Last week, the Class of 2016 music theater majors premiered their freshman showcase, “Let Me Be Your Star.” The show, created solely by the first-year students, acted as a debutante ball for the performers, according to freshman Ryan James Monroe, student director and cast member. He said the performance showed off the class’s capabilities.

“The purpose of a freshman showcase is to give light to the newest members of the program who don't traditionally succeed in getting other opportunities to be showcased, mostly because they don't know how to grab performance opportunities yet,” Monroe said.

The Class of 2016 had complete control over what went into the debut on the Elon scene. Monroe encouraged his peers to think critically about what they wanted to go into the show, and encouraged them to utilize Broadway pieces like “Positive” from “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” as well as pop songs like Pink’s “Glitter in the Air.”

Each piece had a director and music director, who arranged the piece and chose adequate performers. The theme was hand-selected by one of the class members to reflect what the ensemble wanted to show the audience.

“The title was the idea of our public relations director, Ciara Dixon,” Monroe said. “She proposed the song ‘Let Me Be Your Star’ from the hit TV show ‘Smash’ as our final number and that inspired the title for our show. It simply represents the idea of what the showcase stands for: let us show you who we are and what we can do.”

This was one of the first times many of these students would be showing their skills for an Elon audience, Monroe said. For performers like  Jillian Hannah, the chance to prove themselves to peers was exactly what they wanted out of the showcase.

“Not only has it given me my first opportunity to perform here at Elon, but it has also given me the chance to show my classmates, who've never heard me sing, what I can do,” Hannah said.

“Let Me Be Your Star” was the young artists’ launch into a program that will serve as the home, education and the support system for the rest of their time here, Frohlinger said.

“I feel like we are finally initiated officially into the department,” Frohlinger said. “Every class before us has done this and every class below us will do this. It is just part of the tradition of being an Elon music theater major, and there is no better feeling in the world. “