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NILES — Students from Niles High School are preparing for their first in-person musical performance of 2023.

The schools’ musical group will be performing “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown ” in the Niles High School Auditorium at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 4th and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 5. Tickets are $7 for the general public and $5 for all students. 

The performance will be directed by first-year music teacher Julia Mikel and will feature a take on the famous comic strip “Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz.

I thought it would be fun to take your family friendly Peanut characters and bring this kind of story to life for the kids here and the community as well,” she said.

Mikel said it did not take long for students to embrace the show.

“At first, people were like ‘Charlie Brown?’ As we started preparing for auditions and started casting people, they started to fall in love with the music,” she said. “It’s a funny show, too; there’s a lot of humor in it… Everyone loves Snoopy, everyone loves their favorite Peanuts character, so I feel they fell in love with the fact that these characters actually come to life. My cast is super excited about it and they were excited to do a current musical that is bright and colorful.”

Senior Andrew Jackson will be portraying Charlie Brown in his first-ever lead role. Jackson has been active in school theater, having been in the school’s previous two plays, “Scrooge” and “Oklahoma!”.

“It feels fantastic to be the lead role in a high school musical,” Jackson said. “Ever since I started, I always wanted to be at the top, but I had to stick with what I had, and I had an incredible experience even though I may not have gotten what I wanted.”

According to Jackson, he is looking forward to dancing to some of the songs including “Beethoven Day” and “The Baseball Game.” 

“These songs make me want to dance so much and they get me very happy,” he said.

Mikel hopes the community comes out to enjoy the show as she aims to bolster the theater program.

“I’m trying to build a program here and get students involved,” she said. “I’m trying to build this program and build as many people into this program as I can.  One of my goals is to have more community involvement in productions Niles puts on.”