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School plays are okay as a few children get a chance to show off, and occasionally disastrous memories are made. In my school play, I once (by mistake) said the line that began Scene Five, at the beginning of Scene Two. Everybody carried on from there to the end, and the whole play was over in about 25 minutes. The parents were thrilled, and I've tried to make every show I've done since as short as possible.
School musicals - which were seen in my schooldays as the devil's work - can be much more fun. For a start, many more children can sing than can act. There are more jobs available - bigger cast, more costumes and props, the band, the sound technicians - and the smallest element is still vital. Peter Pan has to sing the big number, but the triangle that plays Tinkerbell and the sound-effect for the ticking crocodile are just as important.
There are lots to choose from, from Joseph to Grease (and I might put in a plug here for my own Brilliant the Dinosaur, which is for a cast of thousands up to about age 13).
Best of all, write your own, about something local or contemporary. It will work as long as it obeys the golden rule: it must have a subject worth making a song and dance about. Think about it - Carousel is about crime and violence, Oklahoma! is about proud cowboys having to become farmers, Phantom of the Opera is about society rejecting ugliness. The Sing Up Musical is about people with ideas so far ahead of their time that most other people thought they were crazy. All big subject.
Starlight Express, whose title song can be found in the Sing Up Song Bank, is about bullying. Rusty, the small steam engine, is victimised by the diesel and electric engines until he starts to believe in himself and fight back. Back in 1984 we were looking for the best way to turn actors into trains. I suggested wheelchairs; my collaborators looked at me as if I was crazy, and we did the show on rollerskates. It took 20 years before my idea stopped being crazy. Treloar's College for disabled students in Hampshire did the whole show in electric wheelchairs, and it was thrilling and brilliant.
Do a school muscial. Make it ambitious, thrilling and brilliant and nobody will forget it.
What a good idea!
The Sing Up musical can be found in our Song Bank area.
Sing Up would like to thank Rosemary Taylor-Mew's Sing Up Club at St. John's C of E School in Harrow for coming up with the title for our Sing Up Musical, What a good idea! The Sing Up Club, which was only formed in September, brainstormed their ideas during one of their practices and sent in their favourite. Well, it was our favourite too! Thanks!
More songs from musicals!
We've put lots of other songs from musicals up online in the Song Bank:
- Easy peasy harvest from Easy Peasy Harvest
- Five fine bumblebees from Billy No Buzz
- Harvest rock and roll from Harvest Rock
- Inch worm from Hans Christian Andersen
- In the autumn from Harvest Rock
- I wanna be like you from the Jungle Book
- The land of cogs and wheels from The Weekend Whizz
- Shining shoes from African Jigsaw
- Spaceship jam from Planet Plenty
- The ugly duckling from Hans Christian Andersen
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