So, I recently went to go see a couple of high school musicals. No, it wasn't the movie for all of you 90s teens (like myself). The two I saw were put up by my hometown school and the school in the town my college is at. They were both interesting, but for vastly different reasons.

The town my college is in is Sterling, and the Sterling High School had just recently put up the show "The Secret Garden," a show I had not yet seen. My hometown high school, Lyons, put up the show "The Wizard of Oz," a classic in terms of movies, musicals, and books. I was lucky enough to get to see both of them in the same weekend.

My thoughts on both were...interesting to say the least. Sterling did a really nice job putting up the show. There was a bit of question to the story and choreography, but the actors were really good. Sterling is well-known for its talented singers, and this musical was no exception. Most of them had to speak and sing in an Irish accent (or was it Scottish?) and kept it up quite well, even whilst singing, which can be difficult even for the most talented of singers. So overall, it was pretty good.

Lyons on the other hand...wasn't. But before I go on I just want to say something, just in case someone I know reads this and then wants to lock me up somewhere for accusing such malarky. In this instant, I'm going to be brutally honest. I'm not saying the people who were in the musical didn't care about their part, and I'm not saying they're bad people. I'm sure that both the actors, set designers, light and sound people, and directors put a lot of time and effort into this, and I applaud them for that.

With that being said...it was really bad. The actors (except for a select few) hardly had any expression in their voice and actions, and it all felt way too scripted. It came to a point where I thought that it was a satire and something shocking and hilarious was going to happen like "Oh, now dorothy is dead" or something like that. It felt like a parody pf the musical, rather an actual showing. The dancing was half-hearted (except for the elementary students, for them it's acceptable because some of them don't even know what they're doing), the jokes almost never hit, and a lot of people looked like they just didn't want to be there. I'm not going to go into specifics, but there were a certain few who actually did an exceptional job. Likewise, there were people who were laughably terrible. The few good things about the show was that they implemented some interesting technology into the scenes with the wizard's projection, and they actually had an orchestra for the pit which made it a lot better than the normal of just two pianos.

If I had to rate the two shows compared to all of the shows I've seen ever, I'd give sterling a 6 and Lyons a 2. But, as compared to other high school preformances I've seen, I'd give Sterling an 8 and Lyons a 4.

However, after seeing these two shows, I started to think about high school musicals in general. I was in quite a few when I was in high school, and I've seen plenty more beyond that.

So, what are my thoughts? Well, the thing about high school musicals is that they are put on by teachers and students. People who, frankly, have better things to do. After all, a lot of them were probably roped into it from a teacher or friend. So it's expected that the amount of "care" put into these is less than something like a community or college musical. With that being said, I heard that they actually had 2 and a half months to put on a show. That's twice as much time as the recent musical my college just put on. So, you'd expect them to be a bit more rehearsed. Once again, it goes back to the fact that they possibly don't care that much about it.

All in all, high school musicals aren't necesarrily bad. Some teachers and students could possibly put a little more passion in to what they do. I also realize that this is high school, so maybe I should expect it more.

Those are my honest thoughts on high school musicals.

Come on. We're all in this together, right?