A trio of close friends who bonded over Frank Sinatra impersonations in class vowed to create a musical — at some point in the very distant future. After an unexpected opening at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, they had to shorten that timetable dramatically. The resulting product, “Gibson Fleck,” will premiere this weekend at the Arthur Miller Theatre.

“We’ve always had this creative energy, so we’re always entertaining ridiculous possibilities,” said MT&D senior A.J. Holmes, who most recently played Tateh in the University's production of “Ragtime.”

Last winter, after hearing that the School of MT&D was looking for a new original musical to produce this fall, Holmes, along with MT&D senior Carlos Valdes and MT&D junior Ali Gordon, jumped on the opportunity without trepidation. Less than a year later, and after a series of theatric twists and tumbles, their show “Gibson Fleck” is the first full staging of a musical written by current undergrads to be produced by the school.

“The stars just aligned, and instead of keeping it as a distant fantasy in the back of our minds, we said, ‘Let’s make this a reality,’ ” said Valdes, who wrote the music and lyrics for the musical adaptation of “Trafford Tanzi,” and collaborated with Holmes on Team StarKid's “Me and My Dick”.

“Gibson Fleck” is about a young man’s search for a family and a home after being abandoned as a baby and inheriting his birth mother’s belongings years later. But the story premiering tonight is entirely different from the play submitted to the School on July 21.

“A gem of an idea,” according to Holmes, was all that the team of writers had when the School was looking for an original musical last winter. Nevertheless, they asked the faculty if the School would produce a play about an orphaned boy looking for a home, providing they wrote it over the summer.

For past original productions, the School has always turned to established professional playwrights, some of whom have been University alumni. But this was the first time current students had pitched an original musical to the school.

“We knew full and well that nothing like that had ever been done before, that it was crazy, but we were audacious and hopeful enough,” Valdes said.

They met with Linda Goodrich, an associate professor in the school, who enthusiastically supported the project and wanted to direct it in the fall.

“This is very unique in that we felt confident about the maturity of the writers, that they’re incredibly gifted way beyond their years,” Goodrich said.

MT&D Chair Brent Wagner challenged them to write the play and score first, and then pitch it to the School on July 21.

“He kind of flipped our logic and said, ‘No, if you write it, then maybe we’ll do it,’ ” said Holmes, who had previously worked with Valdes to write the music and lyrics for “Me and My Dick.”

At the beginning of May, the group created a board full of sticky notes with story details and song ideas. They wanted to flesh out each character to tell a rich story.

“We spent countless nights in Mason Hall charting the characters’ trials and tribulations on graphs — incredibly silly,” Holmes said.

“There were loose wires” in the show, Valdes said, and once they proposed it to the school, they realized they would have to completely revamp it. Advice all around was to simplify — and dramatically so.

“I thought it was best to push the story to the best it could be rather than just settle on what it was,” Goodrich said.

Just a day after the pitch, the group eliminated characters, cut songs and slashed dialogue until they were back at the prologue.