The folk revival is alive and well in Miles Thornton and Darby Patterson’s original musical The Gaslight, premiering this weekend. The story, set in the 1960s, follows young Dave Van Ronk a “forgotten hero” of the folk revival and his group of friends, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan, as they bum around Greenwich Village, performing at The Gaslight Cafe.

Miles and Darby have been working on the show for over a year as their senior project at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. Both are interested in pursuing careers in theatre and wanted experience in producing a show. Originally, they thought about staging a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show. When royalty expenses were stacking up, they decided to tax their own creative juices instead of their wallets and started from scratch. Miles had recently read The Mayor of MacDougal Street, a memoir by Mr. Van Ronk, and was intrigued with the story of these folk legends before they became well known.

Writing the script took nearly a year, which surprised Miles.

“I didn’t realize how hard it was to formulate a coherent story,” he said. Though both he and Darby story-boarded together, Miles did the majority of the script writing.

Folk music has a long history of artists borrowing songs from other artists, and Darby and Miles continued that tradition. The score of The Gaslight will be familiar to many audience members as characters sing a few renditions of “House of the Rising Sun.” Mr. Van Ronk’s music will be performed as well, including “Dink’s Song.”

To add to authenticity, Darby and Miles recruited musicians for the cast.

“That was a super long process of constantly asking for favors from every person I could think of,” Miles said.

Dana Edelman stars as Dave Van Ronk, Darby as Joan Baez, Liam Weiland plays Bob Dylan and Rykker Maynard is Phil Ochs. All together there are 13 actors, including Willy Mason and a small group from the high school a capella group the Sound Waves.

The Gaslight will be performed on Friday, May 13 at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 14 at 2 p.m. and Sunday, May 15 at 7 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center. All showings are free.