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High School in the Spotlight: Roosevelt High

Just like the BroadwayWorld College Center, the High School Center offers a directory featuring upcoming show listings for high schools nationwide. Schools can register for 'enhanced' listings on the site - adding in photos, cast lists, videos, links and more. Productions that take advantage of this will receive highlights on our listing pages, extra editorial mentions and potential spotlight features.

This week's High School in the Spolight goes to the Drama Department at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Washington!

Roosevelt High School has the only full time drama program in the Seattle School District, offering eight periods of drama per day including acting, directing, technical theatre, production, design, and a full musical theatre program with four private voice teachers, a vocal director and a choreographer for the yearly musical.

Roosevelt's annual production calendar includes:

• the annual drama festival of student directed one-act plays
• an original work developed by intermediate/advanced theatre students through a professional theatre company residency
• a playwright residency with the Seattle Repertory Theatre - student written/acted and directed by staff from the Rep.
• the winter production (usually two plays) of a straight play.
• participation in the annual state high school theatre festival through WA State Thespians.
• one or two musical reviews
• spring production of a big Broadway musical

Along with the annual theatre program work, special opportunities are created for the students to broaden their experiences. The theatre program performed at the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, travelled to Hawaii Preparatory Academy to lead workshops in theatre sports and musical theatre and also performed a musical review. They have travelled to New York City to take workshops taught by broadway actors/directors/agents through Broadway Classroom and have also participated in the International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Named one of the top ten high school theatre programs in America in 1996, Roosevelt Theatre has created a world class, internationally recognized model for theatre education. The students of Roosevelt High School receive outstanding training and many have gone on to further training at such prestigious institutions as New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Carnegie Mellon and Yale University. Alumni of this program have performed on Broadway in Never Gonna Dance, Chicago, Into the Woods, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Oklahoma, Life With Albertine, A Chorus Line, Good Vibrations and the upcoming production of Lennon, the new John Lennon musical. They have also been in national tours of Fosse, Chicago, Sunset Boulevard, Evita, Swing and Civil War. Alumns have also found careers in television with roles in Friends, Felicity, The Practice and Spin City, and they have performed on the Tony Awards and many television commercials. International productions in London's West End and Europe have seen grads in The King and I, Miss Saigon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, West Side Story and Cats to name a few.

For information on upcoming events at Roosevelt, click here. And scroll below for production photos of previous shows and make sure to check out their complete photo gallery here.

To learn more about Roosevelt High School, please click here.

If you would like to be considered for a School in the Spolight: High School Edition or have questions/concerns/suggestions related to BWW's student center, please contact studentcenter@broadwayworld.com

Photos and program information courtesy of Roosevelt High School