Choosing The Show

TRUE STORY:

It was the first time I had ever been asked for suggestions for a show. I was in my new position as the choral director of a prestigious school with a strong program. Because I had taken some classes and had a theatre background, my suggestion carried more weight than it should have, especially since I had way more book knowledge than practical experience. I suggested they do a historically important show that I was familiar with because I had taught it in a musical theatre history class. The themes in the show resonated with the philosophy of the school and with some important current events of the time.

But I wasn’t thinking about the needs of my audience, the experience and abilities of the student body, and the patience of everyone involved for an obscure museum piece. My choice was better suited to a New York audience or a bunch of people who had recently earned Masters degrees in Musical Theatre Writing. I picked it for me, not for the people who were going to be doing the show with me. And although the show went very well, I think the only people who really enjoyed it were me and one history teacher.

ADVICE:

Think of the strengths of your actors and your program before you start throwing names of shows around. Otherwise you’ll be trying to come up with reasons to defend your choice instead of coming up with a show that matches your need. Here’s a challenge that will seem obvious, but which you may not actually be able to do: Think of the sound of your group the last time you worked with them (a Spring Concert, the last year’s show) and picture that group doing some music from the show in question. Sound like a mess? Maybe you should keep looking.

When people are in the process of choosing a show for a school to do, many factors come into play, most of which are really not helpful in making the choice.

1) You’ll often hear people suggesting shows they like, or were in at one point. And yes, you should probably like the show you pick, seeing as how you’re going to be living and breathing it for 3 or 4 months. And yes, if you’ve been in it, you probably know a little more about it than other shows you might have picked. The problem is the things that make the show so awesome are often the things that will sink your production. You know, the really great dark subject matter, that will have parents calling the school complaining, or the really cool set that crashes your budget and has you fighting with the people building it because it’s 3 weeks late. The show with the great role you always wished you could play, but that no kid in your school is vocally capable of carrying off. You have to open your list of choices to include shows you a) aren’t particularly fond of and b) don’t even know.

2) You might hear people throwing out shows that the kids will ‘like’. It’s true that some shows are not great for bringing out kids to try out, but kids will get into almost anything. Really! Name recognition counts for something. But you have to remember that their education requires you to expose them to things they should learn to appreciate. And if they already appreciate it because they own the movie on DVD, that part of your job is not being done. Stop trying to be cool and try and pick something the kids will be good at and that will expose them to something they need to know about.

3) You will often hear people talking about a show that needs to be heavily altered to be done by your organization. I strongly believe that if you have to change all the genders of the show, or cut half the songs, or change the location or job of major characters, you just picked the wrong show. You will have to alter things, it’s true. But you shouldn’t pick a show you know up front will need to be sliced and diced.

4) Some organizations have a thing about never repeating a show. This is a mistake. It’s tantamount to saying “I refuse to make a good decision twice.” If a show hasn’t been done in 8 years, no student in your school was in it, and probably very few current students or parents saw it the last time. Some shows just work, and you shouldn’t be afraid to do them multiple times. I’m also not crazy about the idea of a cycle of shows that keeps repeating over and over again. I heard recently of a middle school that cycles through Peter Pan, Annie, and The Wizard of Oz every three years. I just can’t imagine those shows are very fresh.

If the staff of the show allows you to be a part of the decision making process, (which is unfortunately rare) you should be a strong advocate for your position and you should listen carefully and empathetically to the positions of all the other people in the room. Make it a point to look through the score and find the vocal ranges of all the major characters and make a note of particularly difficult passages. If you don’t do your homework, it’s you who’ll have to pay when you’re teaching the impossible parts to the kids.

But you should also carefully consider everyone else’s position and try to understand where they’re coming from. Sometimes the choreographer is thinking about the dance opportunities of a show with her particular group of kids and your unease about the vocals needs to be weighed against the benefits in other areas. Don’t be the one in the room who says no to everything. Carefully weigh the pros and cons of each show, advocate with your best reasoning, and then when the show has been chosen, throw all your weight behind making it the best it can be.

If your musical program is new, start with something easy. You might someday be able to do a Sweeney Todd or a Les Miz, but it takes time to build the support structures and personal loyalty necessary to pull off something that ambitious.

As you’re researching your shows, there are a few books and websites that will help you find your way:

WEBSITES:

MTI’s website has a great search engine built in where you can look at shows based on Style, Types and Themes, Casting, Orchestration, Technical Elements, Suitability for Organizations, and Theatrical Resources. It’s fantastic, and it’ll also recommend shows based on shows you’ve already had success with

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization has a similar site, with searches possible based on the type of organization you are, the size of the cast, the kind of leads you have, the vocal demands, the size of the orchestra, and the dance requirements.

MTI and the R&H organization deliver the best materials to your group. They have really put a lot of care into making sure the materials are rehearsal ready, and their websites are clearly designed to serve their customers well. The other major organizations are not so consistent:

The Tams Witmark site currently has no search feature based on qualities of the shows. You’ll have to slog through the site to find what you’re looking for, one show at a time. For some shows, Tams offers a FLEX-BO orchestration, which is a reduced orchestration that still has all the notes. This can be extremely useful.

The Samuel French website This site is the hardest to maneuver around, because Samuel French is really a great play publishing organization which also happens to license shows.

A newer organization which I don’t know very much about, but which seems to send out great materials is Theatrical Rights Worldwide. (and you don’t send the materials back! They let you keep them!)

It’s important to note that some shows have multiple versions that are represented by different Theatrical Rights organizations. For example, Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing is represented by MTI and SAMUEL FRENCH. For a fairly complete list of shows and who they’re represented by, see: http://www.musicals101.com/alphinde.htm

When there are multiple versions of shows available, please note that they are not identical. You should look through both versions carefully to be sure you’re picking the best version for your group.

Books you should have in your library:

Broadway Musicals Show By Show by Stanley Green. A reference book with general, historical, and statistical information about important shows through the history of Broadway.

Let’s Put On A Show, How to Choose the Right Show for Your School, Community or Professional Theater by Peter Filichia. It contains discussions and overviews of a number of shows, with a view to performability by various groups.

Getting Your Contract Squared Away:

GETTING YOUR CONTRACT SQUARED AWAY:

TRUE STORY No. 1:

Department Chair: Will you music direct the musical in addition to your regular teaching duties?

Me: Sounds great!

3 Months Later:

Me: When should I expect my stipend?

Department Chair: Stipend?

TRUE STORY No. 2:

I signed the contract for ¼ less than my normal rate because the director of the arts school only scheduled me for 3 hours a day. Unfortunately, the rest of each day was scheduled with a director who needed to run scenes with music and a choreographer who needed music to dance to. The pianist? Me. My daily hours? 6

TRUE STORY No.3:

The whole hired staff of a show refused to return for another year at a badly run High School Music Program. But I liked the kids, so when the new director called me and offered me the job, I gave him my list of conflicts, which, it turned out, included the entire run of the show. Fine, the new director said; just hire someone else to play the show. So I subcontracted the best pianist I could find and offered him half my fee. I began to suspect they had not budgeted for me about a week before the show, when I saw the custom made costumes they had bought for the BOWS. I sent some e-mails just checking to see if in fact I was being paid, and when they were cutting that check. No response. When the show rolled around, I paid my sub $1500. But I didn’t get my fee until months later, after I had contacted administrators and been passed up the food chain.

ADVICE:

Please, please, pretty please. Never agree to music direct a show unless you know when, how, and how much you’re being paid. If your pay is part of a stipend for activities from your school, be sure everyone who needs to know knows that you’re being paid. If you are being contracted, and you don’t work for the school, get it in writing. You deserve to be paid. In this industry, you normally get paid the DAY you complete the work. Some districts have Byzantine budget rules that require you to submit for checks only after the work has been completed, and sometimes those things have to get past a school board before anyone signs a check. You’ll have to decide whether you want to work for that kind of an outfit. But if you do, bother everyone who might have anything to do with you getting paid and ask if there’s anything you have to fill out, any blood test or criminal background check you’ll need to get through to get paid. Your contract or agreement should also very clearly spell out your responsibilities, including hours. It’s part of respecting yourself enough to be sure you’re taken care of. And it should never cost you $1500 to music direct a show.

The 2 Primary Principles

THE TWO PRIMARY PRINCIPLES:

These are the two cardinal principles I base all my decisions on:

1) To make everyone sound and look as good as possible.

2) To be as faithful as possible to the authors’ intentions for the piece.

Let me flesh those out a little bit.

1) As the music director, (and actually as a musician, and as a human being) you need to be trying to make all those around you seem as competent as possible. You want to do this for a few reasons. First, there really isn’t any way for you to look good if those around you don’t. Theatre is a collaborative art, and in order to succeed in it, you must collaborate. Secondly, and this is very important: Everyone around you is remembering the experience of working with you. If you are focused on doing your best within your sphere to improve the quality of your colleague’s work, your colleagues will want to work with you again. If you become absorbed with your own concerns and don’t engage your colleagues, they won’t hire you again. If you’re a teacher in a school, your job may not be on the line, but it takes a lot of goodwill to keep a program going, and you can’t afford to lose that. Make people look good.

2) The people who write shows do so with varying degrees of skill, but the process of putting together a show for its first production usually involves a lot of people who are extremely good at what they do. As the show is being written and rehearsed the first time around, everything is up in the air, and songs are added or cut, moved into different keys, moved to different positions in the show, etc. They are usually constantly trying out the changes in front of paying audiences and in front of a group of backers who have spent a lot of money, and hope to get some of it back. Considering all the thought and care that went into each decision in the show, you should alter things as little as possible. When you do alter things, it’s very important that you know the authors’ original intention, and how your alteration is an improvement. Changing things you don’t understand is a little like removing walls in a house without checking to see if they’re load bearing. The author’s conception and intentions are not an artistic straitjacket. They are the foundation and framing that hold up your show. Change things intelligently if you must change them. Or don’t change them at all.

THE BALANCE OF THE 2 PRINCIPLES:

When you make artistic decisions within a show, you’ll soon see these rules coming up against each other in interesting ways. Let’s say you have a kid who can’t sing the high note he has at the end of a number. It’s breaking principle 1 to make the kid sing the high notes and sound terrible. But it’s breaking principle 2 to transpose it, since the author intended it to be in the key he wrote it in. Well, clearly the author’s intention is that the song be well sung, and if it takes moving it into another key, generally, that’s the best solution. But taking the song out and inserting a song by another writer is going directly against the author’s intention and could do damage to the structure of the piece. Let’s say the kid can sing the notes, but he can’t keep the audience’s interest for the duration of the piece. That’s breaking both rules, since the kid doesn’t look good, and the author probably wouldn’t intend for the audience to be bored. So maybe a cut is in order. But you must clearly understand the structure of the piece dramatically and the way the words function in order to know what best to cut if anything. So these principles must be held in balance with each other.

As you make your choices, ask yourself: How can I make these people look and sound their best, and how can I be true to the piece we’ve chosen?

Introduction

So you’ve been asked to music direct a school musical. And you think, hey, that sounds like fun. Maybe you’re a choir director, maybe you’re a parent with some music background. Maybe you’re a pianist who sings a little, and they’re giving you your first shot. Well, you’re right. It is going to be fun. It’s also going to drive you crazy. And there are going to be a bunch of things you didn’t think about that will drive you nuts, and you’ll wish somebody had told you about them. This blog will hopefully be helpful in outlining the various things to consider as you music direct a show, and it’s based on the many many things I did wrong over the years I’ve directed school musicals.