On Feb. 21, 2020 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium, Annandale High School will be holding its first ever talent show. This event will be replacing the annual and popular Mr. Annandale contest. Leadership held an interest meeting on Dec. 5 for students interested in being apart of the program. The admission fee for the new event will be $5.

“I thought [Mr. Annandale] was pretty cool. There were a lot of performances and every contestant had their own unique show,” sophomore Brian Mercado, who attended last year’s show, said.

“It was really fun to watch and I think it would’ve been really cool if they did it this year.”

Mr. Annandale, ran by AHS’s leadership was similar to a pageant for senior guys with a talent, “fan favorite”, and strength test portion. The judge panel was made up of teachers and faculty. Like many of our neighboring schools, who’ve had similar programs and events, AHS has decided to scrap Mr. Annandale.

“The talent show was meant to replace Mr. Annandale, which was an event we ran in the years prior, but other schools had been dropping it, due to other concerns with gender and all of the things associated with that,” junior and leadership student Sophia Baraban said.

“We decided to follow along so that there wasn’t any controversy, so we decided to replace it with a talent show. It’s a fun and fair way everyone gets to express their talents that they love.”

Like Mr. Annandale, the talent show will have a judge panel made up of teachers who will assess each act and choose winners.

Since the talent show is open to all students regardless of grade or gender, many students are interested in participating, like sophomore Hao Pham, who plans on performing a one minute dance. “I’m not nervous and I plan on preparing for it by practicing in the studio for two hours, maybe four days a week,” Pham said.