Wayne Barker, BD Wong, and SDSU Students Team Up for Musical Adaptation of MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS

Broadway veterans Wayne Barker and BD Wong set out to write a new musical, but the process is always strenuous and requires many pieces to come together just right. In the hopes of going beyond their own creative development, the pair took their work to San Diego State University and brought in students from the MFA program to aid in the development and production process.

Robert Meffe, the head of the MFA Musical Theatre program tells NBC New York that it couldn't be more beneficial. "Our students get the chance to work on a brand new piece, something that's never been seen before, develop characters, learn music, and they also get to work with some of the great creative artists of our time. And then on the other hand, the artists themselves get to hear their own work."

Wong agreed, saying "The development process is all about feedback, trial and error, about learning new things about the work and changing things, and when you have students that are really game and they're getting something out of it on their end, it's kind of a mutually beneficial equation."

The musical, an adaptation of Mr. Holland'S OPUS, follows a composer struggling to make his way who takes a job as a high school teacher in order to make some money, then finds a level of fulfillment he had been seeking all along.

Wong says building the show in the university/education environment was a serendipitous meta aspect, while Barker says, "To write a show that is wrapped up in education and then immediately bring it to an educational environment, it sort of takes the edge off. Every day we can come in and say, yes we were right, it's relevant."

To learn more about the project, visit NBC New York here, and check out the video: