One of the youngsters eagerly said “We are going to shine on”, and that came through in their rehearsals and show performances.

“The show gave them the chance to connect with each other, connect with what was happening in their segments, and connect with the audience,” Ms Devine said.

Star Struck 2018: Connect will be staged at Newcastle Entertainment Centre, Broadmeadow, with performances on Friday, June 15, at 10.30am and 7pm, and on Saturday, June 16, at 2pm and 7pm.

The show has brought together 3500 public school students, aged eight to 18, from an area bordered by Gosford and Muswellbrook. As well as onstage performers they include 400 choristers, 70 orchestra members and 30 backstage workers.

The performers have a notable diversity, and include the Hunter Signing Choir and students with special needs. The latter, for example, appear in a song called The Score, which is about football, and they play whistle-blowing referees.

The show also features special adult guest performers who went through the local school system. NBN television news reader Paul Lobb is the show’s compere and magician Joel Howlett features in a sequence which has many young magic makers delivering the song Anything Can Happen.

The students in last year’s show asked if they could write songs for Star Struck, so this year an original song competition was held, with 23 songs submitted. The winning song, 21st Century, is by a Hunter School of the Performing Arts year 7 student, Kalyani Burke. It will be among 44 songs included in Connect’s 13 segments.

One of those songs, On a Newcastle Morning, is by Newcastle composer Brian Daly, and is sung by the choir as a young man explores his Newcastle connections while moving along projections of Hunter Street, Newcastle beach and  Nobbys breakwall.

Annie Devine says the show’s first half features the connections people make in their childhoods, as infants, young school children, and then teenagers. The second act looks at the ways technology influences people’s lives and relationships, with its early songs including Mr Postman and the Abba number, Ring, Ring, which is sung while people look at their mobile phones. One segment, with the song Hopeful, has a boy rapping.

For tickets for Star Struck 18: Connect ($38.90 to $50) ring Newcastle Entertainment Centre, 4921 2121, or through Ticketek.

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