Best musical at school?

June 25, 2009 6:31 PM

What's the best musical to try and put on for a middle school (ages 12–15)?

If you've ever directed a musical at a middle school level, or in general, could you please state what worked well in general and what didn't (everything from stage design to costumes and microphones etc.)?

If you did it within the last 5 years could you mention the musical you did and how enthusiastic the kids were to the choice?

Thanks for any input.

posted by fantasticninety to education (18 comments total)

we did Bye Bye Birdie when i was about that age, and it seemed to go over pretty well. costumes were not difficult, the songs were fun, and i had a blast, but i also wasn't the director. she didn't seem to be overly stressed about the whole thing, though. our sets were fairly minimal, though, so that might've been a headache she just avoided.
posted by radiosilents at 6:37 PM on June 25

"she" being the director, of course.
posted by radiosilents at 6:38 PM on June 25

I'm not sure how helpful I'll be, since I'm a 16 year old high school junior, but I've been involved in musical drama for three years now, and kept a very close ear to the world around me.

In middle school, which is what you're probably looking for, I was involved in Peter Pan. This is a great musical for the age group: there's no harmony, really, so you don't have to worry about that, and actors are divided into simple groups to work with: Lost Boys, Indians, and everyone's favorite, the Pirates. Because of that, there's costume uniformity for all but the starring roles, and thanks to the ease of obtaining, say, a hook or green cloth, that was quite easy too. Blocking isn't the easiest - you do have to work with a large number of people on stage nearly all of the time - but it's still simplistic, and all you need to do is form rows.

I live in an affluent school district, and we outsourced the microphones to a sound technician from a local news network. Beware this route: he took nearly half our money from all of the musicals we've done. Yet this is probably the cheapest method to get wireless microphones, especially if you're working with a large group. I'd advise buying no more than five microphones, and giving them to the larger parts: Wendy, Captain Hook, Peter Pan and Smee will do most of your talking.

I can't say this was exactly thrilling to us, but it wasn't the bane of our existence - and you can bet that everyone will be familiar with the story. If you have any further questions, feel free to mefi mail me - I can also send you the email of my high school drama coach, who has an incredible dedication to getting kids to work on these things, and would love to help an up-and-coming director.
posted by Bleusman at 6:46 PM on June 25

My kids' old school did Gilbert & Sullivan productions with kids in grade 6 (!!). I wasn't involved in production so I can't say much about that, but having a musical that needs a big chorus lets you have everyone who wants in participate because the chorus can never really be too big. Specifically, they did HMS Pinafore. Costumes for the leads were more involved but the chorus kids had pretty basic costumes that can be easily made or made by parents with limited sewing abilities.
posted by GuyZero at 6:58 PM on June 25

I was in a "production" of Charlotte's Web with kids 4th-7th grade. Maybe a little young for the older end of your bunch... but it's a good story that no one could possibly object to, and there are a larger number of "big parts". Four or five people get solos, there's a lot of flexibility for cast size (townsfolk at the Fairs, etc.) and the roles are really fun (motherly spider, naive pig, snotty sheep, stuttering goose, sleazy rat, shy horse, etc..) We had a ball, it went over like gangbusters, A++++ WOULD WEAR SPIDER COSTUME AGAIN!!!
posted by moxiedoll at 7:12 PM on June 25

Anything Goes. It's great for middle school students because it has quite a few lead roles, and three major female roles, the bigger chorus the better, and the male parts aren't quite that difficult to sing. Also, it will be adorable.
posted by pazazygeek at 8:13 PM on June 25

Important factors when choosing a musical to do in any school:

1) Know your (potential) cast
1a) Gender ratio
How many boys do you potentially have in your cast? How many of them, do you think, could honestly handle a lead role? There are tons of great musicals out there that just don't work very well in a typical school setting because their chorus is either half male ("Guys and Dolls", "Oklahoma") or majority-male ("Damn Yankees", "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", etc.) and it's just so hard to pull that off well when the ratio of girls to guys in your average school theatre program is usually something like 3:1. I mean, "Oliver!" is a fun musical for kids, but if you're casting tons of girls as the boys because of the gender inequality, it's going to come across as kind of odd, and you may as well just do "Annie" instead. I saw one production of "Fiddler" at my sister's middle school where the song "Tradition" at the beginning was so unbalanced in its guys vs. girls that the mamas and the daughters outnumbered the papas and the sons by at least 4:1. The audience will only suspend disbelief for so much, even at a kids' show.
1b) Talent level
While you should definitely keep an open mind for auditions, it doesn't hurt to try to mentally cast some of the kids in whatever shows you're thinking of doing, and see where that might or might not work for you. Do you know that any of them have good loud voices? Are there any hams? Do you know the kids you'll be working with well enough to pick out potential leads from the bunch and type them as ingenue, comic relief second banana, heartthrob, scrawny kid who hasn't gone through puberty yet, etc? Can any of the kids dance? Tap dance? Do gymnastics or aerobatic passes/jumps across the stage? Think about what the numbers and characters in your musical-of-choice will require. "42nd Street" is tons of fun and has a lot of roles for girls, but if your kids can't dance, forget it.
1c) Race
I am absolutely in favor of race-blind casting, but you need to be aware that having an all-white group of kids attempt shows like "Once on This Island" or an all-Asian group of kids do "Fiddler on the Roof" or an all-any-one-race group do "Ragtime" is going to undercut the very point of the show you're doing. Nothing is more cringeworthy than having an entire cast of little Jewish princesses attempt to butcher their way through unintentionally offensive Puerto Rican accents in "West Side Story" -- or worse, have the blonde actress playing Maria use not-very-convincing brown stage make-up to try to seem Latina. (Ahhhh, summer camp.)

2) Appropriateness of the musical:
Especially for a middle school cast, you should pick a lighter comedy that doesn't require amazing actors to carry the show. Emphasis on the comedy part; an abundance of FUN! will cover a lot of production missteps if your kids are cute and funny. Stay away from adult material like "Cabaret" until the kids are much older. And no, "Pippin" is just not appropriate for kids to do, unless you want to censor major sections of it -- although way too many middle schools and summer camps still keep insisting that it's okay to do that, which as a big "Pippin" fan I find disturbing and wrong.

So, all that being said, I was in a production of "Pirates of Penzance" in 6th grade and "Little Shop of Horrors" in eighth grade. Both were great fun and don't need tons of guys to pull off (women can double for some of the pirates in "Penzance") and would be very appropriate for middle schoolers. Other good choices for that age group that fit the above criteria would include "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown", "Bye Bye Birdie", and a new awesome favorite where the kids would be actually playing kids their own age "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee". If your kids were in high school, I'd also be adding "Urinetown" to that list. If they were in elementary school, I'd add "How To Eat Like A Child", which is little-known but terrific.

Also, don't forget to check out YouTube for all sorts of videos from amateur productions around the world; it's a great resource for would-be directors! It's neat to see how different schools tackle the same song from a show. Looking through variations on the opening number from "Little Shop of Horrors", for example, is really neat.

Best of luck to you!
posted by Asparagirl at 8:32 PM on June 25 [1 favorite has favorites]

One more quick note: if you do pick "Little Shop of Horrors", you can do what our school did and double the Ronette/Crystal/Chiffon roles to six girls instead of three, to give more girls in the cast a chance to have a lead -- and it will help people in the audience hear their awesome harmonies better. Just make sure they have SASS and BRING IT; nothing sucks the life out of that show like having scared-looking girls singing that awesome title song in very soft falsetto voices trying to sound pretty rather than street. You want belters with ATTITUDE!, much more than even girls who trill nicely.

Generally speaking, if the kids are having a good time on stage, the audience will have a good time. If the kids look unsure of themselves, the audience will be unsure and uncomfortable on their behalf. If forced to choose between attitude/energy and pitch, take the ones with the attitude! You can work on the pitch later with a vocal coach, but you can't teach enthusiasm as easily.
posted by Asparagirl at 8:43 PM on June 25

seconding "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown." It's small as casts go, but still fun.

My middle school did "Sound of Music" one year which was very well-served by our girl-heavy cast (someone in went to school with posted a picture of the size of our "convent" recently); also, everyone in the cast had seen the movie, so they had kind of an idea of how the songs were supposed to sound already and so we didn't lose any time to "learning" too much. "The Wizard Of Oz" had similar advantages the following year.

If you were dealing with a high school, I'd recommend Working, which may have had a concept which was weird as all hell (it's based on a Studs Terkel oral history book), but which had 28 leads, so it was one of the very few school productions which satisfied all of the would-be superstars I went to school with.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:55 PM on June 25

Oh, damn -- premature posting.

Uh, the reason why I'd hold off on WORKING until high schools is that it does deal with some more "adult" themes (one of the characters is a prostitute), and junior high students going there may feel a little oogy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:29 PM on June 25

My former middle school has does a musical every other year - swapping with the high school since the band director at the MS helps out with the HS show too.

I was already in HS or maybe college when they started these but I hear about them as I do community shows with the MS band director every summer.

The shows always go over really well from what I hear - from audience as well as the director. I think the reason is they don't do the full broadway adult version.

They do junior versions of the shows.

MTI Broadway Junior

I can't remember all of the productions they've done, but from that list, I know they've done Music Man, Fiddler, Annie and Guys and Dolls. (Pretty sure on that last one...) They've also done Cinderella and a few others that escape me at the moment.

The benefit of these Junior adaptations is that they're made to work with middle school kids performing - not to mention they're shortened timewise. The only downside, IMO is that they don't come with pit orchestra parts - just piano accompaniment. (which may be better for you - you didn't specify.) Luckily because the band director is passionate, if anything, about these shows, he has an extensive knowledge (and record library) of a lot of these shows and usually does a lot of arranging on his own so he can have a nice little pit of middle school band and orchestra kids. (Just another option to think about...)

I'll have to ask about which shows worked especially well and why, but I do remember that the kids responded particularly well to Annie. Hope this helps.
posted by Kimothy at 10:01 PM on June 25

I was involved in my schools' musicals from about the second grade up to the eigth, and here the ones we did:
Peter Pan, Lion King, Mama Mia, Grease, Little Shop of Horrors. I'm missing one...

Anyways, Peter Pan works great in terms of casting and costumes. Mama Mia is definitely the fun one, and also works great in erms of casting. Same with Grease. Little Shop of Horrors is definitely my favourite, and a lot of fun to work with. It's a lot less childish than most of the others and I always love when school plays cause kids to watch old movies!
posted by alona at 2:05 AM on June 26

I second the JR productions - I'm not the biggest fan of them, but they work well for middle school. It's what we always did. In my time there, we did Guys and Dolls jr., and when mybrother was there they did fiddler on the roof jr, annie jr, and the music man jr. they may also have done into the woods jr and cinderella jr...
posted by firei at 4:05 AM on June 26

There's 'DAZZLE - "A Musical Space-tacular!" - it's a sci-fi spoof which seems to work really well for that age range, and scales well to small or large casts. It's not that well known but I've seen it performed a few times and it was great fun.
posted by freya_lamb at 4:12 AM on June 26

I don't have any specific suggestions besides what's been mentioned above, but I will say that while Charlie Brown is a positive choice, you need five strong singers for "Book Report." It's actually a pretty complicated piece, especially when everything starts getting layered on. I've seen many performances, especially at that age, start to falter at that point. It's also the end of act one, which means that if it doesn't go off, it hurts leading into act two.

Just a word of caution - the rest of it is very doable.

I lied, I just remembered another suggestion - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat was written for kids these ages, basically. You can strip out certain songs (and I would), but at its base (and if you have one rather good male singer), it can work.
posted by SNWidget at 5:53 AM on June 26

Give My Regards To Broadway is a GREAT show full of George M Cohen songs, a sort of silly Runyonesque plot, simple dialogue. I did a production of this as part of a children's summer theater workshop, and it was a HUGE hit. The songs are already familiar enough that you don't have to work THAT hard to teach them to the kids, but opportunities arise for good harmony singing and choreography. The kids all loved dressing up in gangster clothing, and the show actually sold out a 3 week run, if I remember.

There are likely other similar musicals offered at the same website.
posted by hippybear at 7:26 AM on June 26

(I should clarify -- I was musical director for the production, not a participant in the workshop)
posted by hippybear at 7:27 AM on June 26

I directed Little Shop of Horrors at an (all-girls, ages 9-15) summer camp - I assume you've got a co-ed cast, but like someone said above, you can expand the Ronettes if you're in need of more female roles. This is a really fun play for teenagers, from building the set (the plants require some ingenuity) to some seriously awesome songs. My girls just loved it to pieces, I think because the characters are so terrific. There is a note at the beginning of the script that says something to the effect of "don't play this campy, play it straight, put your heart in it, make the characters real, and the funny will come." I actually read this to the cast in the middle of one frustrating rehearsal. I wasn't really sure if they would get it, since most of them were just used to hamming it up on skit nights, but, impressively, they all *got* it, and I think it made a big difference.
I'm not going to claim it was a great show (lines forgotten, songs totally blown, scenery barely holding up, camp pets randomly wandering onstage mid-performance (no, seriously)), but we threw it together in about 2 weeks and the kids had fun and the parents had fun and I didn't completely lose my mind and I think everyone went home happy.
posted by naoko at 1:20 AM on June 30