Iowa's high school musical theater talent on display in Des Moines Thursday
Des Moines Performance Arts has been all a buzz this week as 650 students from around the state have gathered for rehearsals at the Civic Center. The showcase and awards happen Thursday night and feature ensemble performances of the best vocalists in central Iowa schools singing together, and then about half the schools will perform excerpts of their high school musicals on the Civic Center stage.
Gabe on the Go: Cuddling with goats in Cumming
A musical director and a choreographer, both based in New York City, are here to work with the kids to prepare for the showcase. The program started in 2013 and has seen huge growth.
'When we started, we had nine schools in central Iowa. We've grown to be statewide with over 100 schools, more schools asking to join us, and we've become one of the largest programs of its kind in the country. And schools just keep telling us how valuable the feedback is and all the learning opportunities and how much showcase provides inspiration,' said Karoline Myers, DMPA Director of Education.
The High School Theater Showcase is a ticketed event and is sold out. But you can watch the live stream on IowaPBS.org starting at 7:00 p.m. The showcase will also air on Iowa PBS in July.
Awards and scholarships will be given at the end of the night for categories like best actor, vocalist, and dancer. And two students will win a 10-day trip and Broadway workshop in New York City to take part in a national High School Theater Showcase on Broadway later this summer. Those two students will be guests on Hello Iowa at the end of June.
On Monday morning on Today in Iowa, we will feature some of the student performers and their directors in Scholastic Spotlight.
Iowa's high school musical theater talent on display in Des Moines Thursday
Gabe on the Go: Cuddling with goats in Cumming
Sausage plant planned for Perry, 500 new jobs to be created
Inside look at Final Four in Coolest Thing Made in Iowa Contest
Forecast: Thursday raindrops, then heat
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Associated Press
Book Review: Debut novelist Aisha Muharrar deftly explores love and loss in ‘Loved One'
I picked up a copy of 'Loved One' based solely on the fact that its first-time author, Aisha Muharrar, was involved in three television comedies that made me laugh: 'Hacks,''Parks and Recreation' and 'The Good Place.' The opening scene of 'Loved One' could be a set piece on any of those shows, as we jump inside the head of our narrator, 30-year-old Julia, who is delivering the eulogy at a friend's funeral, a popular indie musician at the time of his death. She thinks in pop culture tropes. 'Gabe and I were actual friends… We weren't the kind of friends who were never really friends. The kind of friends you see in a romantic comedy where there are two incredibly attractive people who are deeply emotionally invested in each other, and we're supposed to believe they have never once considered the idea of sexual intercourse.' Julia next goes to the bathroom and ends up needing to borrow a tampon from Elizabeth, a British woman Gabe had been dating for more than a year at the time of his accidental death. (He slipped and hit his head on a marble sink when exiting the shower of an L.A. hotel.) Elizabeth's words to Julia in their brief bathroom encounter set the rest of the story in motion: 'I know exactly who you were to Gabe.' After some required background about how Julia and Gabe met at a program for arts and architectural students in Barcelona in the summer between high school and college, Julia is on her way to London to retrieve a few of Gabe's things at the request of Gabe's grieving mother. 'I was a set of house keys buried at the bottom of a purse, finally plucked out, jangling with a purpose,' is the poetic way Muharrar describes Julia's feelings as she heads overseas. Once in London, the story takes on an almost buddy comedy feel, with Julia and Elizabeth warily befriending one another as they attempt to collect mementos of Gabe's — from a guitar he once played to a Mets cap he wore. We stay inside Julia's head most of the time, as she travels around London, still delivering inner monologues wrapped in her pop-culture sensibility: 'I liked learning a new tidbit about him. It was never-before-seen footage that kept the movie of his life rolling.' As the two women get to know one another, we as readers get to know more about their relationships with Gabe, and especially what happened in the final month or so before his death. Muharrar's work developing her main characters throughout the story allows her to explore deeper themes of grief and loss in the final third of the book without too much sentimentality. Closure may be too much to ask for these grieving women, but it's enough that they realize they still have lives to live without the object of the book's title. ___ AP book reviews:
Washington Post
30-07-2025
- Washington Post
A cynic's struggles: 'The Book of George' wins Gabe Hudson Prize
NEW YORK — A comic novel about a cynic's struggles to connect with others has won a $10,000 award named for a widely-respected author and editor, the late Gabe Hudson. Kate Greathead's 'The Book of George' is this year's recipient of the Gabe Hudson Prize, which is administered by the literary publisher McSweeney's . 'The Book of George' was praised by The Associated Press reviewer Kendal Weaver , who called Greathead 'a gifted storyteller who reels off dialogue filled with wit and humor so well it makes page-turning a pleasure.'
Associated Press
30-07-2025
- Associated Press
A cynic's struggles: 'The Book of George' wins Gabe Hudson Prize
NEW YORK (AP) — A comic novel about a cynic's struggles to connect with others has won a $10,000 award named for a widely-respected author and editor, the late Gabe Hudson. Kate Greathead's 'The Book of George' is this year's recipient of the Gabe Hudson Prize, which is administered by the literary publisher McSweeney's. 'The Book of George' was praised by The Associated Press reviewer Kendal Weaver, who called Greathead 'a gifted storyteller who reels off dialogue filled with wit and humor so well it makes page-turning a pleasure.' Hudson, who died in 2023 at age 52, was a creative teacher, a McSweeney's editor and a prizewinning writer whose books included the novel 'Dear Mr. President.' The prize, endowed by his mother, Sanchia Semere, is given for a book that conveys 'humor, pathos, and a deep understanding of contemporary America.' Greathead said in a statement Wednesday that Hudson's 'generosity of spirit and humor are traits I admire greatly in writers and non-writers alike, and to be a small part of his legacy is as meaningful a tribute as I can imagine.' 'It has become an unfortunate cliché that award recipients often say they are 'humbled' on such occasions, but in thinking of what Gabe and his writing meant to people, it is the word that comes first to mind,' she added. The Hudson prize was launched last year: The first winner was Ayana Mathis' 'The Unsettled.'
