This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.

Amid the festivities leading up to graduation, seniors active in the performing arts have a pregraduation of sorts: they graduate from the Harker Conservatory’s certificate program, signaling their successful completion of a fouryear course in dance, technical theater, theater, vocal or instrumental music, or musical theater.

Seniors performed selections from their portfolios to a packed house at the Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater in San Jose.

Acts ranged from a Shakespearean monologue, divided into two parts performed toward the beginning and end of the show, to a clarinet sonata during which the instrument was slowly dismantled section by section, leaving the player with only a mouthpiece. Dance graduates performed and musical theater students enacted moments from Broadway shows. Vocalists, a harpist playing a traditional Chinese instrument, and classical and jazz instrumentalists rounded out the eclectic evening, overseen by a technical theater graduate.