Camille Nugent of Fossil Ridge High School and Connor O’Brian of Lakewood High School took very different paths to the top of Colorado’s high school theater world.

Nugent has been treading the boards since she was all of 6, first appearing as Young Cosette in a professional production of “Les Misérables” at the Midtown Arts Center in Fort Collins. “Theater, I would say, has been the most vital component to who I am as a person and my perception of the world,” Nugent said.

O’Brian nurtured his twin loves for stage and soccer for as long as he could, which was his senior year. That’s when he finally was made to fully commit to one love or the other. Both relied on teamwork, both created families and both satisfied his thirst for physical activity. But theater additionally allowed him to escape into whole new worlds. “And, more important,” he added, “theater really gave me a chance to define who I am as a person.”

To borrow from sports parlance, Nugent and O’Brian are, essentially, our two individual state champions in theater. From a pool of 10 nominees, they were named the two Outstanding Performers for the 2022-23 school year at the Denver Center’s recent Bobby G Awards – Nugent for playing Alice in the bluegrass musical “Bright Star,” written by comedian Steve Martin and pop-music star Edie Brickell; O’Brian for playing a hilariously vainglorious Shakespeare in Lakewood’s “Something Rotten,” a comic imagination of how the world’s first musical came to be all the way back in the Bard’s day.

Talk about bright stars.

When the two Outstanding Performers were named on May 18 from the Ellie Caulkins Opera House stage, the 10 teens who had met just 10 days before were holding hands in solidarity. When Nugent heard her name announced, time moved into slow motion as she approached the podium. With graduation around the corner, that surreal moment became “a really beautiful marker for the end of one journey, and the start of another,” said Nugent, who is bound for Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh this fall.

O’Brian didn’t even hear his name called through all the screaming. “But then I looked up at the screen and I was like, ‘Wait, my name is written up there, too!’ said O’Brian, who will be joining the state’s top undergraduate degree program for musical theater this fall at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

But first, these two new BFFs will represent Colorado at Monday’s National High School Musical Theatre Awards – more casually known as “The Jimmy Awards” – in New York City. After an 11-day training with some of Broadway’s best creatives, Nugent, O’Brian and 94 other regional winners from around the country will officially make their Broadway debuts with a one-night-only performance at the Minskoff Theatre.

They are both clearly in the midst of one of those life-defining moments – and they know it. “To be in New York with all of those other kids and to say, ‘Yeah, we’re from Colorado,’ is really important to me,” said Nugent. Likewise, O’Brian said “it means the world to be representing Colorado at the Jimmy Awards. Especially after going through a spectacular, year-long journey of growth and self-confidence on his way to New York.

He remembers being in the audience back at the 2022 Bobby G Awards watching that year’s 10 nominees singing together and wondering where he might fit in this strange new world.

“I remember thinking, like, ‘Wow, they are all so talented,’” O’Brian said. “And that I wanted to be up there myself, so, so badly. But honestly, I didn’t see an avenue to achieving that goal.” So, he made one for himself. “That same night, I decided I was really going to be all-in on this theater thing, and that I was going to work toward this goal, and that I was really going to devote myself to this craft.”

Fast forward to early May. Fossil Ridge theater teacher Mikayla Assmus gathered her students in the choir room and played for them her DIY slideshow announcing the school’s six Bobby G Awards nominations, including Nugent’s. Over at Lakewood, retiring director Tami LoSasso took a slightly lower-tech approach to informing her students of their record 10 nominations. And it got loud. “I think I was a little hard of hearing for a few days after that,” O’Brian said.

Over its 10 years, the Denver Center’s year-long Bobby G Awards program has engaged about 70,000 Colorado high school kids and given nearly 3,000 of them the chance to perform on its biggest stages. One thing that separates these awards from, say, more definitive sports championships (with final scores) is that, while winners are necessarily determined, the Bobby G Awards fundamentally emphasizes camaraderie over competition. After all, the only thing keeping all like-minded theater-loving theater kids everywhere from being best friends is geography and the names of their schools.

That’s why, 10 days before the Bobby G Awards were held, retiring Denver Center Education Program Manager Claudia Carson first gathered this year’s 10 individual nominees and laid it all down for them.

“The top priority for me, the minute I meet these kids, is to completely disengage them from any thought of competition,” said Carson, who creates an original medley for the 10 nominees to rehearse and perform at each year’s ceremony. It’s a creative process that creates bonds between participating students that can last a lifetime.

O’Brian recalls walking into the designated Denver Center Education studio for the first time feeling major imposter syndrome. “I was really nervous and intimidated going into it,” he said, “because I wasn’t too certain about my acting capabilities – and especially my singing. But you could kind of sense the positive energy in the room. Everybody was just so supportive and nice. Everyone was sharing their joy and love for the art form – and that was really fun to see.”

The medley songs came from the shows those nominees worked on back at their schools, which meant that, at one point, it would include lyrics from Fossil Ridge’s “Bright Star.” And when they got there, Carson stopped and told them all: “I want you to really listen to these lyrics and think about what they mean to you in your life right now – because these are impactful times for a lot of you”:

“I’m ready for my life to begin.

I’m ready for it all to start.

My heart’s about to bust.

Don’t lead the way.

I must follow my own bright star.”

Tears were shed, and not only from Carson.

“I can tell you that this musical has become my life,” Nugent said. And when she told us to stop and really listen to those words, it just really hit home for all of us. We’re all at this precipice of our lives. A lot is about to begin – and a lot is about to change.”

Carson describes that moment as “one of those magical theater instants where everybody is right there in the same moment.”

Nugent had her own epiphany: Yes, all of these young lives are about to become so much bigger, “but we’re all right here right now,” she said, determined to savor the moment.

And the next “right here” and “right now” is Monday. Honestly, neither Nugent nor O’Brian can even remotely imagine what it is going to feel like to walk out and perform on a Broadway stage.

“It’s something I truly never thought was possible – but here we are,” said O’Brian. And that’s a trip he booked that very moment he didn’t hear (but could read) his name at the Bobby G Awards ceremony.

Winning, he said, “has solidified this idea that I can actually pursue this as a genuine career, and that I could be doing what I love in the future,” he said. “In that beautiful moment of realization, I mean – what I want my life to be has become an actual possibility.”