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Good-bye, Broadway...  Hello, Unknown Play

By Edith Weiss 

Edith Weiss is the author of several published children’s plays, including six with Pioneer Drama Service.  A lot of Edith’s writing time goes into her stand-up comedy routine, which has taken her all over the country and on three overseas military tours.  Besides writing, she also acts and directs in both children’s and adult theatre. 

It’s time to choose a show.  Sure, it would be fun to do Seussical or High School Musical, or if you’re not doing a musical, Our Town or anything by Neil Simon.  But maybe you want to give your regards to Broadway and go your own way, producing a play that is unknown to both your actors and audience.  There certainly are advantages to taking this road less traveled, but you have to watch out for some potholes if you choose this route.

Here’s the first thing everyone wonders:  Will performing an unknown show hurt ticket sales?  I doubt it, unless much of your audience is filled with community members not associated with your school or organization.  But for schools and small organizations, 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 your audience size, just get a lot a people onstage.  And backstage.  And doing entertainment at intermission.  If all of them have family and friends come to the show, you’ve got it made!

If budget is a consideration (and when is it not?!), producing a play that hasn’t seen Broadway will help your bottom line.  The royalties are much lower and in most cases are fixed.  That means you know upfront what all your costs will be, and they’ll be reasonable.  You can determine your ticket price based on the cost of the royalties, rather than the other way around where the more you charge per ticket, the higher your royalty.

You also don’t have to worry about applying months, or even a year, in advance for the rights to a show, only to risk being refused after months of waiting for a reply.  Imagine, you can wait and see what kind of kids you have in your drama club, then choose a show to suit them.

Additionally, going “off Broadway” has advantages for the director.  Putting onstage anything that has been seen on a screen (think Wizard of Oz or Sound of Music) will be compared to the movie.  Admit it, you can’t compete with Hollywood!  The same goes for plays or musicals that have had national tours.  Think Annie or Les Misérables.  Audiences enter with ideas in mind, but unless your budget is humongous, your production just can’t match up to their mental images.  On the other hand, with a play that is new to the audience, the director can create his or her own vision.  It’s an exciting challenge for both the director and the designers.

The advantages to the student actor are even greater.  You will be giving your actors the opportunity to create entirely new characters.  As every director of young actors knows, one of the pitfalls for a young actor is to imitate someone else’s portrayal of a character.  If they’ve seen the character in a movie or in a professional production, chances are they’re going to just imitate that.  This limits the growth of your actors as artists.  The mark of a good actor is not copying, it’s creating. With a character they have to create from scratch, they learn what it really means to be an actor.  They have to use their imaginations rather than imitate someone else.

So here’s the first pothole to watch out for.  Creating a new character can be extremely scary to a young actor.  Make sure you allow time to take your actors through the whole process of developing their characters.  What’s his voice like?  How does she walk?  What is he afraid of?  What annoys her?  What does he love?  An exercise I did at grad school that I still use with my actors is to ask them if this character were an animal, what would that be?  Say it’s a bear.  It lumbers, it growls, it seems to move awkwardly.  It holds an underlying threat.  Have them do their lines as that animal, and then pare away the “bear” until it becomes a human being with some of the characteristics of a bear.  It’s fun, and your actors will discover all sorts of things they wouldn’t have thought of since their bodies are doing the work.  Or really get the imagination going.  What color is this character?  Sunny yellow?  Dull brown?  Flaming red?  Another valuable technique is to ask them to think of someone they know who comes close to this character, and take off on that.

Here’s your biggest pothole to dodge.  No doubt, some of the actors are going to be disappointed that they are not doing Urinetown or Rent.  Challenge them to appreciate that this is a journey of creation and discovery, not imitation, and get them excited about the process.  Don’t be held hostage by a recalcitrant actor.  If someone doesn’t want to involve themselves wholeheartedly because they don’t get to play Dorothy, explain the advantages of doing something new, and if they don’t get it, let them go.  It can’t be about their ego or résumé building.  If they think their only path to success is with a known show, they’re not going to dedicate the kind of energy you want to build a great production without relying on a famous name.

Bottom line, doing a show that’s custom designed for success at the amateur level is an easier road to travel and will raise the quality of your production.  Broadway shows (and their adapted Broadway Jr. versions) assume a professional stage with sophisticated technical abilities, an abundant costume budget and multiple complex sets, whereas shows specifically written for the educational and amateur markets boast few if any technical requirements, single sets and simple costumes.  More than that, amateur shows usually have more of an ensemble cast, rather than shining the spotlight on just one or two stars.

So give your regards to Broadway, then venture down the road less traveled; it will make all the difference.