AUG
30

Give My Regards to Un-Broadway

By Debra Fendrich, Executive Editor, Pioneer Drama Service 

Debra serves as the executive editor at Pioneer Drama Service, where she has worked for over 24 years.  Prior to joining Pioneer Drama, she taught public school and has since volunteered extensively in the schools.  Even before that, she played flute in the pit orchestra for her high school’s productions of George M! and The Music Man. 

I’ll be the first to admit that I love Broadway musicals.  Even though I’m the executive editor of Pioneer Drama Service, where we publish over 225 musicals that will never see the lights of Broadway, I have held season tickets for the “Best of Broadway” national touring series in Denver for 30 years now.  I even managed to fit in four Broadway musicals on a five-day trip to NYC last year.  But does that mean every high school should produce only Broadway musicals?  No.  Does that mean middle school students should only “get to know” what it’s like to perform in a musical by doing some condensed version of a Broadway show?  Absolutely not.  Does that mean elementary students should only be exposed to musicals via kid or junior versions of the Broadway classics?  Again, the answer is a resounding no.

While there is a time and place for Broadway musicals, the “Un-Broadway” musicals that Pioneer offers also have a time and place, and you might be surprised just how much they can add to your school year.

First and foremost when choosing a musical, think of what type of experience you want to give your students.  The mark of a good actor is not copying, it’s creating.  You don’t want your young actors to merely imitate someone else’s portrayal of a character, but if they’ve seen that character in a movie or in a professional production, chances are they’re going to do just that.  With a character they have to create from scratch, young thespians learn what it really means to be an actor.  They use their imaginations and acting skills, not their imitation skills.

The same holds true for your set and costume designers.  When doing a Broadway musical, they know that the audience is coming with pre-conceived notions from watching other productions of the same show on stage or screen, so they use their skills to duplicate to the best of their ability (and your budget) what’s already been seen.  Imagine putting on a musical that is new to the audience, where you get to create your own vision, design your own sets, imagine your own costumes.  What an exciting and liberating challenge!

Pioneer musicals are specifically written and designed for success at an amateur level.  The sets and costumes are simple, yet invite as much embellishment as your budget and talent desires.  The dialogue is written for ease of memorization, and the songs — generally about ten in a full length musical — are specifically written for the vocal ranges of young voices.

As you think of the type of experience you want to create for your students, also consider how many kids you want to have speaking roles.  Broadway shows are specifically written to be star vehicles and for the most part are very male heavy.  From South Pacific and Guys and Dolls to Les Miserables, you can’t even name three female roles in most Broadway shows.  Really, there are only so many times you can do Thoroughly Modern Millie and Annie.  And as one of our customers said, “Annie is a fun show...  if you’re Annie.  But for the 29 other girls who auditioned to be Annie but ended up in the chorus, their enthusiasm for the show was suddenly low.”

You’ll be much more likely to find an ensemble cast with plenty of female roles in a Pioneer musical.  With a wide variety of cast sizes with roles of all sizes, imagine the joy of finding a musical to match your cast rather than having to find a cast to match your musical.

You should also consider what type of experience you want to create for your audience.  When I went to a local high school’s production of Oklahoma, you should have heard the principal’s announcement.  Absolutely no pictures.  Absolutely no videos.  Believe me, these kids will never have the fun of posting their favorite musical number on YouTube.  It’s a shame for the kids, but also their parents, and especially the out-of-state grandparents.

With Pioneer’s musicals, pictures and videos are always welcome, and we encourage posting on YouTube and other social media sites.  That’s half the fun, as well as a great way to promote your show!  Take a look at this video clip one of our customers did to promote their musical from us, Golly Gee Whiz!, winner of the National Youth Theatre Award for Outstanding New Musical.

You might be concerned that performing an unknown show will hurt ticket sales.  Unless much of your audience is filled with community members not associated with your school, it actually will have little to no impact.  Face it, your audience is made up of family and friends of your cast.  The single biggest determining factor of your audience size is the size of your cast, not the name of the show.  So don’t worry about ticket sales; just get lots of people onstage.  And backstage.  And doing entertainment in the lobby at intermission.  If all of them have family and friends come to the show, you’ve got it made!

We’ve considered what type of experience you’re creating for your cast, crew, and audience, but don’t forget to consider what will be best for YOU!  If you’re doing a full Broadway musical, think about what you have to put up with:  requirements to apply for rights months in advance (and risk being denied), unknown royalty fees, pre-defined staging and choreography, tight restrictions on making any changes to the script, logo usage restraints, pre-defined rental periods, erasing every pencil mark in every book...

Not one of these “necessary evils” is actually necessary if you do an Un-Broadway musical from Pioneer.  There’s no “applying for rights” since exclusivity is not an issue, our royalty prices are fixed and published so you know all your costs upfront, and you’re purchasing the material, so you can work on your own timeline and have your actors and crew mark up their scripts as much as necessary to help create the best production.  Want to make a slight change to the wording, change the gender of a character, or add in local references?  No problem!  Have a talented student that wants to design an original logo for our musical?  Fantastic!

Another feature of Broadway musicals is their length — two and a half hours, which translates to an incredible amount of rehearsal time, followed by a lot of wiggling by younger siblings in the audience.  Do you really have the time to choreograph 13-15 musical numbers?

Granted, the condensed versions of the Broadway musicals address many of these concerns, but they create other problems along the way.  Time and time again, we hear from directors that these highly edited scripts are choppy and put scene changes practically right on top of each other.  These shows were simply not written for amateur success with student actors, and shortening a show isn’t going to change that fact.  Just like reading a condensed version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in lieu of Mark Twain’s classic, highly edited adaptations might give students a taste of the story, but without the fullness of the character development and the complexity of all the subplots and themes, they really are a poor substitute for the original.

Pioneer’s musicals, written specifically for groups like yours, are easy on the budget and give young actors a true chance to shine.  So as you think about the experiences you’re creating for your students both onstage and behind the scenes, for the family and friends in the audience, and for yourself, join Pioneer Drama in singing, “Give my regards to Un-Broadway!”