After 33 years and hundreds of successful theatrical productions, Point Loma High School teacher Larry Zeiger has taken his final curtain call.
Zeiger, who pioneered the school’s long-running, unique musical theater and cinema arts program, directed his final closing-night performance Saturday and is now on the verge of retirement.
In his wake, Zeiger leaves a legacy of groundbreaking, popular and proven teaching methods ” and a laundry list of productive, successful former students who have gone on to various successes.
However, Zeiger said the issue of retirement has yet to fully sink in because he’s been directing his record-breaking 31st annual high school musical production, “Too Hot to Handle: The Radioactive Musical” at PLHS.
“I think it’s exciting, because I plan to continue to work in other avenues, doing things with theater and art and film,” he explained. “So, it’s given me another avenue to be able to pursue more of what I love.”
While he hopes to enjoy a relaxing retirement, Zeiger said he will work on a patchwork of various projects. Among them, he plans to have a musical produced that he co-authored with a friend a few years back. He said he also plans to do some traveling to Italy and a little wine tasting and will set to work on writing his biography.
“It’s going to be loosely based on my life and my perspectives on arts and culture and politics,” he said. “All those exciting things that make people cringe.”
Although Zeiger has achieved enormous success during his tenure at Point Loma High, he said his teaching career unexpectedly blossomed from what he initially thought would be a temporary position.
“Originally, my plan was to be a film writer and I was accepted into the Ph.D. [program at] USC School of Cinema,” he explained. “I decided I wanted a break for a year, and I wound up going into teaching.”
As a result, Zeiger went on to create his popular, unique curriculum as part of an English class where students write, choreograph, design and produce their own musical each year.
“It became a prize-winning program in the state of California, as an English class,” Zeiger recalled. “That became somewhat of a major phenom in the U.S., because few people had seen that in a high school class.”
In addition to turning out some highly successful students, Zeiger’s curriculum has been well-acclaimed, receiving the California Golden Bell Award for the top performing arts program in California and recognition from the California Association of Teachers of English. Zeiger was also recognized as San Diego Teacher of the Year and winner of the San Diego Ch. 10 Leadership Award.
As another measure of success ” one a little more personally gratifying for Zeiger ” is the fact that he can easily count more than 100 of his former students of his who have had successful careers in areas both in and beyond theater arts. Zeiger rattled through a list of notable examples, including a key producer on the successful film “Boondock Saints,” an entertainment lawyer and Jason Scheff, one of the lead singers for the rock band Chicago.
“One of the textbooks I used in my class on three-dimensional imaging and animation was, in fact, authored by one of my former students,” he said.
Recalling one particularly memorable year, Zeiger explained how his class produced a musical about Hollywood actress Winona Ryder’s now-infamous shoplifting incident, a production that garnered the students national media attention. “We were interviewed by CNN, the BBC,” he said. “I was interviewed by a newspaper in Rome. It was very exciting for everyone involved.”
Zeiger’s co-workers and peers at Point Loma High School have expressed mixed emotion of joy and sadness relating to his retirement.
“He’s been a mainstay at this school for 33 years and a driving force with drama and everything else he does,” said Susan McCartney, a school secretary. “He’s going to be very missed and, in my thinking, almost impossible to replace.”
One of Zeiger’s hopes for the future is that his program continues even after his retirement. “When kids get involved in a project, they buy into the entire educational program,” Zeiger said. “It’s not just an artistic endeavor, but it integrates all the major disciplines like science and math and physics and culture.”
Asked what he will miss most at PLHS post-retirement, Zeiger said, “That’s an easy one. I will miss my students. They’re the lifeblood of the educational program.”