Some of his English students began to ask about starting up a musical theater club last year, he said, but Myers decided to take it a step further and turn the potential club into a class.
At the end of the last academic year, Myers, who has several years of experience directing and performing musical theater productions, began to draft curriculum for the course.
“We’re really going to be spending a lot of time on how movement and lyrics create character and even how pieces of music create character,” he said.
The school’s existing drama courses deal with musical theater, but not exclusively, said Scott Bailey, drama and English teacher at Burroughs High School.
The course would be open to all grade levels and focus on an in-depth look at all facets of musical theater, Myers said, including work with combining vocal and physical expressions, studying the different genres of musical theater and looking at literature that has inspired musicals as well as adaptations of literature to musical theater.
“I think how stuff evolves from page to performance would be really important,” he said.
Students would also learn about the historical and social significance of musical theater, he said.
“It’s pretty much like my two favorite things combined,” said Caitlin Bietz, 16. “Singing and acting and drama. It’s one of the things I really like to do besides volleyball.”
As a member of both the school’s show choir and the varsity volleyball team, Caitlin said she doesn’t have much time during the day or after school to explore her elective choices, but a musical theater class would hit two birds with one stone.
“My schedule is pretty busy,” she said.
