Original musicals for schools & theatre groups

So Andrew Lloyd-Webber has released amateur rights for schools to perform ‘Cats’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera’.  How are we supposed to feel about this?  Undoubtedly teachers and directors will rush to secure the rights to perform these shows, they are popular, they will excite the cast and get bums on seats.   I am keen to know just how much the license fee for the performing rights will be and then just how practical will the shows be to stage?

I can’t see many schools having the facilities to move a gondola along the stage or swing a giant chandelier across the auditorium.  Of course, no doubt amendments have been made to make the shows more manageable for the producers but really I can’t help thinking Sir Lloyd Webber is ‘selling out’. All of the shows were written for an adult cast, the songs are not necessarily suitable for young performers, the vocal challenges could be too much and  the dance capability of the cast of ‘Cats’ is no doubt way beyond that of the average school cast.  Surely Webber is compromising the original creative intentions by allowing the shows to be performed by schools.

However, what really troubles me is that there are original musicals on the market which have been written for large casts of young performers, that are pitched perfectly for their capabilities and above all the staging solutions are far more practical and affordable for schools.  Why then are teachers and facilitators not looking for this material and are, instead hanging out for the rights to perform shows which are well known but really very difficult to stage and deeply unoriginal?  In my humble opinion, students do not have to be subjected to adult performer’s sloppy seconds.

It has always been my thinking that school shows have an audience in the parents, aunts, uncles, grans and grandads of the cast.  As a mother myself I am already very excited about the forthcoming nursery school nativity and I can assure you the choice of title is irrelevant.  I just look forward to seeing my daughter on the stage.  She might be appalling, she is probably too stubborn to join in and bash a tambourine but I know I will love every minute and plan to watch both performances.  Schools can afford to choose unknown musicals to perform, in fact they might find the whole process profitable.

But how do we make our website the first port of call for teachers when big names like Lloyd Webber seem to be offering so much? We are about to release our OLYMPICS musical.  We have had so much interest in this one, teachers are securing the licence to perform it without even reading it!  The topic will be covered by every teacher across Britain next year and we have jumped on the opportunity.  We hope that teachers will use our very reasonably priced resource and then come to us for their nativity, their songbooks and their end of term plays.  We have had to think of a way to get noticed and hopefully develop a relationship with teachers across the country to last for years to come.  We fully appreciate what Andrew Lloyd Webber has done for musical theatre but we urge teachers to seek out new voices too.

Angela & Andrew have worked in the field of youth theatre for many years.  Angela ran her own theatre school and now works as a freelance tutor, director and choreographer.  Andrew has a background in rock music but was invited to play the role of the man eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors and has had an interest in musical theatre ever since. Together they run Lucky Bucket Productions providing schools and theatre groups across the country with original shows for performance.