Broadway stars join Parkland students on stage at benefit concert

SUNRISE, FLA. (WHDH) – Some of Broadway’s brightest stars traveled to South Florida to pay a special musical tribute to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The musical theater stalwarts left the stages of the Great White Way for the BB&T Center in Sunrise to be a part of the benefit concert “From Broadway with Love: Parkland,” Monday night.

“In my lifetime, I’ve never seen anything like this,” actor and singer Matthew Morrison said.

Morrison, who starred in the musical “Finding Neverland” and is more widely known as Mr. Schue from “Glee,” made an appearance at Monday’s concert.

“This night is so important, because the movement is still going,” said Morrison.

That movement was started by students like Cameron Kasky, who sees Monday’s concert as a way to continue healing and pushing out their message.

“With all the nastiness that’s come out out of this, the fact that something like this gets to happen, it’s a good thing,” Kasky said, “and it shows our community remembers what’s important.”

The concert started off with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Stoneman Douglas students joined the chorus of voices rising as one, proving their strength and showing that the momentum behind their movement is still strong.

“They are about common sense,” Fred Guttenberg said. Guttenberg’s daughter Jaime was one of 17 people killed in the Feb. 14 shooting at the Parkland school. “They don’t run right, they don’t run left politically. They’re about getting something done.”

Some of the students wrote their own songs for the concert, like freshman Ally Reichard, who wrote a song called “Okay.”

“It’s basically just how you keep saying that you’re fine and that it’s all going to be fine, but it’s not,” Reichard said.

The emotional tribute brought together these students with these performers. They stood on the same stage, as they made sure their voices were heard.

“To see these young people — the spirit and the energy and the relentlessness they have towards this movement — is powerful,” actress and singer Deborah Cox said.

Rachel Bloom, star of the Golden Globe Award winning CW show, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” performed at the concert. She told CNN that the night reminds people about the importance of the arts. “I think this is an example of why theater and why the arts and art schools are so important,” Bloom said.

“The arts – it’s communication of ideas and that’s how you change the world – your ability to communicate. It makes me proud to be a fellow theater kid seeing what all of these people are doing with theater and music,” she continued.

Some Stoneman Douglas students told 7News the concert marks the first time since the shooting that they’ve been able to come together as a community and just smile and celebrate, something that, they said, they had not done in a long time.

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