Special needs students to show talents in musical theater

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The full cast in the rehearsal for the musical play.

Winnie and Alexander, the producer and executive producer of the Musical Theater.

The scene where Ramandawi (seated, left) is encouraged to believe in her ability to sing.

KOTA KINABALU: Maktab Nasional Private Mission School, fairly well known in musical theater for nearly three decades, will be holding its first fund-raising event tonight, at the Tun Raffae Auditorium at Yayasan Sabah.

The school, which only have 240 students, will be performing a musical theater to raise funds through the sales of tickets.

Headmistress, Madam Winnie Voo, said they hoped to raise funds to support the school learning center and to accommodate the special needs students who had enrolled in the school since January this year.

Maktab Nasional has enrolled a total of 18 special needs student this year which included two female students.

According to Madam Winnie, these special needs students, who currently receive their education under the supervision of four dedicated staff of the school, are actively participating the school education syllabus, namely, living skills, music classes, singing and dancing lesson, vocational and academic subjects.

“We hope to better serve them with improved facilities so these students can progress well with their learning ability,” Madam Winnie said.

“This musical theater is not only about raising funds to improve the facilities of the school for the special needs students, but we also wanted to showcase our talented students in performing, acting, singing and dancing to the public,” she added.

“The student population of Maktab Nasional may seem small, but most of the students are very talented, showcasing the student’s talents is one of the ways of acknowledging their potentials; it is best to always encourage the students as much as we could in order to build them up for their future in the area they are passionate about.” she added again.

When talking about the details of the musical theater, the headmistress proudly introduced the director of the play, Cindy Gadalon, who has been polishing the hidden talents of her eight potential students in performing and acting, while Debbie Ho and Joanna Ho, as the dance choreographer, have been skillfully training a total of 14 students in creative dancing for tonight’s performances.

Cindy, who wrote and directed the whole play, said that the musical theater is about a group of students who each have their dreams, but had no ideas on how to achieve them. “Crazy Dreams” was selected as the theme for the play because it portrays the teenagers’ life of having a lot of ambitions.

Cindy also said that the play will illustrate the life journey the teenagers will go through in realizing their ambitions.

If you are interested to see what this showcase is all about, tickets are available for sale today, around 6pm at the entrance of the Tun Raffae Auditorium at Yayasan Sabah, priced at RM40, RM80 and RM100.