Woodrow Wilson alumna Leslie McDonel took Van Hughes, her co-star in the national touring company of Green Day’s “American Idiot,” with her Tuesday for a Q&A with 40 to 50 students, including the Variations Show Choir, former students and others at her alma mater. Leslie is in town performing in the Tony award-winning rock opera, which opened Tuesday at the AT&T Winspear Opera House to an enthusiastic audience.

While sitting on the school’s stage floor, students’ curiosity was about the basics one would expect: “How did you get started?” “What is your life like?” “What is it like touring?” Students were fascinated by the comments and answers to their probing questions.

Both actors advised that when deciding what it is you want to do, you need to go after it with everything you’ve got. Don’t be afraid of hard work. Do everything you can to prepare mentally, and then focus, focus, focus.

When the kids asked Leslie and Van to sing, they obliged with some songs from the show. Then Leslie treated her audience to a reprise of a song she sang on that same stage years ago when she got her start, “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

Retired Woodrow Wilson theater teacher of 30 years Marca Lee Bircher attended, commenting: “It was a supreme joy and privilege to have been a part of Leslie’s performance education in high school, and to have worked with such rare gifts as hers. She is as unassuming now as she was then. She has all the powerful talent and charisma of a star, but none of the temperament usually associated with it. Her spectacular success is just beginning.”