My Students

I remember when I first saw live theater; I was memorized. Almost all of my students have never experienced a live performance, and they have an incredible opportunity to break away from our low-economic community and experience one of the greatest performances ever: Wicked.

My students live in the mountains in California in a low-economic community.

Unhealthy behaviors and examples run rampant in our community and greatly affect our students. My students attend continuation school, which means that they have been struggled either through discipline or academic issues. However, the students in our school are hard-working, respectable, young men and women who are ready to overcome their pasts and charge into their futures. My students are friendly, kind, polite, and determined.

My Project

The musical Wicked has themes of overcoming obstacles, discovering one's values and living one's life based on those values, loyalty in friendship, putting others before one's self, and many other inspiring themes that my students can benefit from. In addition to the themes in Wicked, the play's quality has no substitute. My students have never experienced live theater and, therefore, have little appreciation for the art form. My objective is to change that paradigm with this amazing experience. In telling my students that I am trying to gain funding for this trip, some of them were excited to see a musical they have heard is excellent, others were excited to simply have the opportunity, and still others were open for the first time to experiencing something that they previously had no interest in. I want my students to change the world, and I want them to start in this community.

Wicked features a young woman, a green-faced "wicked witch in Oz.

Elphaba, the green-faced heroine, is an outcast until her peers discover that she is talented. The superficial Glinda and Fiero, the most popular kids in school, quickly learn from Elphaba's examples of selflessness and appreciation for academics. Elphaba has an opportunity to fulfill her dreams if only she can bring herself to compromise her morals and values. This is a story from which my students can gain much.