Several weeks back, there was a curious article published in the Seattle Times entitled "High-school musicals: big casts and big bucks" (can be found on the Seattle Times' website under Local News). It covers the rising quality, expenditures, and pressure of high school musicals, focusing mainly on a small handful of local schools. At present I am working on my high school's spring musical, "Grease," as one of two costume designers (though our roles have expanded to include hair and makeup as well) and thus found the article to be very intriguing.

Over at James A. Garfield High School, we can boast of our jazz band, our newspaper, our academics, our girls' basketball, our girls' volleyball, our boys' tennis, our math team, our chess team, our Latin club, our so on and so forth - you get the gist - but we cannot boast about our drama program. We've gone through four drama teachers in four years! Let's just say that, despite the strong student run drama club, theatre arts just aren't Garfield's thing. This means that the drama program has no money and thus we are automatically left crunching sand in our teeth as high schools such as Blanchet and Roosevelt zoom by.

Not exactly disgruntled, we of the monetarily challenged are wistfully envious. If we can do what we're doing now on about $6,400, imagine how much more we could do with $90,000 (Blanchet's budget for their performance of "Barnum")! It isn't fair to begrudge schools for having better and more supported programs than we do. We have to remember that, if we want to compete with those musicals, we need to work double time. And if we don't even come close, well, at least we tried and had a good time doing it. It shouldn't be about the money and the resources the school can provide. It should be about the love, camaraderie and building community. Besides alternately experiencing horror and utter confusion while digging through previously used and essentially destroyed bits of sets, props and costumes is half the fun - clothespins for the nose are recommended. Just because we know that our "grease lightning" car is bits of plywood and awful faux furs doesn't mean that the audience will be any the wiser or, for that matter, even care.

For me, that is what high school productions are all about - scrambling, laughing and making the best out of what you have. Don't get me wrong though, I get just as slobber-mouthed as the rest of Garfield's cast and crew when I hear about Blanchet's 4,000-piece costume shop and Roosevelt's $3.1 million auditorium.

A month or so ago, several people in our "Grease" cast went to Reno for a vocal jazz (jazz choir) event. By coincidence via repeated visits to a diner, they met a Reno high school cast and crew who were also performing "Grease." They were then enthusiastically invited to watch and participate (as their respective characters) in that school's rehearsals - and they could not stop talking about how cool that school's show was. The dancing was amazing. The costumes were adorable. There was even a real car that drove onto the stage! So, yes, large budgets are very happy things.

Yet, regardless of how spectacular and professionally infused (some schools hire professional musicians and instructors) high school musicals become, they are still teenage productions. It is my opinion that if audiences wanted to see Broadway, they would go to Broadway. Guess what? They aren't going to Broadway. Instead they're going to high school auditoriums. Now the question is, is that shiny sheen of semi-professional perfection worth the extra tens of thousands of dollars it costs, and does that profuse polishing actually add to the audience's enjoyment of the show? The charm about high school musicals is that they are put on by these amazingly talented young people who are all a part of the local community. That is why the community comes out and supports them. Sure the productions might seem a bit...amateurish, but, after all, we are amateurs.

I fully support the advancement of high school musicals, but let's keep the professional adults to a minimum.

Note: Information in this column regarding other high school's besides Garfield High School was taken from the cited Seattle Times article.

Kyra-lin Hom may be contacted at kl_hom@yahoo.com