Elli Parks, a junior at GEHS, has been nominated for the prestigious Starlight Blue Star Awards in Lighting Design (Oklahoma!). Elli is the first GEHS student to be nominated since 2006!
Modeled after Broadway’s Tony Awards®, Starlight’s annual Blue Star Awards recognize achievement and excellence in musical theatre among Kansas City area high school students.
Established in 2003, the program is one of the largest and most admired high school musical theatre awards programs in the nation. All high schools in metropolitan Kansas City and selected outlying communities are invited to participate. Each year the program serves 5,000 area students who contribute either on the stage or behind the scenes to their schools’ musical theatre productions.
Adjudicators, who are theatre professionals, performing artists, designers, and theatre arts educators, attend each participating school’s musical and provide evaluations and commentary to Starlight’s Community Engagement Department. Their comments are also compiled and shared with each school’s theatre teacher and students.
Each year, the program culminates with the red-carpet Blue Star Awards Ceremony on the Starlight stage.
There are 26 different categories, from Best Show, individual performances through technical theatre aspects of Fall Produced Musicals in the area. Schools from Liberty to Lee's Summit all the way to Paola have entered the competition.
The nominees are invited to the red-carpet Blue Star Awards Ceremony on the Starlight stage on May 17 at 7:30 p.m., where the winners will be announced in front of some of the best talent and high school Theatre Programs in the Metro area.