Zionsville Community Schools - Zionsville Monthly Magazine

April 2022 Zionsville Community High School (ZCHS) presents its first annual Spring Musical: “Edges”! “Edges” is a song-cycle about four burgeoning adults asking classic coming-of-age questions. This charming, witty and honest examination of adulthood explores what happens when we are teetering on the edges of our lives. The songs cover such universal issues as love, commitment, identity and meaning. Characters deal with confronting emotions, escaping expectations and deciphering complicated relationships. Its most famous song, “Be My Friend,” has come to be known as the “Facebook song.” Fans of the award-winning Pasek and Paul, the duo behind “The Greatest Showman,” “La La Land” and “Dear Evan Hansen,” and even bigger fans of the ZCHS Performing Arts Department can experience the department’s first-ever spring musical, “Edges,” featuring two performances on Saturday, April 30, at 7 p.m., and Sunday, May 1, at 2 p.m. at STAR Bank PAC. A New Format for ZCHS Performing Arts The award-winning Pasek and Paul composed “Edges,” a 70-minute song-cycle, as their first collaborative effort while in college. “Edges” tells the stories of coming-of-age characters attempting to discover themselves and is a timely show for the ZCHS cast and crew as senior graduation is only weeks away. The show will take a minimalist approach, allowing students to create their own stories and stage their own numbers. Directing the cast and crew is Choral and Musical Theater Director Sam Chenoweth. Chenoweth has previously directed “Edges” in his former role at Carmel High School and is a fan of the unique musical and all that it presents to both the students and the audiences. He is excited to bring “Edges” to ZCHS. “I like this because it’s a good foray into this format,” Chenoweth said. “‘Edges’ is different in that it is a song-cycle, but it’s essentially just vignettes within each song that aren’t necessarily connected with a throughline of a story. Each song has its own story.” Chenoweth, a beacon of positivity and progress within the arts community, felt that it is important to let the students ignite their imaginations in terms of developing their respective roles in this production. “I’m giving the kids some discretion and am leaning even harder into it now,” Chenoweth shared. “The kids are deciding who they are in each song and what the role is. They’re creating every detail of their number or numbers, including the physical setting on the stage. I’m shepherding them to a way that would make the most sense to an audience, to make it more clear to an audience, but they are doing all the groundwork. We’re doing a fairly large projection set, and they’re responsible for developing the content for that too.” Chenoweth added, “It’s the most student-driven show that I’ve done, for sure. We did our first sing-through right before spring break, and the kids were hearing each other’s songs for the first time. It’s a cool ‘Choose your number and your way to connect’ show, but there’s a lot of touchstones for people throughout.” As it will be the first spring musical for ZCHS, Chenoweth is pleased to announce that it will be the new standard for the musical theater season at ZCHS. “We’re planning on this being an annual event,” Chenoweth stated. “Going forward, there will be a two-show season. We will have the traditional large-scale, large-cast show in the fall and a small-cast and small-scale show in the spring.” Be sure to get your tickets to ZCHS’s production of “Edges.” Tickets are available at zionsvillepac.org.

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