Shuffling through dusty boxes, senior Grace Fields became fascinated with the bookshelves full of preserved diaries and letters chronicling the life of her great-grandma, Lorene Grant Piper — a concert pianist born in 1910 who coped with life through storytelling and music. It wasn’t until the end of her junior year when her independent study — a researched topic or idea, in this case “Reverie” — switched to an on-stage reality. The musical’s storyline shifts between Lorene’s reality and a realm of characters she creates throughout her life when she escapes to her worlds of fantasy, like Ruby City and the City of Mystical Mirrors. Through the hardships of Lorene’s past, Fields intends to spread the idea that our lives don’t need a happily ever after. According to Fields, life is about the moments along the way. As Fields continued to read about the life of her great-grandmother, she spent the vast majority of her junior year mapping out the preliminary details — creating 13 original ...