Sarmistha Pulagam

The cast and crew prepare for the winter musical, Legally Blonde, after school. Since November 2025, almost every day after school, students and teachers work on producing the musical. “We’ve got the set crew building this set,” Director Justin Scheuer said. “We’ve got the lighting crew that’s hanging the lighting equipment. There’s a lot of props in the show and a lot of costumes. We have a publicity area, and they’re putting together the poster and the program and getting the word out so people can come see the show. It’s a lot of plates spinning at once.”

Students will perform the winter musical, Legally Blonde, in the Performing Arts Center Feb. 19-21.

Legally Blonde is the story of Elle Woods, a stereotypical 2000s sorority girl, who follows her ex-boyfriend to Harvard Law School in hopes of getting back together. Through the process, she finds a passion for law. Woods learns that staying true and embracing who she is allows her to redefine what a great lawyer is. 

“[The musical is] an adaptation of the movie, so if anyone’s seen the movie, it’s basically the same storyline,” Musical Director Justin Scheuer said. “I feel like there’s more character development, especially with Elle and Emmett in the musical, versus in the movie.” 

Preparation for the musical began over the summer with Scheuer and other school administration. Typically, the search for the winter musical starts the school year prior, but since it was Scheuer’s first year directing at Ladue High School, he was given three play choices due to the late start.

“The first part of the process was actually working with the music department to figure out what show to do, figure out what [the] talent pool was, what would fit our community and where we would be able to provide enough roles for everyone,” Scheuer said.

Student involvement was brought in during November, led by set crew co-managers Jane Carrico (11) and Eliza Yawitz (10). A couple of weeks later, auditions were held. Since then, the cast has met after school five times a week to rehearse.

“[Jane and I] talked and mapped out what each scene needed, if there’s anything scene specific that was a set requirement,” Yawitz said. “We started sketching out some designs. I went into my CAD software, Onshape, and just started making models of ideas.”  

The musical is split into multiple departments, each group in charge of their designated job. But in order to make the play cohesive, consistent communication is needed between each department.

“Jane [and I] have a lot of meetings with Scheuer because he blocks everything,” Yawitz said. “We’ve met with a couple of departments. Like with the costumes department, we had a meeting the other day about how we could match some of the costumes to some of the set pieces.”

Through all the hard work and long hours working on the winter musical, a community has been formed. It can often be stressful, but the whole crew has learned to rely on and help each other out.

“I was really surprised by the community that’s in theater,” Carrico said. “I went into it not expecting anything, and I’ve made so many close friends, and everybody is just so welcoming and just genuinely funny, and it makes it a really great experience.”

While Scheuer is new to Ladue, he and the cast collaborated to make the musical the best it can be. Most of the cast have been in theater at Ladue for multiple years, and they’ve pushed themselves to work with Scheuer and improve the show. 

“I feel it needs to have full student ownership,” Scheuer said. “Students should feel this is their show. It’s not my show and it’s not the school show, it’s the department show. And students should feel like, when it’s all said and done, they did this.”