Jericho teen wins Broadway League's Jimmy Award

A Jericho teen was named the nation’s best high school musical theater actress this year by the Jimmy Awards, bestowed by the same organization as the Tony Awards.

Lauren A. Marchand, 18, on Monday won the National High School Musical Theatre Award, colloquially called the Jimmy, for best performance by an actress for her role as Snow Queen Elsa in the Jericho High School production of Disney’s “Frozen.” Along with the award from The Broadway League Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the official Broadway theater trade group, she will receive an educational grant of $25,000.

The prestigious honor is often seen as high school musical theater's equivalent of the Tony Award. Woodmere-raised Andrew Barth Feldman won the Jimmy in 2018 and the following January began a yearlong run on Broadway as the star of "Dear Evan Hansen."

"I’ve been watching videos of the Jimmys since I was 10 years old,” says Marchand, the daughter of New York City schoolteacher Steven Marchand and New Hyde Park nurse practitioner Elizabeth Marchand. “I’ve always been a theater kid, always liked music.” But, she adds, “I consider myself more a musician than a theater actress. I don't want to put myself in just a theater box.”

Born in New York City and raised in Bayside before moving at age 3 with her family to Jericho for its “scary successful schools,” she says, Lauren Marchand “started singing in elementary school.” While a fourth grader at Jericho’s Cantiague Elementary, she played orphan Tessie in “Annie Jr.,” the official 60-minute version of the musical “Annie,” at the Merrick Theatre and Center for the Arts. According to her resume, she went on to roles including Tracy Turnblad in “Hairspray” at Syosset’s Cultural Arts Playhouse in January 2016, Gabriella in “High School Musical” at Merrick Theatre’s Second Stage Productions that June, and Charlotte in “13: The Musical” there the following April.

“There were no performers in my family, but we love music and love stories,” she says of her immediate family, which includes brother Christopher, 14. “When I was younger, my childhood was just filled with my dad’s music, and that’s where I got a lot of my interest and my ear for all different music. The music theater stuff started when I saw a couple of Broadway shows when I was younger. My mom tells people that at ‘The Little Mermaid,’ I lit up in my chair. From that day forward I got an interest in storytelling and being someone else onstage.”

In addition to attending Jericho High for academics, Marchand spent mornings at the specialized Long Island High School for the Arts in Syosset, receiving diplomas from both. On Saturdays, she attended the Manhattan School of Music for five years for vocal training. She is now enrolled in New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, aka NYU Steinhardt, “for vocal performance and musical theater,” she says.

“Anytime a parent is able to watch their child live out a dream on their road to their career and life is always going to be awesome,” says Steven Marchand, 54. Having been at the Jimmys ceremony at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre and ”seeing a huge audience applaud your daughter, it just fills your heart.”