[photo credit: Eliot Arts Magnet]
The school’s drama and dance program opens Bring It On: The Musical at Pasadena High School, the second spring production the displaced middle schoolers have mounted since the January 2025 fire destroyed their campus at 2184 N. Lake Ave. in Altadena. Drama teacher Mollie Lief chose the show — a Tony Award-nominated musical about a cheerleader who builds a new squad after being forced to change schools — for reasons that hit close.
“It’s all about unity and coming together, and so it felt like the right next show for Eliot,” Lief said in a December interview with the Los Angeles Times.
The fire tore through Altadena on January 7, 2025, damaging or destroying five Pasadena Unified School District campuses. Eliot Arts Magnet, a grades 6–8 visual and performing arts school, lost its auditorium and much of its north wing. The theater program’s collection of largely handmade costumes was also destroyed, according to the Los Angeles Times. Students and staff relocated to McKinley School at 325 S. Oak Knoll St. in Pasadena, where they have remained for more than 14 months. Many students and staff members lost their homes.
The Pasadena Educational Foundation awarded Lief and a colleague a $2,000 grant in December to help replace the lost costumes for this production, according to the Times report.
Despite the upheaval, the program did not stop. In April 2025, Center Theatre Group and Pasadena Playhouse offered Eliot Arts students the 2,100-seat Ahmanson Theatre in downtown Los Angeles for a one-night benefit performance of Shrek Jr.
“They’ve had so much taken away from them,” dance teacher Billy Rugh said in February. “This is one thing we can help make sure they don’t lose.”
Bring It On: The Musical features music by Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, a libretto by Jeff Whitty, and lyrics by Amanda Green. The Broadway production received two Tony nominations in 2013, for Best Musical and Best Choreography. The story follows Campbell, a cheer team captain whose senior year is upended when she is transferred to a new school with no cheer squad. She teams up with a dance crew to compete at the national championships, according to an Eliot Arts Magnet press release announcing the production.
The show runs four performances over three days at the Pasadena High School auditorium, located at 2925 E. Sierra Madre Blvd., Pasadena. Performances are Thursday, March 26 at 6:30 p.m., Friday, March 27 at 6:30 p.m., and Saturday, March 28 at 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 general admission and are available at eliotartsdrama.ludus.com.
Eliot Arts Magnet is expected to remain at McKinley for the foreseeable future while its Altadena campus is rebuilt. The PUSD Board of Education has adopted a resolution to rebuild the school, according to the Pasadena Star-News, but no timeline has been announced.
“Every single dollar that goes to the Eliot Arts drama and dance programs just means that we can keep doing what we do for the kids,” Lief told the Times in December. And yet, she added: “Under the surface there is so much pain, and there’s trauma.”
On a borrowed stage, with borrowed seats and replacement costumes, the curtain goes up anyway.
