Coverage progress on musicals for fall 2012

For complete coverage, please go to our Illinois Musicals Home Page at
http://t.schoolsnapshots.org/musicals.html

Here we will update our progress in compiling a complete list of musicals performed at Illinois high schools during the 2012-13 school year. Two years ago, at least 317 high schools in Illinois put on musicals, so we have a ways to go.

Between 15 and 20 percent of the high schools in Illinois that put on a musical do so in the fall, before the winter break. When we requested official information two years ago, we took that and assumed most of the 59 high schools that performed a musical before the winter break two years ago will perform one before the winter break this year. That assumption is correct in almost every case. So, we have been scouring the websites for these schools, looking at calendars, drama club pages, daily announcements, and such, looking for any clues as to what the musical will be or when it will be performed.

We have full information for those schools marked in red below and partial info for those marked in blue. If you can help us out, we believe this collection of information will be, as it was two years ago, a handy resource for students, directors, and fans of great musical performances in Illinois. Say your school is putting on Beauty and the Beast, and you would like to see some other ideas for the production. This site will point you right to every other high school in Illinois that’s performing that musical this year.

In the 2010-11 school year, for example, we know that at least 19 high schools— Princeville, Columbia, Belleville West, Elgin, Roxana Senior, Minooka Community, Flora, Hamilton Junior/Senior, Hononegah, Iroquois West, Forreston Junior/Senior, Wilmington, Princeton, Red Bud, Carterville, Mater Dei, Paris Cooperative, Lincoln-Way Central, and Quincy Senior high schools—performed Beauty and the Beast during the course of the year.

We hope students and directors from those high schools used our convenient guide to get ideas to improve their own performances two years ago, and we received lots of positive feedback (thanks!). We hope the same thing can happen this year, though we’re sparing the time of people in the district central offices across the state and just hoping you’ll keep us posted about what your musical is. Please see our “Contact Us” page and drop us a line.