Entertainment

Disney's popular High School Musical is about a jock and a whiz kid who buck their cliques and become stars in their high school musical.

© BRANDON THIBODEAUX/Disney Channel

Two Fort Worth high schools, Western Hills and Arlington Heights, will be featured in Disney's documentary on real schools performing High School Musical. Lauren Davis (center), 16, of Arlington Heights plays brainiac Martha Cox.

Now a group of Fort Worth teens performing High School Musical through Saturday might become real-life stars, thanks to a documentary that will air on the Disney Channel in the fall.

Academy Award-winning documentary director Barbara Kopple is filming the production by the Joint Summer Theatre Program of Arlington Heights and Western Hills high schools in Fort Worth. Kristina Doelling, 18, who portrays Sharpay (the role Ashley Tisdale plays in the movie), says she'll never forget the day they got the news. She and castmates were in the office of Ann Hunter, Arlington Heights theater director, just a few weeks before she graduated.

"She told everyone to get out because 'this is the important call.' Then we heard her screaming, and then we were screaming for 15 minutes straight," Kristina says.

The group was chosen, in part, by sheer luck. When Disney decided to air a documentary about a real high school doing High School Musical in the fall, it looked for groups that had licensed the rights for June. There were six.

But what made this production stand out was that the theater program (also called Heights Hills Operation, or H2O) brings two rival schools together to do an annual summer production. Ms. Hunter built the program years ago with her friend and co-director, Julia Worthington, the theater arts director at Western Hills.

That gave the production a behind-the-scenes edge that appealed to Ms. Kopple.

"I came out and did a site visit, and they made us feel they really wanted us here," she recalled by phone from Western Hills High School, where she was filming. "The kids were fantastic and had so much passion and enthusiasm. And with these two rival high schools coming together, we thought we could help kids discover these roles in their own skins."

The show's message, which addresses how teenagers can struggle against the invisible but powerful walls of school cliques to try new skills or make new friends, was underscored by bridging differences with students from Western Hills, says Lauren-Claire Poitevent, 15, of Arlington Heights.

"It's definitely opened me up," says Lauren-Claire, who plays Gabriella. "I learned that if you are only in one clique, you may never get to know kids in other cliques and those kids may end up being the best friends in your life."

Kristina agrees, adding that if she hadn't done a show like this, "I would never have been close to the Western Hills kids."

More than 40 students, including many in double-cast roles, are performing. Western Hills technology teacher Larry Boston plays the coach. In the only other adult role, Ms. Worthington plays the drama teacher, Ms. Darbus. Typecasting?

"I haven't done much rehearsing," Ms. Worthington says with a laugh. "Only 29 years' worth."

And do the kids mind that Ms. Kopple's crew is following them everywhere –from home to rehearsal to hanging out, capturing all those intimate and inadvertently awkward moments (including the first time the boys rehearsed "Get Your Head in the Game" and they couldn't quite get the basketballs to bounce in sync)? The students say they don't do anything different for the filming than they normally would, with one exception.

"It's different always coming to rehearsal with cute outfits and makeup," Kristina says of her choice to come looking good for the shoot. "But it hasn't changed the way we relate to each other, how we treat each other. We are still funny, embarrassing theater kids."

And Lauren-Claire agrees.

"We embarrass ourselves in real life every day."

Continues tonight and Saturday at 7 p.m. with an additional matinee performance Saturday at 2 p.m. at Western Hills High School Auditorium, 3600 Boston Ave., Fort Worth. 817-560-5689. $8.