Sara Bareilles Wants High School Theater Kids to Feel Loved

If there’s anyone who knows the difference a high school theater program can make on a young person’s life, it’s Sara Bareilles.

Insecure, teased about her weight and stuck in the small, remote Northern California city of Eureka, Bareilles struggled through school until finding her people: the music and drama kids.

“Theater was the first place where I felt like I actually belonged,” Bareilles tells me on a recent Zoom call. “Where I wasn’t experiencing this sort of trap-door feeling, where at any point people could turn on you.”

It’s entirely appropriate, then, that the Northern California regional National High School Musical Theatre Awards — also known as the Jimmy Awards — have been renamed the Sara Bareilles Awards. Each year under the program, two high school theater students from the region will be chosen for a week-long trip to New York to study with theatre professionals and compete for national recognition.

Bareilles, of course, made it out of Eureka to become a Grammy-winning, Tony-nominated artist who’s responsible for one of the 21st century’s catchiest radio hits (“Love Song”); a fan and critic’s favorite on Broadway (Waitress); and, most recently, her own PBS concert special recorded at the Kennedy Center.

But it all started in Humboldt County. The young Bareilles had already acted in some community plays when, in 1996, she was cast as Audrey in her high school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors. Looking back on the experience — locals still talk about the long lines for tickets outside Eureka High School’s theater — she likens it to suddenly finding a safe haven.

“When we create these spaces for kids,” she says, “where they feel like they get taken seriously, and their talent gets taken seriously, and their drive and their contribution as young artists gets taken seriously, it makes a huge difference in what they imagine is possible for themselves.”

Shannon Martin, who directed Bareilles in that Eureka High production of Little Shop of Horrors, now lives in Redding. Reached by phone, Martin can still remember the school’s music teachers urging her to cast Bareilles in the lead role. To ensure fairness, Martin required everyone to audition, but the answer was clear. At just 16 years old, Bareilles “hit it out of the park,” Martin says.

Bareilles didn’t need much training or directing once cast, either. To hear Martin tell it, she arrived almost fully formed. Martin showed her how to do a stage slap, but “that’s the only thing I feel like I taught her – how to turn her back to the audience, and flip her hair. She already knew how to do everything else.”

All the more reason why high school theater, and the space it allows natural talents to realize their potential, is important. The following year, as a senior, Bareilles was voted “Most Talented” and “Most Likely to Become Famous” by her classmates. The rest is history.

When Bareilles talks to high school students today, as she often does, she reminds them that it’s OK to not be OK. Bareilles is open about her history of anxiety and depression, and the benefits of proper medication.

“Vulnerability is really important to me, and authenticity, and transparency. And it really matters to me to not project some kind of facade that I’m okay or that I have everything figured out,” she says.

The National High School Musical Theatre Awards were founded in 2009, with regional divisions all over the country sponsored by local theater producers of touring Broadway shows. The Northern California region, which had previously been known as the BroadwaySF High School Musical Theatre Awards, covers San Francisco and Alameda Counties, and all counties north, including Humboldt.

As for lending her name to the awards, which in other regions around the country are named for luminaries like Stephen Sondheim, Gene Kelly and Rita Moreno, “I’m so excited. And my mom is thrilled,” Bareilles says.

Her mom’s not the only one. Eureka High librarian Savannah Polizzi says the school was overjoyed when Barielles decided to do a free concert in 2022 for over 11,000 people in Eureka, shouldering the majority of the costs herself. “And we’re always grateful for her sponsorship and involvement in community endeavors,” Polizzi says.

Martin, meanwhile, is glad to also have been part of something special in directing Bareilles. She recently went to see her former student star in the movie version of Waitress: The Musical.

“And I just cried,” she says. “I was so proud.”

Registration for the Sara Bareilles Awards is open now through March 10. The awards ceremony takes place Saturday and Sunday, May 17 and 18, at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco.