful new works of art, that especially students at Townsend, could create and be inspired by,” said Mr. Schwab.
“Broadway tickets costing over $150 for a decent seat is an insane paywall that’s really not accessible for most people,” said junior and Nightingale Theater student director Lukas Cooper. “This trip allows students that before had almost no chance of going to a show to be able to experience the wonderful world of Broadway for only $22.”
Freshman Sofia Starcic said, “The ability to attend The Great Gatsby for $22 was absolutely mind blowing. The price being as low as it was gave me even more of a reason to attend, which impacted its accessibility thoroughly.”
“My favorite part of the performance was definitely the song ‘New Money.’ I loved the way it combined a jazzy, swing style with a classic, musical theater touch,” Lukas said. “This song, along with the entire show, had absolutely incredible dancing and choreography that overall improved the performance tenfold.”
Mr. Schwab and Mr. Lacker plan to discuss the show at the next Nightingale Theater Company meeting.
“A lot of what I try to stress in the classroom is to look at your ability to talk about art, culture, or anything, in a way you can explain why you engaged with something like this,” said Mr. Lacker. “To go and experience and appreciate art and to be able to talk about it is essential to the academic world, to classes, and to making us better human beings.”
Mr. Schwab hopes that students are influenced by the physical theatrical elements rather than special effects: “I think education is [amplified through] exposure,” said Mr. Schwab. He said that broadway shows can inspire, and “even seeing bad theater teaches you what not to do. Seeing a Broadway production gives everybody an opportunity to kind of raise their own bar as to what could be put up on a stage.”
Mr. Lacker said he plans to expose students to theater as much as possible, especially in high school.
“We’ve really tried to share it with everybody as much as we can on social media because these opportunities are just going to keep coming and coming, and with more interested people, the easier they become.”
Sophia, who was interested in theater before seeing the show, said that seeing The Great Gatsby reinforced her love for the arts. “From this experience, I learned that schools actually do care about theater and the arts. I remember thinking that it’s so nice to have found a group of people that care just as much about musical theater as I do.”
