Theater normally operates on a trickle-down principle. A show may move from the hinterlands to Broadway, but after that the route is defined: Broadway to national tour to professional theaters to schools and community theaters.

But when audiences turn out now for the national tour of High School Musical, not only have many seen the movie multiple times, they've frequently acted in the stage show.

It was all part of Disney's plan.

Before the movie musical hit TV screens in summer 2006, Steve Fickinger, Disney's vice president of theatrical licensing, was approached to develop the show simultaneously for the stage.

In only six months, the organization had turned out scripts for schools and community groups, so that as the TV show hit fever pitch in fall 2006, the theatrical version was ready. A one-act version came with a DVD of musical accompaniment.

"We originally had developed it just for schools," Fickinger says. To test the script, they held a reading in a New York rehearsal studio. Suddenly, there was a professional staging in the show's future.

"I got so many calls from producers saying, 'I hear you're developing this thing, can we do it?' " Fickinger says.

Soon the show was being developed into a national tour as well. Usually, when a tour goes out, local production rights get yanked. This time, Disney let the local groups, such as the Arvada Center and Mizel Center, hang onto their rights.

"When the show started to really catch fire professionally, what some people might elect to do was to hold it back from the schools, but we made a philosophical decision that High School Musical was at its heart a show about kids and for kids," Fickinger says. "We're going to see if the two can coexist side by side."

The move hasn't been an unprofitable one. In less than two years, the rights to present High School Musical have sold beyond all other Disney properties, including Beauty and the Beast, Aida and a version of Cinderella.

"It's one of the reasons people do Grease a lot," Fickinger explains. "Kids like to play something their own age, or at least roughly their own age. It's fun for them to get up there and sing and dance their hearts out, playing a sassy version of how they see themselves."

And for school and youth organizations, it's an easier production. A school gym can be a school gym; a team uniform can be a team uniform.

"You can do it in your cafeteria, you can do it in your community center. It's not really dependent on a very sophisticated level of production values," he says. "If you're going to do even one of our wonderful titles like Beauty and the Beast, you have to have a point of view on how you're going to create these big fairy-tale costumes."

The juggernaut isn't complete. There is High School Musical on ice now on tour. The stage version of High School Musical 2 will premiere in November at Atlanta's Fox Theatre and be released to schools this fall as well.

Not enough for you? Just hang on. High School Musical 3 hits cinemas in October.