AUBURN – Eleven-year-old Lexis Clavet held her wireless microphone in her hand and struck a pose.

Beside her, 10-year-old Matt Taylor gazed at the ceiling of the school gym, listening for his voice to erupt from the amplifiers. Pat Buzza, 11, tapped his mike. Katie Hummes, also 11, swished in place as she waited for the music to start.

A moment later, the karaoke-style intro of “Mamma Mia” began and the Broadway Kids Club sang.

The nine voices rang in perfect unison.

Spread across the gym of Park Avenue Elementary School, the fifth- and sixth-graders moved together and timed their smiles to the words in the songs.

The only audience was music teacher Jim Raymond and a few early kids and school staffers – eavesdropping on the before-school rehearsal.

To Lexis, the practice felt as important as any on the Great White Way.

“I feel like a star,” she said when the singing ended. Around her, eight heads bobbed in agreement.

The star-making began last fall, when the teacher floated the idea of something he called the Broadway Youth Singers.

He asked the Park Avenue kids – who’d already shown a love of show tunes – to take part in auditions.

“They were grueling,” Raymond said. He made them try out individually, giving them microphones and amplifying their voices as they performed solos in front of their friends.

They had to be able to sing. More importantly, they had to be brave enough to stand up and be heard.

“Everyone who tried out made it,” Raymond said.

The rigors kept going. Rehearsals were held at 7:30 a.m., before the start of school, and each session became a kind of master class, said Raymond.

“At almost every class, each kid sings a solo,” he said. Often, the children have no preparation when they are asked to stand up and sing. And when they’re done, the kids critique themselves and each other.

They started in October, learning 22 songs from such musicals as “Into the Woods,” “Mamma Mia!” and “West Side Story.”

At first, the rehearsals were all about the music, learning the songs and their parts in them. In January, interpretation began creeping in.

“They’re learning to tell a story with their presentation,” Raymond said.

It showed during a recent rehearsal. They warmed up like pros, singing scales and tongue-twisting lines.

“The big black bug bit the big black bear and the big black bear bled badly,” they sang.

The work flowed into their performances.

During the ABBA-inspired, “Mamma Mia,” they were happy and outgoing. For “No Good Deed” from the musical “Wicked,” the expressions darkened.

Part of the excitement comes from a sense that the group is cool, said the kids. The were responsible for changing their name from the “youth singers” to the “kids club.”

Some, like Matt Taylor, said they didn’t even like singing until they came to Park Avenue.

“I actually hated singing,” said Matt, who moved to Auburn from Brunswick two years ago. The song choices at his old school were “horrible, horrible.”

The kids credit Raymond. He credits the songs and, in a way, his technology.

“There’s something about having a microphone in their hands,” he said.

In his classes, attended by all students, he has never had a kid refuse to sing when the offer came with a microphone.

For a moment, every kid feels like a star.

Katie Hummes – wired with a microphone and plugged into an amplifier – bounced in her seat as she talked about the club’s first performance, planned for June 14 at the school.

“Just wait,” she said.