By Ande Jacobson
Senior year of high school is often fraught with decisions. For the academically inclined, this is the year when students make a series of decisions that have a monumental impact on the rest of their lives. It’s the year when they have to decide which colleges they’ll apply to (if indeed they are planning to go straight from high school to college). Later when the acceptances start rolling in, they have to decide which college they’ll attend. For many of these students, these college related decisions overtake their world. They visit campuses. They talk with friends, family, school advisors, current college students, faculty, and admissions staff, and they try to make the decision that is best for them given what they know about their interests at that time. They also still continue to attend their high school classes through their senior year, maintaining their academic performance that got them to this point in their lives. They may also have part time jobs that require their attention. They have familial responsibilities. For those students seeking an arts related college program, they may also have to audition or submit portfolios for consideration as part of the application process. In short, they are busier than they have ever been. For Val Zvinyatskovsky, this was only part of what occupied his time through his senior year of high school. In addition to his studies, campus visits, and holding down several arts-related jobs across performance, tech, and teaching, he also put his thoughts into a musical production as the composer, lyricist, librettist, and director. Barely a week after his high school graduation, he debuted his new one-act musical, The Right: A Gameshow Musical, in a special one night presentation, a video of which is available for all interested viewers.
Val describes his show thusly:
“The Right” is a new one-act musical by Val Zvinyatskovsky. It explores the daunting college application journey by placing it within the flashy and high-stakes setting of a gameshow. As two contestants engage in a fierce battle, they strive to navigate each challenge strategically, aiming to secure their coveted program while also grappling to preserve their relationship. With their mutual friend serving as the host, caught in the crossfire of their competition, the very structure of the gameshow may buckle under the weight of this pivotal moment in the characters’ lives.”
An apt description to be sure. The Right is a complex, poetic, and insightful look at the personal impacts of the college application process. Val’s book and lyrics delve deep into the complexities and lifetime ramifications of applying to college taking two “contestants” from their application through the often angst-filled wait for their all-important letters to arrive. They hope for acceptances and fear rejections. For many students, applying to the universities and colleges of their choice can be a daunting task. So much of school can be competitive, whether for class grades, class ranking, even for the attention of their teachers. The application process brings that competition to a whole new level pitting students not only against friends for those coveted spots, but also against other students they will likely never meet but who can have an outsized impact on the direction of their lives after high school.
In the show, the contestants are close friends, but they also see one another as rivals of a sort even though their chosen fields of study (medicine and the arts) couldn’t be further apart. Their self-confidence is tested as they note each other’s best qualities and abilities while questioning their own by comparison. The game show host serves as a moderator of sorts not only posing pointed questions and directions, but also injecting salient observations for the contestants’ consideration. While the characters’ thoughts come with a stream of consciousness feel, there are some lighter humorous moments breaking up the deeper revelations. Val accompanied the actors on keyboard through the performance, the music hitting all the emotional highs and lows with some adroit callouts to the musical theater genre. He cast this show well, and the actors handled the challenging music with aplomb while conveying honest emotion as they played to an appreciative audience sitting in rapt attention.
Val has been working toward a career in the arts for over a decade having spent his childhood honing his skills across the spectrum of theater including music, acting, direction, technical design and implementation, and composition. Along the way, he’s written several scripts for local cabaret performances, and this new musical takes his writing and composition to a new level. He sees the arts not just as entertainment but as far more. Through the creativity involved in being a theatrical artist, he strives to bring people together to change how they see the world around them. Theater can make a bold statement about life, the world at large, our interactions, our thoughts, and our dreams. Theater can educate, inspire, and present new ideas to a broad audience. Most importantly, it can make people think.
Theater allows artists to express themselves in ways that might not always come naturally to them. It can stretch them into areas they’d never considered. It also lets them send a powerful message at times, giving their voice greater reach than just talking with friends and family. Artists can use theater to raise awareness on sensitive issues. Val’s performance and directorial experience has put him into that realm on multiple occasions. Over the last several years, he’s had the opportunity to work on shows tackling subjects across a broad spectrum from pure entertainment to topics that make people uncomfortable because they don’t know how to deal with them. He’s used all of that background in creating own musical to reach audiences to both entertain and educate them.
As for the complexities of the college application process, sometimes dumb luck comes into play, both good and bad, and that can weigh on a student just entering adulthood. On the upside, a positive interview or audition can have a favorable impact on a student’s application. A campus visit can give the prospective student a good feel for the environment and whether or not they’d fit, and they can make some important contacts while they are there.
On the downside, numerous unexpected events can occur. Schools can close unexpectedly as happened with University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA after an almost 150 year run. Decisions can be made too late to regroup and go another direction in a timely fashion. Even being placed on a waitlist for a first choice school can be anxiety producing. That places the student in limbo unsure whether to make other solid plans for a lesser choice or wait and hope for the best on their first choice. None of it is comfortable, but it’s all life experience. An artist can tap their life experience and through theater, give it a visibility they never thought possible. For Val, anything is possible.
References:
https://agoodreedreview.com/2021/12/11/val-z-profile/
http://www.valzvi.com/
https://www.valzvi.com/therightmusical
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/accreditation/2024/06/17/university-arts-closure-remains-mystery
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