School of Rock: From Cult Classic to Beloved Musical

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If you love Jack Black and everything musical, then you’ll love School of Rock.  Based on the 2003 cult classic by the same name, this musical is coming to the main stage, with all new music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who you might recognize as the man who composed Phantom of the Opera, Cats, and Jesus Christ Superstar.

Freeway Music and CCT’s students will be performing School of Rock on May 21st, at 2 pm and 7 pm. There will be loveable characters, talented teens and tweens, and rock music that will be stuck in your head for weeks after witnessing the magic on stage. 

School of Rock follows Dewey Finn, a slacking and struggling guitarist who’s constantly fantasizing of making it big as a superstar. He’s kicked out of his band No Vacancy for trying to upstage the lead singer and is later fired from his job at a record store. His friends call him ‘nothing but a dreamer’ and that he will go nowhere unless he grows up.

After getting a phone call from a school counselor, mistaking Dewey for someone else, he impersonates this person to get a job as a substitute teacher at a prestigious school. There, he ends up teaching a group of uptight students who don’t like him because of his careless nature. However, upon hearing the musical talent of these straight-A fifth graders, Dewey becomes determined to join these students together into a band and win the Battle of the Bands. 

This musical is about determination, about working to achieve your goal instead of being in a constant state of dreaming, but not doing. Dreaming is a virtue, to imagine things that might’ve been unimaginable or too farfetched, but it’s not until you try and fail, try and fail, will you end up learning and one day, succeeding.

Although the musical is different from the original movie, it acts as a worthy adaptation by accentuating the rock and roll influence and maintaining the theme throughout it as honestly as the movie. 

If you’re interested in seeing this cult classic adapted on stage, come watch School of Rock performed on May 21st!