Valley Musicals wraps season with regional student performances in Lewisburg

Nearly 200 students from 13 schools turned Lewisburg Area High School into the Valley’s biggest youth theater gathering, closing the spring musical season with four live performances and 13 video spotlights. For the first time since the celebration moved to Lewisburg, every school that staged a spring production sent representatives, giving the event the feel of a regional arts network rather than a single-school awards night.

The eighth annual Valley Musicals red-carpet celebration started at 6 p.m. Monday, May 11, with doors opening at 5:30 p.m. at Lewisburg Area High School, 545 Newman Road. Students in grades 9-12 were invited to be interviewed for the special section, putting the focus on the cast, crew, ensembles, feature performers and directors who carried each show through months of rehearsals.

The roster stretched across Union County and the surrounding Valley, bringing together students from Danville, Lewisburg, Line Mountain, Midd-West, Mifflinburg, Milton, Meadowbrook Christian, Mount Carmel, Selinsgrove, Shamokin, Shikellamy, Southern Columbia and Warrior Run. The celebration honored productions ranging from The SpongeBob Musical to Sweeney Todd, a reminder that the Valley’s school stages are producing both crowd-pleasers and more ambitious musical theater.

Kylyn Dillman, a 9-year-old Midd-West student, put the night in simple terms: “music is her top thing.” That kind of enthusiasm is what makes the event more than a recap of a school season. It gives younger performers a public stage, while older students get recognized for the discipline, confidence and creative work that happen long before opening night.

Lewisburg’s own musical program has been building that pipeline for more than 50 years, and the district says thousands of students have taken part over that span. The annual spring musical is typically staged in March, with auditions usually held in early December, a calendar that keeps students working from winter into spring before the Valley Musicals spotlight arrives. The school’s auditorium seats 824 and was completed in December 2016 as part of the district’s new high school building.

The 2026 celebration matched the scale of the 2025 special section, which highlighted 13 local high school musical productions. In Lewisburg, that kind of turnout shows how deeply school theater is woven into the Valley’s civic life, and how much of it depends on a steady chain of students, families and school programs keeping the curtain rising year after year.