In April, student vocalist Katie Marcus-Reker, grade 12, was chosen as one of the winners of a vocal competition organized by 42nd Street Moon, a San Francisco-based theater company. Each contestant uploaded a video to Facebook of him or herself singing a musical theater song. Marcus-Reker was chosen as one of 50 competitors to take part in a special master class on May 1 with actor and singer Darren Criss, who stars in the popular Fox TV show “Glee.”

“I am a huge fan of Darren Criss and all of his work on ‘Glee’ and with Team Starkid,” Marcus-Reker said, “so this workshop was very exciting for me.” The class dealt a lot with performance techniques and how to interpret and express the meanings of songs.

“The class really emphasized portraying a character through your song, knowing that character and making decisions within the song as that character,” she said.

Her favorite part of being in the class was witnessing Criss’ advice transform into positive results. “It was fascinating to see how much it helped some of the people who worked with him on stage,” she said. “He would give them some advice and instantly the overall performance improved astronomically.”