So I guess Rent is out?
Have you all done Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? Children’s chorus allows kid participation but lots of great parts for others. Great contemporary music. Truly one of the most joyous shows our D was ever a part of.
@musicmom1215 I had a feeling you would say that with Music Man. You got a lot of great suggestions here. I hope you are able to bring something new and fun this year. Please come back and let us know what you guys decide!
Children of Eden might be a good choice – we saw it for the first time this year and just loved it!
^^^one of my favorites for youth/community theater!
The slate is already set for this summer. We are doing All Shook Up. The committee will be meeting to select shows for 2019.
We have done Joseph several times as well. And yes, Rent is out. lol
I sometimes wonder if our audience would be as shocked as our long-time board members think they would be, but we are afraid to find out.
The other theater does a show from the Smoke on the Mountain series every few years. It is about a family of singers who travel around to perform and preach at different churches. It is very funny in places. One of the sisters does not sing, but she uses sign language intended for the deaf but it is not the official sign language. She’s just acting out the songs. One old lady in town wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper saying how blasphemous it was!
@musicmom1215 Have you ever surveyed your patrons as to what shows they’d like to see?
I would like to suggest Footloose. The community theatre in my area did it. There are a lot of parts and the parents know it from the movie.
Drowsy Chaperone! Lots of opportunities for multiple people to shine with many featured roles.
Thank you for all the great suggestions. I’m not on the play selection committee, but I have already told the president of our group that I will vote against doing anything we have done in the past. I don’t want to vote no without having some suggestions to offer. They may be sorry they recruited me to come back to the board. lol
My town has a summer theater program run by a non-profit. A few years ago, they did Urinetown. S17 worked tech and crew for it and loved it. Our HS had done it a few years earlier when S09 was involved. The show is a little dark but a lot of the darker stuff may go over the heads of younger kids. I would definitely consider the show.
My son’s favorite show in the summer program was “Big Fish,” which was a sellout when they did it.
Last year, they did “All Shook Up,” which is kind of an Elvis type show. S17 was surprised by how much he and the other kids (6th - 12th graders) really enjoyed the show. It was incredibly popular. Baby boomers came out in droves, even if they didn’t have a kid in the show, because of the music and the sort of topic.
I spent the day with my D and she insists that Urinetown would be perfect for us to do, in spite of it being a little dark, and she said the “other” theatre has said they will not do it because of the title, so we would not have to compete with them.
I think they are banking on the baby-boomer Elvis fans to come out to All Shook Up this summer. And we have never done it before so I give them props for stepping outside the usual comfort zone.
@musicmom125 -
As I mentioned, my town’s not for profit summer theater group, which uses only children as cast and crew, did All Shook Up last summer. The final two performances were sold out as word spread amongst the baby boomers. I think that you should market it to this group. We put up posters at the train station, the local assisted living facilities, and any other place that would let us. I was surprised (as a mid-boomer and not a huge Elvis fan) by how much I truly enjoyed this show.
A few other suggestions, Once upon a Mattress is a lot of fun. Mamma Mia is also good, timely as the second movie is coming out. I hear the rights to Matilda are coming out… I would jump on them.
So many good shows to choose from.
I personally think we should do two musicals a year instead of one musical and three plays. Unfortunately, two-thirds of the play-selection committee do not sing so they would never go for that. Still, being in my stir-the-pot mood, I may suggest it. LOL
Shows which have been successful for our local community theatre (which is actually teen-based but draws thousands to shows in our theatre-in-the-park):
Curtains
*Ragtime/i
Some other shows to think about:
Titannic
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Your demographic would be OK with Mama Mia? Do you know the story?? Personally, I think art shouldn’t be censored if it’s quality, but given what you said about your audience, I’m surprised you’d consider Mama Mia.
I’ve only seen the Mamma Mia movie and that was a long time ago. I remember it being about a girl trying to find her father out of multiple possibilities. Is it worse than that?
Her mother slept with multiple men around the same time, so the protagonist’s father could be any of them.
As long as we don’t show her in bed with men, that would be okay.