Watch out, “Hamilton!” Eighth-graders Jonathan Morris and Tali Kuperberg are on their way to the theater scene with a musical about vocal music teacher Aaron Dunn.

Morris came up with the idea to write a musical while in theater class. At the end of the period, he did not hesitate to tell Kuperberg of his eureka moment.

“It just burst out from there and all the ideas just came out,” Kuperberg said

Morris and Kuperberg started writing that day and have been writing on and off ever since. They said that there have been gaps between writing because of a lack of inspiration and a busy rehearsal schedule for “James and the Giant Peach, Jr.,” the middle school musical.

In the musical, Dunn goes to New York to try and make it on Broadway. Unfortunately, Dunn cannot land a role in New York, so he joins the CESJDS faculty. He then meets Jewish text teacher Marci Aronchick who shows the non-Jewish Dunn how to chant Torah.
When Dunn, who started teaching in the 2016-2017 school year, found out that there was going to be a musical written about him, he was quite surprised.

“I think the term is ‘facepalm,’” Dunn said. “It was just sort of an overall ‘okay then.’ I certainly wasn’t expecting it.”

Although Dunn was at first taken aback by the idea, he is glad that his students are writing a musical. He believes that there is a lot about the production of music and shows that can be learned through writing a musical, which makes “Mr. Dunn the Musical” a good teaching experience for the students.

The soundtrack touches on many different emotions. Songs like “Mr. Dunn, That’s My Dream” and “Our Little Friendship,” the latter of which is about Aronchick and Dunn’s friendship, are light and happy. The finale, “What I’ve Dunn,” touches on the serious subject of self-deprecation, which Morris takes seriously as a lesson of the show.

“There’s a lot dealing with self-deprecation and feeling like you’re not enough,” Morris said. “The finale deals with that and reassures him that ‘Yes, you’ve done enough and that’s okay … you don’t have to be perfect.”

Both Morris and Kuperberg agree that writing the play was a very fun and educational experience. They explained how writing it together made the process exciting and efficient.

“It’s a lot more fun than writing by yourself because you have someone to bounce off ideas and that’s just much more incredible than working by yourself where you just don’t know some things,” Kuperberg said.

Despite the progress Morris and Kuperberg have made, they still do not know exactly when they will finish the musical. They hope to have it done by either the end of this year or the start of next year. All they know is that they will hold auditions for the roles in the near future.

Even with an uncertain timeline, outside of Kuperberg and Morris, excitement for the show has grown. Students throughout the middle and high school have already helped Morris and Kuperberg design and print posters to put up throughout the school. Dunn was impressed that upperclassmen helped the middle schoolers as much as they did.

“It really sort of speaks to the community of the school that a senior, you know, cares what an eighth grader is doing,” Dunn said. “It’s sort of an incredible thing. It’s just a cool little community thing that people really care what’s happening.”