The event in Times Square’s Duffy Square featured “Smash” and Broadway star Krysta Rodriguez (The Addams Family); 2012 Tony honoree and MTI Chairman and CEO Freddie Gershon; Rodgers & Hammerstein/R&H Theatricals President and past American Theater Wing Chairman Ted Chapin, and Tams-Witmark Music Library, Inc. President Sargent Aborn.
At the event 13 year old student Bailey Grey (Mary Poppins) performed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz Young Performers’ Edition; middle school students from PS 124, The Yung Wing School (40 Division Street, 10002) presented “It’s Possible” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Getting to Know Edition of Cinderella, students from Leadership and Public Service High School (90 Trinity Place, 10006) performed “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Miserables, and students from East Rockaway High School (443 Ocean Ave. East Rockaway, NY 11518) sang “Oh, The Thinks you can Think” from Seussical JR. Everyone present at the celebration then launched into a flash mob performance of “Tomorrow” from Annie.
East Rockaway High School is currently being featured in three national network spots with “Smash” and Broadway star Jeremy Jordan airing during NBC’s “Smash.” The Long Island school was overcome by a tidal surge during Hurricane Sandy which destroyed its theater’s stage, theater seating, curtains, props, and flats. Through “NBC’s ‘Smash’: Make a Musical constructed by Lowe’s,” which helps schools improve their theater facilities, volunteers from Lowe’s, Irwin Contracting, Inc., and Rebuilding Together joined together in February to rebuild and restore East Rockaway High School’s auditorium. During Musicals in our Schools week, community members and organizations create unique ways to express the value of arts education, ranging from organizing a flash mob, performing a number from a musical, supporting a local student production, to sending a letter to a theater educator who made a difference, writing a letter to a politician or volunteering to help out a local production.
