By Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major at the University of Maryland.

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To truly appreciate The Me Nobody Knows, one needs to understand where it came from.

The musical is based on the 1969 book The Me Nobody Knows: Children’s Voices from the Ghetto, which compiles the voices of 200 students from Harlem. Teachers encouraged these students, who were between the ages of 12 and 18, to write down their deepest thoughts, fears and concerns. The book’s editor, Stephen M. Joseph, asked his students to respond to four dimensions of their identity – how they see themselves, their neighborhoods, the world outside, and the things they can’t see or touch.

The result: A moving collection of young people’s voices that was adapted into a musical by Robert Livingston, Gary William Friedman, Will Holt and Herb Schapiro in 1970. Alvin Mayes and Scot Reese, co-directors of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies’ production, have situated these teenagers in a church basement, in a therapy/support group of sorts.