This year’s annual VAPA showcase took place on Thursday, April 9th, with a thematic for of the band: The Beatles.
Put on by all the teachers and students from the visual performing arts, HPHS featured music, art, and drama. Unfortunately, this year HP didn’t have entertainment from the dance classes which was cut from HP.
The theme for this year’s showcase was The Beatles suggested by Mrs. Anthony, the music department director. The other teachers liked the idea and brainstormed around it.
Dr. Parker, the English and drama teacher, was glad about the chosen theme and how it is able to
“Educate the kids on a different area of music and exposes them to a legend.”
In order to incorporate the Beatles into the showcase, Mr. Herrera, one of the school music teachers is going to have the Modern Band, Mariachi, and Choir students perform the songs, “Imagine”, “Do you wanna know a secret”, and “Michelle”. For modern bands the two groups performing are Sonar Waves and Anything And Everything. Mr. Herrera is “excited to see the students’ interpretation of the music and wishes the students good luck!”
Ms. Espinosa and Ms. Aguilar’s art classes created pieces of art where the students interpreted song lyrics into their calligraphy work.
Dr. Parker’s Advanced Theater class is surprisingly not doing a show based on The Beatles but is working to promote their upcoming play Ride The Cyclone. For the play, Dr. Parker was excited for her students to share a scene from their show with other students,
In addition, this year Dr. Parkers drama students, Michael Vasquez and Nelson Aguirre-Medina wrote and hosted the showcase. They had to research the history and cultural context of The Beatles in order for it to correlate with each group’s performances and the theme.
This year’s VAPA showcase was not only able to teach students about The Beatles history but entertain them as well, with a mix of the sounds of timeless influential figures and modern students, this showcase showed off the students talent by using their voices, art, and instruments.
Written by Suhey Aguilar, staff writer