How the­atre kids final­ly found their spotlight

With the release of The­atre Camp in cin­e­mas, and Dis­ney+ hav­ing just end­ed its longest-run­ning show, High School Musi­cal: The Musi­cal: The Series (based on the beloved Dis­ney film series), the cur­rent era of media is a haven for all those who were in their high school dra­ma club. While the idea of a ​‘the­atre kid’ is under­stood by any­one whose school had an active dra­ma depart­ment, its car­i­ca­tures have been cement­ed in the cul­tur­al zeit­geist through their depic­tion on film and TV.

One of the sem­i­nal films about teens in the arts iron­i­cal­ly feels set apart from much of what fol­lowed. Alan Parker’s 1980 musi­cal Fame fol­lows a group of stu­dents at a per­form­ing arts school in New York. It secured two Acad­e­my Awards for Best Orig­i­nal Song and Best Score, as well as crit­i­cal recog­ni­tion for Bar­ry Miller’s per­for­mance as Ralph. It’s a grit­ty film that seeks to be authen­tic in its por­tray­al of teenage life, with Roger Ebert prais­ing its ​“sen­si­tiv­i­ty to real lives of real peo­ple that we don’t get much in Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions any­more”.

Fame was unafraid to deal with dark sub­ject mat­ter such as sui­ci­dal thoughts, racism, and drug addic­tion – all of which should feel out of place in a musi­cal, but some­how nev­er do. While its ensem­ble cast and errat­ic pac­ing mean that you aren’t able to ful­ly uncov­er the nuance of each stu­dent, what we see in them is deter­mi­na­tion and ambi­tion to be some­thing big­ger than them­selves, leav­ing a last­ing lega­cy. We also see how the des­per­a­tion to achieve this can lead to self-implo­sion. This is some­thing that is true of all future depic­tions of dra­ma kids, even if we are used to see­ing a sani­tised ver­sion more akin to the film’s TV spin-off and 2009 reboot than its orig­i­nal iteration.

Musi­cals are cer­tain­ly the genre that most nat­u­ral­ly leans to telling the sto­ries of dra­ma stu­dents, with inte­grat­ed musi­cal num­bers flow­ing eas­i­ly when they make nar­ra­tive sense. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the film that helped to res­ur­rect the form was Dis­ney Channel’s High School Musi­cal, which spawned a cul­tur­al lega­cy that remains today. It’s a sim­ple boy meets girl sto­ry about find­ing your place in the world and break­ing free from peer-imposed expec­ta­tions. Its script is kitsch, but there’s some­thing in the earnest­ness of it all that makes it a com­plete joy. Ken­ny Orte­ga (who pre­vi­ous­ly chore­o­graphed Dirty Danc­ing and direct­ed Hocus Pocus) caught light­ning in a bot­tle with a cast led by an effort­less­ly charm­ing Zac Efron and Vanes­sa Hudgens.

The already estab­lished the­atre kids like Shar­pay and Ryan (Ash­ley Tis­dale and Lucas Grabeel) are camp and over the top, and the extent to which their lives depend on the suc­cess of their show is ridicu­lous. In con­trast, Troy and Gabriel­la offer a soft­er, more sub­tle approach, as out­siders to the the­atre depart­ment who still find an escape and home there, expand­ing the appeal of these nar­ra­tives to those beyond the stereo­type. It clear­ly had a uni­ver­sal appeal: its first sequel went on to score the high­est view­er­ship for a TV movie with 17 mil­lion view­ers, and recog­nis­ing the franchise’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, Dis­ney released the third High School Musi­cal film in cin­e­mas, where it grossed over $250 mil­lion at the box office. How­ev­er, despite the strong nos­tal­gia pull with adults today, High School Musi­cal ulti­mate­ly was aimed at chil­dren, and lacked an adult audience.

Fast for­ward three years, and Fox debuted its new musi­cal series Glee. Still about the­atri­cal high school­ers, and with a jock lead (Cory Mon­tei­th) who some­how gets pulled into the world, it marked a sig­nif­i­cant shift from High School Musi­cal. It was mar­ket­ed at teens and adults, with sex, cheat­ing, teen preg­nan­cy, and a wicked sense of humour. These days, the show is talked about as a bad fever dream, but the extent of Glee’s cul­tur­al impact is pro­found. It won Emmys and Gold­en Globes, staged an inter­na­tion­al con­cert tour, and its first sin­gle, a cov­er of Journey’s ​‘Don’t Stop Believ­ing’, reached num­ber 2 on the UK charts. Where High School Musi­cal thrives in its earnest­ness, Glee is defined by its self-aware­ness. Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) is an impos­si­bly overex­ag­ger­at­ed pro­tag­o­nist – remem­ber that time she sent a com­peti­tor to a crack house? – and the show rev­els in exhaust­ing every high school cliché. How­ev­er, there is heart beneath the extrem­i­ties, aid­ed by a tru­ly tal­ent­ed cast who could always get you to root for their char­ac­ters in a mean­ing­ful way as they tra­verse grow­ing up.

Glee paved the way for stu­dios to believe in these come­dies, and the suc­cess of Pitch Per­fect in 2012 only cement­ed this fur­ther. Inspired by Mick­ey Rapkin’s book ​‘Pitch Per­fect: The Quest for Col­le­giate a Cap­pel­la Glo­ry’, the three film fran­chise may focus on col­lege stu­dents rather than high school­ers, but the camp the­atri­cal­i­ty and slight dis­so­ci­a­tion from real­i­ty remain. It again cen­tres an out­sider so as to widen its appeal – here it’s Anna Kendrick’s Beca – but in all of these musi­cal depic­tions, the kin­ship and com­mu­ni­ty that the­atre kids have between them is cru­cial to under­stand­ing these characters.

Even out­side musi­cals, the­atre kids have made for com­pelling pro­tag­o­nists in teen nar­ra­tives. Teen dra­mas his­tor­i­cal­ly have loved sto­ry­lines where the cast put on a show, and in con­tem­po­rary exam­ples such as Riverdale and Eupho­ria, their usage has high­light­ed how the­atri­cal­i­ty can height­en the expe­ri­ences of com­ing of age.

But even beloved auteurs Wes Ander­son and Gre­ta Ger­wig had ear­ly break­out films (Rush­more and Lady Bird) that focused on the­atre kids. Max in Rush­more (Jason Schwartz­mann) and the tit­u­lar role in Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan), are defined by the neu­ro­sis that seems inher­ent­ly linked to their the­atri­cal­i­ty. Like many who ful­fil the trope, there is a self-impor­tance that shapes their inter­ac­tions with oth­ers, and a detach­ment from the things that tru­ly mat­ter. In the open­ing scene of Lady Bird, her mum yells at her, ​“you don’t think about any­body but your­self,” some­thing that is also said in Fame by Mrs Sher­wood to young, ambi­tious dancer Leroy. How­ev­er, these the­atre kids are still depict­ed as empa­thet­ic, feel­ing every­thing more deeply.

The bal­ance of depict­ing neu­rot­ic ten­den­cies and gar­ner­ing empa­thy is a knack that Ben Platt (the arche­typ­al the­atre kid, whose father Marc Platt is a respect­ed film and the­atre pro­duc­er) has mas­tered in Dear Evan Hansen and now again in The­atre Camp. It shows in his per­for­mance but also in his writ­ing, as var­i­ous review­ers have point­ed to The­atre Camp as a film that is very much an in-joke between friends. Being both writ­ten by and star­ring the­atre kids-turned-the­atre adults (his friend Mol­ly Gor­don and fiancé Noah Galvin star) there is a hind­sight that pro­vides the satire, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing the unhealthy rela­tion­ships between the­atre kids and their teach­ers. But there is also a deep fond­ness for that world, mean­ing that the earnest tone cap­tured in films like High School Musi­cal can’t help but spill out, even in the mock­u­men­tary format.

In a review of the final sea­son of High School Musi­cal: The Musi­cal: The Series, crit­ic Fletch­er Peters points to ​“satire and earnest sto­ries of teenagers find­ing their true selves” as what the show does best. But this bal­ance has been what cin­e­mat­ic depic­tions of the­atre kids have always done best. What would be annoy­ing in real life has an oth­er­world­ly charm on screen that when lov­ing­ly poked at, mak­ing for fun­ny and empa­thet­ic sto­ry­telling that shows the tumul­tuous nature of grow­ing up.