There are a lot of hills around South Fayette Township and, thanks in part to the musical program at the high school, they are often alive with the sound of music.

SF students perform in last spring’s production of “Singin’ in the Rain”

Like all performing arts endeavors, the various performing groups and events in the drama and music departments at South Fayette are collaborative efforts. Veteran teachers head up the various arts – the marching band known as “The Little Green Machine,” several choruses and a theater department that produces an annual fall show and the always-anticipated spring musical – all of which have a high percentage of student support at the 600-student high school.

For the spring musical, which is the highlight of the performing arts season at most Western Pennsylvania high schools, producer/director Mariann Mackey works with several colleagues to make sure that every aspect of the production is first rate. That is important when you are responsible for translating classic works by legendary composers and lyricists like Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe and Andrew Lloyd Weber.

“With so many students in a show (last year’s production “Singin’ In the Rain” boasted a cast and crew of over 100) it takes a lot of people to pull it off,” Mackey said.

One of those people is the director’s vocal coach Kevin Maurer who oversees the various choral groups at the high school and has a reputation for heightening students’ interest in singing. That talent extends to the spring musical where Mackey likes to fill the stage with featured performers, dancers and chorus members, all the better to impart the love of theater to young people who will be the next generation of theater professionals and theatergoers. The director and vocal coach have collaborated on 15 musicals so far and Mackey says that is important, especially during the rehearsal process when division of workload is so important.

Other major collaborators in the process are Mackey’s son Michael who directs the Little Green Machine and is getting ready for a band festival featuring ten high school marching bands on September 15 at the high school athletic field. Michael Mackey conducts the show’s pit orchestra of which Maurer is a member.

Choreographer Alivia Vereb-Owen keeps the student performers stepping lively, Marie Ireland designs and makes costumes that fit the mood and period of the show, Patrick McAndrew designs the sets and Dean Stewart manages the construction. Doing the actual construction is a team of fathers, some of whom keep coming back long after their children have graduated.

But the first step is selecting the proper material for the talent available. For example, in some seasons there may be a large number of boys with the singing, dancing and acting chops to take center stage. Those are the years that the production team might look at male dominated fare like Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls” or Lloyd Weber’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.” If the talent pool is heavy with girls, a play is picked that has a dominant female cast.

For now, with the school year in its infancy and incoming freshmen whose talent has yet to be evaluated, the 2008 musical is still in the planning stages.

But long before the robins sing and the roses bloom, Mackey is looking forward to another theatrical challenge. The school’s fall right of passage, “The South Fayette Follies,” will be replaced this year and in the future with “straight” plays: comedies or dramas that don’t use music to further the plot. As of now, the director is thinking about a few alternatives to kick off the new fall tradition.

“I might do two short plays this season just to get the students and audiences used to the change,” she said.

Whatever she chooses, Mackey knows that the lesson to be learned by her drama group is that Shakespeare and Sondheim, Pinter and Porter, Wendy Wasserstein and Rodgers and Hammerstein can all coexist at the same high school.