When an event announces that it’s “the first annual,” we have to wonder if that’s truth-in-advertising. Yes, every happening has to start somewhere; there was a time when there were the first annual Tonys, Oscars, Emmys and Grammys – and, of course, there have been plenty more.

And yet, the world has been littered with lofty evenings that promised to be “the first annual” and were never seen again.

Here’s predicting that such an unhappy fate won’t meet what was officially named The First Annual Shubert Foundation High School Theatre Festival for New York City Public Schools. Considering the quality of the presentations seen at the Imperial Theatre on Monday night, we can confidently start counting the days until the second annual festival.

That the Imperial Theatre was pressed into service was proof that this was a serious endeavor. The prestigious Drama Desk Awards have often settled for having their big annual hoo-hah at LaGuardia High School’s Auditorium, but here we saw kids from that same school perform at the same theater that Les Miserables has been occupying for the last year. Talk about “I Dreamed a Dream!”

Even Carmen Fariña,the Chancellor of New York City’s Department of Schools, was so excited that she walked on stage a tad prematurely, even before the turn-off-your-cell phone announcement could be  made. Fariña had to patiently stand still until the voice-over got around to officially introducing her.

Her appreciative remarks were worth the wait. “The arts give a school its soul,” she accurately reported. She then came down to brass tacks by admitting that some students who don’t have much little interest in conventional studies can thank the drama club “for getting you to school in the morning.”

Michael I. Sovern, the President of the Shubert Foundation, an arm of the company that owns the Imperial, gestured to where the Les Miserables set spills over the loges. “Tonight, instead of the sounds of the 19th century,” he said, “we’ll be hearing the sounds of the future.”

Sovern then introduced Alex Sharp, who’s been touted all season long for his riveting performance as the troubled teen in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Sharp is twenty-five, but he can pass for years younger; indeed, in Simon Stephen’s hit, he’s supposed to be a mere fifteen.

Thus, bringing on a young man to whom the kids could easily relate was a smart move by Peter Avery, the Director of Theater in the New York City Department of Education. The lads and lasses who loudly cheered Sharp were cheering themselves, too. “If he can do it,” many were thinking, “so can I.”

Sharp even implied that these students were ahead of him, for when he was their age, he was performing in Winnie the Pooh – hardly up to the rigors of what they’d be presenting this evening. “How cool,” he said, “that over a hundred of you will make your Broadway debuts tonight.” He pointed out that the Imperial was “the home of Annie Get Your Gun in 1946, Pippin in 1972 and Dreamgirls in 1981 – and now you.”

Each school would get fifteen minutes to present highlights from a show it had done in the past, starting with Talent Unlimited High School traveling from East 68th Street to do Godspell.

Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak’s musical (with a little help from Jay Hamburger and Peggy Gordon) debuted off-Broadway in 1971, long before the advent of cell phones and iPods. But the freewheeling nature of the piece allows for technological innovations, so deft sharp director Stephen Agosto had kids on phones, texting away -- although he made a few low-tech enough to just use their phones for talking. (Imagine!)

Luckily, there was plenty of singing, too. As John the Baptist, Abraham Gonzales beautifully prepared us for the way of the Lord. His duet with Jesus (the charismatic Bryce Zaslaw-Altamirano) was indeed “All for the Best.” Jesus wore a denim jacket with a multi-colored star embroidered on the back, while John had distressed formal wear. The others were clad in T-shirts that covered every color of a standard Crayola box, but the real color came from the voices of Jamie Talamo (“Day by Day”), Julissa Alonzo and Melissa Ramos (“By My Side”) and Elyssa Cotto (“Bless the Lord”). Only minutes passed before the six musicians loaned from LES MISERABLES proved that they were a kick-derriere band.

Maspeth High School in Queens offered Stand and Deliver, a script that was also making its Broadway debut. Robert Bella took the celebrated 1988 screenplay about Mr. Escalante, a teacher who inspired his students to learn calculus – and taught them so thoroughly that the kids were accused of cheating.

Ryann Garcia superbly portrayed Escalante, the role that had won Edward James Olmos an Oscar. Garcia had to establish early that Escalante wouldn’t be defeated by students for whom airplane-throwing and French kissing were the norm. Little by little, he gained lots and lots of their trust.

While most every drama club matter-of-factly attracts a school’s “good kids,” Stand and Deliver’s cast members probably have seen enough bad behavior in classrooms to convincingly replicate the atrocities that Bella wrote. Best moment: when one student showed that he knew the old canard “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” – which automatically meant that he didn’t have to respect that failure Escalante. But Eric Young, the teacher who expertly directed Stand and Deliver, certainly proved that the old saw is a myth.

Susan Wagner High School from Staten Island provided a stunning Little Women. Heroine Jo’s statement that “Years from now, people will talk about us” turned out to be true of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, and applies to this 2005 Allan Knee-Jason Howland-Mindi Dickstein musical. Aubrey Berg, who heads the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, tells me that Jo’s first act aria “Astonishing” shows up time and time and time again at auditions. It’s no wonder, for after Gianna Chuppe delivered her galvanic rendition, she got the biggest cheers of the night. And why not? The vast majority of kids here tonight certainly know astonishment when they see and hear it.

You might expect that Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens would produce On the Town, Pal Joey, Can-Can or Guys And Dolls, given that Sinatra starred in the film versions of those Broadway musicals.

Hardly. Director Jamie Cacciola-Price opted for Euripides’ The Trojan Women. When he told the kids that they’d be doing a Greek tragedy that had been written literally 2,400 years ago, he probably didn’t hear many students exclaim “Aw, that’s great!” And yet, this amazing presentation proved that the students wholeheartedly got into it just as Escalante’s kids embraced calculus.

Students in the audience too probably assumed that they’d see something musty and dry.  So weren’t they surprised when the story rivited them: Troy has been devastatingly conquered by the Greeks to the point where the play should have been called The Trojan Widows. Now Greek emissary Talthybius tells Princess Andromache that she has a choice. If she hands over her baby right now, it will be buried after they kill it. If she doesn’t, when they do find the child and kill it, they won’t bury it – unthinkable in the Trojan culture, which believes that if there’s no burial, there’ll be no afterlife.

Some choice! How cold and unfeeling Davin Decicco was while waiting for the agonized Kari Luna to make her impossible decision. The looks on the faces of many in the audience were far more horrified than they’ve probably been at Halloween I and II combined.

LaGuardia High School for Music, Art and the Performing Arts on Amsterdam Avenue did In the Heights. Twenty-three talented kids created a block party less than a block away from where Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2008 Tony-winning musical had run.

You’d have never believed that Damaras Obi was a teen, so convincing was she as Abuela. In the middle of “When You’re Home’s” perky melody, Janysa Rodriguez’s Nina brought true emotion when she told her beau “Please don’t say you’re proud of me when I’ve lost my way.” And how the audience whooped in approval during “Carnaval del Barrio” when Jenny Mollet rode a melisma with the skill of a champion surfer conquering a wave.

All five schools had one thing in common. As each presentation ended, at least one student from each troupe looked a little reluctant to leave the stage. All wanted at least one day more on the stage where “One Day More” would soon be sung. But many of these kids were so magnificent that some of them may well get many more than one day on a Broadway stage -- and not just at The Second Annual Shubert Foundation High School Theatre Festival for New York City Public Schools.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com. Check out his weekly column each Tuesday at www.masterworksbroadway.com and each Friday at www.kritzerland.com. His upcoming book The Great Parade: Broadway’s Astonishing, Never-To-Be Forgotten 1963-1964 Season is now available for pre-order at www.amazon.com.