When Gideon Glick attended Lower Merion High School in the early 2000s, John Grace and a lot of other people who saw him perform on stage knew he had something special.
"Pick any great adjective to describe his personality and his talent: effervescent, vivacious, generous," Grace said.
Fast forward a few years and Glick, now 30, is being recognized for his work nationally with a Tony Award nomination for best performance by an actor in a featured role, in "To Kill a Mockingbird."
It's something Grace, Glick's producer for the Lower Merion High School Players, is not surprised to see.
"He executed the kind of real joy at being on stage with everybody else in players. We knew professional life in New York was beckoning," Grace said.
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Kevin Ginsberg felt the same way working with Dan Kluger at Welsh Valley Middle School and again at Harriton High School.
"He was just incredibly talented at everything he did but also incredibly humble. You would never know how talented he was if you were just talking to him. He just strives for perfection," Ginsberg said.
Kluger, who is a composer also from Lower Merion, was nominated for best orchestration for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!
"I think he was destined to do something like this," Ginsberg added.
A Broadway producer with the year's breakout musical also finds herself with a slew of Tony nominations.
"We're nominated for best musical, best score, best book, best direction, best choreography, best set design," said Mara Isaacs, who listed just a few of the 14 Tony Award nominations she is up for as one of the main producers of the hit Broadway musical "Hadestown."
"We set out to make something really unique and special and have found very quickly that audiences are having a truly magical experience when they are in the theatre," she said.
Isaacs is a Princeton University professor who has also done work with the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. She says she was caught off guard when the musical, which is of the beaten path for most Broadway works, received so many nominations.
"I mean it's thrilling. It's really thrilling. It's really hard to describe. Watching the announcement Tuesday morning, first you hear we're nominated for this category, and this category, as it's adding up I'm sitting there thinking "oh my God," she said.
Isaacs will find out if she and her team will take home any of their 14 nominations on Sunday, June 9 at the 73rd Annual Tony awards.