For most students, music is just a fun way to pass time, but for senior Mikayla Davic, hearing a song can be the inspiration to write a new musical for her annual Make-A-Wish fundraiser. It takes Davic several months to decide on the songs she uses in the shows she writes, and this year’s musical, Lost and Found, started out with a list of more than 50 possible songs.
“Listening to songs, along with just my imagination, gives me inspiration for my musicals,” Davic said.
Starting in eighth grade, Davic has written and directed a musical each year to benefit Make-A-Wish. Her productions always feature at least one actor in every grade from kindergarten through senior year of high school.
Her first four musicals have raised about $48,000 for Make-A-Wish. Davic earlier had set a goal of raising $50,000 by the time she graduates, and so it seems likely that she will easily surpass that goal with this year’s production.
Davic was at a golf outing with her cousin when she met a Make-A-Wish representative who was also a Baldwin graduate, and this influenced her to want to raise money for the charity. “Make-A-Wish provides hope, which I think is just as important as going through the treatments and going to the doctor allthe time, because if you don’t have hope, then there’s nothing else,” Davic said.
Davic’s love for musicals started in the elementary school choir, when she got the opportunity to be a munchkin in the high school’s production of The Wizard of Oz. When Davic got to middle school, she began performing in the middle school musicals, which led her to start writing her own productions.
Lost and Found likely will be the last of Davic’s musicals benefiting Make-A-Wish, since she graduates this year. Davic is hoping to go to film school and wants to eventually start a children’s theater program.
“I always wanted to continue doing my musicals after high school, but for now this is going to be my last musical,” Davic said.
As for this year’s production, Davic said she always has wanted to do a show focusing on fantasy, and that the idea of a mysterious island had always fascinated her.
Lost and Found is set on mysterious island where a group of recent high school graduates crash-land and discover that the island’s inhabitants are under a curse. The show focuses on the interactions between the islanders and teens, as well as the problems they try to solve.
“This musical is a lot more fictional than Mikayla’s other musicals I have been in,” freshman Erin Hampton said. “There is a lot more magic and more Disney songs involved.”
The musical will be performed Jan. 3-5 in the high school auditorium.
Davic’s remarkable financial contributions to Make-A-Wish recently earned her a nomination for Young Philanthropist of the Year from the Western Pennsylvania/Ohio region of the Association of Young Professionals.
Her musicals have influenced not only Make-A-Wish, but also the students whom she has directed throughout the years.
“I’m really sad this is going to be her last show,” freshman Olivia Penrod said. “They have been so much fun, and I know we are all really going to miss her and her shows’ impacts.”