Just over a week has gone by since school resumed from winter break with cozy winter fires or relaxing vacations on beaches, and students are already jumping into the grind of musical rehearsals. They stay after school every day from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. rehearsing for the Upper School musical. Their evenings are filled with line memorization, advanced dances, scene choreography, and lots of singing. In just a month, they’ll be staying even later, and the week before the show rehearsals can go as late as 10 p.m.

Currently, the Upper School musical counts as an extracurricular activity on a student’s high school transcript, but it is not counted as an art credit. However, Parker student-athletes and certain out-of-school athletes receive a P.E. credit and are therefore exempt from taking the class during the season. Why isn’t it the same for the musical? Parker students and faculty are discussing the status of the musical as a non-credit extracurricular.

“I feel like an art credit proposal would honor Parker’s values of independent enrichment and taking your education into your own hands,” junior Camille Freedman said. Freedman doesn’t participate in the musical but is a serious dancer outside of school. “In my case, dance is something I do 30 to 40 hours a week. I think that being recognized for the work I do outside of school because it’s so involved is important, and because it would give me extra time to work on academics and homework because dance does take so much of my time. It also would give me the opportunity to have more time to dedicate to that passion and further pursue it.”

Last year, junior Ava Ori sent a proposal to the previous student government president describing why and how the upper school musical should have a credit, but there was no action taken. This year it was reintroduced in Cabinet, which has plans to make it public sometime this school year.

“In the interest of equity, art exemption should be available to all students who qualify,” Student Government President Matthew Turk said. “I theorize that as early as there was gym exemption in 2014, people would have naturally started to think up ideas of how artists can receive similar accommodations. While exemption is different from receiving credit, the idea is more or less the same. This proposal could give out-of-school artists the opportunity to receive credit for their work and the contributions they bring to this institution.”

In the past, Turk has brought up the idea of putting a system in place that would allow artists to meet the art credit requirements without enrolling in additional art classes. The student would just have to fill out a form and request an art credit for their extracurricular art.

Ori has done the upper school musical every year. “I calculated that I spent about 70 hours in practices for the production of Chicago last year which is much longer than any block period art class,” she said. “The initial thought was that if students wanted to take this as a credit, they should be able to. I think that it could attract more students to participate who were deciding whether they would do the musical or not.”

Many students agree with Ori, some have differing opinions, and most didn’t even know this proposal was an option. Senior Isabella Gomez-Barrientos, who has also done the upper school musical every year, is one of the students against the proposal. “When people are doing the musical because they want the art credit, it just doesn’t work out because people don’t want to be there and they don’t put in the time or the commitment, and it ends up being a bunch of people on stage just standing there,” Gomez-Barrientos said.

Sophomore Star Rothkopf thinks that’s not really an issue to be concerned about. “I don’t think people would do that because people know how late you have to stay after school,” Rothkopf said about doing the musical just for the credit. “I don’t know, it just almost seems like more than a class.” 

On the other hand, Ori’s response to students who don’t want people to do the musical just for the credit is that they’re right. “I thought it would be a fun way to incentivize more people to join the musical because we get a much lower turn-out than the middle school, but I get it. After having conversations with a lot of those people, I very much understand the point. You should do something because you love it, but I would defend that by talking about Parker sports. I love field hockey; I don’t do that for the gym credit, but it is really nice that it works out like that. I am just trying to get us some perks.”

In a survey sent out to the upper school student body, out of fifty responses over 70% think there should be an art credit for the musical. Over 50% of students who haven’t done the musical said they would if it provided an art credit. 

Lower School drama teacher and previous director of the Upper School musical Leslie Holland-Pryor believes the musical should be made into a yearlong art course with class credit. It used to be just that because so many students participated. Cookies, a two-day period each spring where entire Upper School takes off regular classes to engage in student-created courses, was initially created to provide time for students in the musical to rehearse during tech week.

“I’ve always noticed that when it comes to athletics and sports, there’s a different standard and protocol,” Holland-Pryor said. “Arts require the same amount of work if not more than athletics. There’s just not the same appreciation.”

If the musical and fall play were made into a year-long class now, Holland-Pryor believes it would relieve the pressure of time off of the students so that they could be fully invested in what they enjoy. Though it would take many committees and much time planning,  Holland-Pryor said. “I was free to become the artist I became because I had a supportive community, so let’s make this work.”