From AAS-Feature - July 11, 2007:
— Michael Barnes AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

During a break in rehearsals for Zachary Scott Theatre's "High School Musical," the performers behave like — how to put this? — performers in a high-school musical.

They giggle and gossip on a vast blanket in the lobby. They flirt and show off. They practice twirling, skateboarding and jumping off the stage in the appropriately barnlike Texas School for the Deaf auditorium.

Maybe that's because, even though a few college students and budding professionals dot the cast, most of them are actually high-school students.

That means adjusting management techniques honed for years on adult actors.

"For some — not all — it's the discipline in the room," says director Dave Steakley regarding the difference between the two experiences. "And the focus. Now, in between rehearsals, they are fantastic, so fresh, mostly because, unlike other actors, they don't have day jobs."

Zachary Scott Theatre is the first professional company in the Austin area to stage the mammoth Disney hit. Last year, several area high schools got a crack at the tween romance about a basketball player and a math whiz who fall in love and land roles in the — forgive the redundancy — high-school musical. Steakley's version opens Friday, just weeks before "High School Musical 2" breaks Aug. 17 on the Disney Channel.

As the 30 players slowly assemble on stage after the dinner break just more than a week before opening, they respond swiftly to Steakley's directions, theatrical jargon spoken calmly over a microphone.

"Let's let this moment split the center more."… "That cluster needs to move downstage." … "Stay in that lip lock until the music stops."

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