Though I, like most of you, am tired of seeing the umpteenth production of OKLAHOMA or FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, there is little else they can do.
High school musicals must do shows that have a large chorus (because many people have to be involved) and, above all else, they must be appropriate.
Due to PTAs and parents and Principals and School Boards, there are many great shows that just won't fly in high school. This makes many great shows go out the window of possibility.
High schools have to produce age-appropriate stuff. (And talent appropriate). God bless any school that tries to conquer a Sondheim show, but it will never be as good as a Loesser or a Berlin or a R&H show in high school.
Merely because the experience of 99% of high school actors doesn't allow them to sound their best with Sondheim. they do not have the training. and high school directors want them to sound their best.
That leaves them with esay-to-sing, appropriate shows that have a large chorus.
Most of the shows that fit this criteria are old classics . And that is why they get recycled.
But the shows that get done again and again in high schools:
Guys and Dolls
Fiddler on the Roof
Once Upon a Matress
Annie Get Your Gun
Oklahoma
The Pajama Game
Pippin
The Music Man
Anything Goes
Oliver
etc
They get done because they work.
A high school can't (feasibly) produce Cabaret or The Producers.
And the kids who are in the shows get to do a show that they are comfortable with; one that they know well.
And if they don't know the show, then it isn't "overdone" to them, anyway.
And do the parents or teachers or other students really care if a show is overdone?
No. They don't come to high school to see ground-breaking theatre.
They come to see kids perform and see if there is someone in their school that has the true talent to maybe make it on Broadway.
And once they "make it" they can perform in ground-breaking shows.
But high school theatre is not about changing the face of theatre. It is about just giving the kids, talented or untalented, a chance to perform and a time to see what it is like to be in the spotlight.
EDIT: Also, as for new shows that fit the "criteria" for a high school show. They have to wait for the tours to get done, so they can license the show. So ecpect to see a WHOLE lotta high schools do SEUSSICAL now that the rights are available.
"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."
The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.
Updated On: 11/21/04 at 10:29 PM
