Photo gallery: ‘Muirlands Got Talent’ show goes on for first time in three years

For the first time in three years, the curtain rose on Muirlands Middle School’s “Muirlands Got Talent” show Dec. 8 as dozens of students strummed, joked, tapped and sang their way across the stage.

It was the La Jolla campus’s first talent show since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

Teacher Amy Hunt, who leads Muirlands’ Associated Student Body class, which organized and ran the event, said this was the first talent show for any of the students at the school, which serves sixth, seventh and eighth grades, and will be the only such show the eighth-graders will participate in before they move on.

The show began in 2017 and ran for three years before the pandemic shut it down, Hunt said.

The 2022 show featured 27 acts; everybody who tried out made the program.

“All students are very talented,” Hunt said.

Many of the acts were piano players with different techniques, styles and song choices, which “draws you in,” she said.

The performances included a “Rubik’s Cube war” between two students, along with three comedy acts and a gymnastics routine, Hunt said.

The rest of the Muirlands students saw the show during the school day before the auditorium was packed for the evening performance, Hunt said. It was a “super-positive atmosphere,” she said.

Most of the performers are in sixth grade, Hunt said, as “the pressure to be cool in eighth grade is getting to a lot of our really talented students,” discouraging their participation.

“It’s unfortunate,” she said. “It’s a kid thing; it’s totally normal.”

Hunt said she hopes younger students who saw the performance will be inspired to enter next year. ◆