Working on the revision of this musical was a really good reminder for me that showing instead of telling can make all the difference.Ĭhildren are smart, and they know when they’re treated like intelligent human beings, and when they’re treated like little kids. My students were acutely aware of this phenomenon.
In my experience, many plays for children have overactive narrators and silly characters for silly characters sake. What they were trying to say was that they thought the musical was going to be dumb. If I’m going to write a musical, I’m going to make it as awesome as I can.” I knew that they never would have said that in its previous incarnation, and that the changes I made were good, and they responded to it. I wanted to jump up and down and do a jig. It’s funny, and sad, and Jack really struggles, and the music is good. My Captain Hook continued, “But this is like, a real musical. She continued, “When you said that you wrote a musical, we were excited because we thought it would be fun, and you know a lot about theatre.”Īnother student (my Peter Pan) chimed in, “When people say, oh, yeah, I wrote a musical – you know it’s going to be fun, but also kind of dumb.” What was I even thinking! Hide under the piano! Potoma, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way…” After we read through the script, and sang through all of the music, the young lady playing Jack (an amazingly talented student who was also my Captain Hook) raised her hand. They were excited, and about fifteen students showed up. that I was offering a special drama workshop, and that they were going to help me rewrite my musical. Would they like it? Would it be something they would want to perform? Were the songs relatable? Catchy? Were the lyrics good enough? It’s fun, it’s angsty, and I was petrified to give it to my students. His terrible actions have real honest to goodness consequences, and he realizes he already had everything he needed. He climbs the beanstalk, even when his mother tells him not to, because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. He gets in fights at school and is angry at the world, for reasons he doesn’t even understand. Jack became a troubled young man who yearns for more. I rescored every bit of music to make it more current, more relatable. All telling.ĪND THE MINCE PIES ARE MADE FROM REAL - " We learn nothing about her or what she wants, and it doesn't further the plot. An example below: The Giantess singing to Jack before: I sat down at my piano, and rewrote the entire opening, completely re-imagined a song that I didn’t even like ten years ago, and scrapped the entire end. He made bad choices with no real consequences. I grabbed my copy of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, and broke the script down into beats. I knew immediately that if I was going to do it (maybe in the next few years) at my current school, that it would need some work. I wrote and performed it with my students years ago, a different time, a different school, different kids. My post modern take on the set for Peter Pan Jr.
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