Performances for theatre’s spring musical, Songs for a New World, begin Thursday, and run through Sunday in the auditorium. 

“We’ve been working during class, after school, for hours, and now we’re finally able to show everyone what we’ve been doing,” freshman Megan Daugherty said. 

The show is a musical review, which means it consists of only songs. There are 16 songs in the show about a range of topics but are all tied together by the theme of the complexity of the human experience. 

“There are a bunch of different plotlines throughout the show; pretty much each song is its own story,” junior Avery Sutera said. “But they all kind of have to do with people’s life experiences and their regrets and hopes for the future.” 

There are songs ranging from a poor boy in the Bronx dreaming about being a basketball star to a man lamenting about not being able to leave his girlfriend. 

“My favorite song is probably ‘The World Was Dancing,’” Sutera said. “It has an interesting message about fear and running away from your problems, and there’s this really pretty part where they all sing together, and it just sounds really nice.” 

Freshman Gayathri Vanka shares her favorite moment from a rehearsal. 

“During our Saturday rehearsal, the actors were singing a song onstage about ‘Flying Home,’ and at the same time, the crew was lifting this giant stuffed bear with a rope up into our storage section,” she said. “The entire cast and crew were trying to get through the song without bursting out laughing.” 

Vanka believes that the show has a message that makes people think. 

“I think there are so many stories in the show that it’ll make people think about how there are so many differences between themselves and other people,” she said. “I mean, I know that when I listened to the songs for the first time, I was thinking about how all of these people have such different experiences, but they’re all put together in the same show just because that’s what it means to be human.”