Nearly always, high schools put on musicals that are totally familiar to the cast as well as the audience—having been performed over and over again by professionals, community theaters, and schools. Every role is fixed, every song set in stone. Many times, you know who originated a role, and try as you will, you can’t get that person out of your mind.

This year, the Osbourn Park players are having the unusual experience of workshopping a musical. There’s no film. No CD. When they were assigned their parts, they didn’t even get a final script. They were given no more than broad guidelines about how each character should talk. Every member of the cast had to come up with something original.

WILLIAM STRAUSS (playwright/lyricist) is co-founder and director of the Capitol Steps, for which he occasionally performs. He has written six books, including Generations, The Fourth Turning, and Millennials Rising (about today’s teenage generation). He has written the musical MaKiddo, a full parody of The Mikado about trophy teens, and is now writing a play, The Big Bump. In the 1999, Strauss founded the Cappies, through which students from Washington, D.C.-area high schools review each others' plays and musicals for publication in The Washington Post and other papers. See capsteps.com, fourthturning.com, millennialsrising.com, and cappies.com.

BO AYARS (composer) has conducted orchestras and performed as a pianist with noted entertainers in major concert halls around the world, and has played at the White House for Presidents Reagan and Bush. His television credits include The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and the original Ed Sullivan show. In a career that spans four decades, he has accompanied Elvis Presley, Liberace, Barbra Streisand, Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Jim Nabors, Raquel Welch, Robert Goulet, Diahann Carroll, Judy Collins, and the Capitol Steps. He arranged the music for MaKiddo, and is now composing music for two other musicals. See artra.com/boayars.htm.

STEVEN ROSENHAUS (composer) has over 100 original works and arrangements in print, including music and lyrics for the off-Broadway show Critic, whose songs were praised by The New York Times as “clever, deftly constructed, and likeable,” by Backstage magazine as “simply lovely.” Rosenhaus has written for and performed with the Don’t Quit Your Day Job Players. His concert music has been played throughout the U.S. and Europe by numerous orchestras and string ensembles. He currently teaches composition at New York University and Nassau County (NY) Community College. See pages.nyu.edu/~slr3/ and dqydjp.com.