MHS spring musical to use locally penned script
Sue Thompson (left) and Michelle Shrewsbury (right) are directing this year’s High School spring musical production, using a script Thompson wrote.
The pandemic has taken a toll on so many things we took for granted before. One of those things is the Manchester High School Thespian Society’s spring musical presentation. The club is now roughly half the size it was two years ago. However, five staff members, who make up the current creative team for productions, are committed to restoring it to its former glory with one very special script.
Michelle Shrewsbury and Susan Thompson have teamed up to direct “Fractured Fairytale: The Playsical,” an original adaptation by Thompson of the Stinky Cheeseman book. Jared Throneberry is overseeing and producing the play, Mark West is designing and constructing the sets, and Andy Galicki is directing lights and sound.
The play’s backstory is about a theater company putting on a play made up of fairy tales but things keep going wrong. Actors are stealing each other’s roles, the fairytales are getting mixed up, and there is an ongoing battle to turn the play into a musical. It’s very meta and the plot even spills out into the programs!
The actual story of the play however, begins more than 20 years ago when Thompson spent about a month penning a short adaptation of the book and then directed it, at the request of her friend, who was the Community Arts director in Wayne. It was about 25 minutes long and made up of five scenes. Afterwards, the script went into a drawer.
The Manchester portion of this story picks up with the arrival of Covid-19 and the canceling of the huge Charlie and the Chocolate Factory production in 2020. In the uncertainty of 2021, it was clear a regular musical was untenable, so Thompson pulled out her old script and started to rework it. Three more scenes were then added. The Thespian Society ended up putting on and filming an audience-free production of Wizard of Oz instead. Shrewsbury used Thompson’s updated script last summer at a drama camp in Chelsea, where it was very well received by the kids.
With no audience last spring and no performances at all the previous spring, there was no revenue from ticket sales and the theater program had lost a lot of its momentum. Shrewsbury and Throneberry, who were directing the Fall play earlier this school year, originally intended to put on a larger Shakespeare play but because of low student participation they pivoted to putting on two smaller Edgar Allan Poe plays. When it came time for the spring musical, a traditional larger musical was off the table. With little money and a small cast, Thompson pulled out the script again.
She has worked daily on the script and has now expanded it from the original five scenes adapted from the book and has added eight more scenes. On top of that, she and Shrewsbury have added music, bringing the run time up to an hour and a half.
One of the benefits of having the author as a director is that Thompson is able to make script additions and changes. Students have been encouraged to build their own characters and have been given more opportunity for freedom of expression than they’ve had before. Students are able to make roles into speaking roles or singing roles. Ad-libbing, which isn’t usually possible in productions, is not only possible but encouraged.
Thompson and Shrewsbury explained that larger schools have theater classes where basics are usually taught like character development and comic timing. Because Manchester doesn’t have a theater class, there isn’t time outside of rehearsals to work on these skills. In addition, in the past, typical spring productions would have included 8 or 10 seniors with four years of experience under their belts. This year they have a smaller number of seniors and even fewer of those have much prior experience. With the addition of 7th and 8th graders in the building, the cast also includes younger members than in previous years. More than half of the cast has only been in one other production.
Behind the scenes and on stage, the creative team has incorporated students, district staff, and many community members into the production of the play. Staff members from all three buildings will be appearing in roles, a student owned business is making the T-shirts, and an Art and Business class are helping with programs/posters/prop pieces, and more.
Thompson’s hope is that other students, both at the high school level and younger, will come see the play and love it enough to want to get involved in the theater program next fall. She hopes the community will come see the production and they’ll be able to raise enough money through ticket sales to revitalize the club’s bank account for next year.
Sound intriguing? You can come experience it for yourself and contribute to the revitalization of the high school’s theater program! The Manchester Thespian Society will be performing “Fractured Fairytale: The Playsical” on April 29th, 30th and May 1st in the High School auditorium. Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to the production.
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