In May of 1996, a group of students at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in California put together a musical based on Star Wars (Episode IV) and performed it for a three-night run. The production featured songs with lyrics (derived from the movie, of course) by the students, set to well-known show tunes from wildly different sources — from Grease to Les Miserables. And it achieves, in its own campy, teenage way, a kind of brilliance.
Courtesy of the folks at Salon.com, we can now watch the production in its entirety, with very helpful subtitles so you don’t have to strain to hear the lyrics in the unsurprisingly uneven recording. All six parts of the video are embedded in order below.
If you’re not yet convinced to watch it, let me say this: The way the final Death Star battle is handled is inspired, and — this is really reason enough on its own — Han shoots first as part of a song. Enjoy!
(The full credits for the production are listed here. If you are one of the people who was involved in the production, or you know someone who was, please drop me an email.)
