BWW Blog: The Stigma Against School Productions and Why They Are Wrong

We've all heard the stigma against high schools and universities putting on shows that aren't the best, but I'd like to end that now. This past weekend my university, SCAD in Savannah, Georgia, put on one of the best shows I've ever seen! For the winter musical, they performed the Broadway musical Little Women. I've actually never read the original novel or seen any of the films so I was going into this blindly. I didn't know what to really expect, but I'm so glad I went. They did four shows of this production and it was the largest production SCAD has ever put on, including hundreds of students from various different majors all coming together to work on this show. I honestly had never felt prouder to be a part of the SCAD community.

A little backstory on Little Women, for those who aren't familiar with the story, it centers around a group of four sisters during the American Civil War and how they deal with society's expectations of women, relationships, being a woman, and standing out from the crowd. Each actress who played these incredible women was simply amazing. That goes for all the actors in the show, who were all students. They all sang like they were already on Broadway and blew everyone away. You will definitely be seeing all of them on a stage, television screen, or movie theater screen sometime in the near future!

Upon walking into the theater, I was surrounded by people in my city, my fellow students and faculty, and people who love theater. The stage was decorated with a scenery of beautiful hand painted flowers and a mural at the top of the stage of the four women by the students. As the show started, each actor performed like they'd done it a hundred times and I honestly found this show to be of Broadway quality, and even better than some of the shows I've seen in New York. This one show, proved that the stigma against productions done in universities and schools is completely wrong. If you have the right crew, talented performers, and a great story, an amazing production can be made anywhere, no matter the place or how much you can invest into it. Theater isn't just Broadway. If you take a chance and go and see a local show or community theater and expect it to go one way, it might just blow away those expectations and you find yourself falling in love, just like these little women did.