The Musical
Cast
Main Cast
NARRATOR - Henri Morel, NPC.
LITTLE GIRL - Emma Carr, NPC. Twenty-one, small, wispy.
GOOD MOTHER - Olivia Masket, NPC.
GOOD FATHER - THE MAJOR.........
FOSTER MOTHER - Talia Victor, NPC.
FOSTER FATHER - Spike.
SNAKE - Joshua White, NPC.
CAMP FIRE - Meghan Rios, NPC.
Minor Cast
- Arkady
- Claire Stanfiled
- Mew
- Jessica
- Zoidberg
- Andy Bernard
- Abby
- A bunch of NPCs!
All members are part of the chorus but have occasional lines and as well. These are ideas that I'm just throwing out there, but honest to goodness, feel free to improvise in their parts. Give them lines to memorize! Shenanigans to deal with!
- All minor character actors are members of the dance studio in earlier scenes.
- Zoidberg and Claire bring in the glass elephant in Act I.
- Andy and Jessica are a loving husband and wife daughter, neighbors of the Little Girl and her family.
- Abby, Mew and Arkady dance together in the dance studio scenes.
- Chorus returns to be freaky and disconcerting as shit when the Foster Parents come into the picture. Andy and Jessica are still neighbors, but play different characters that are more sinister. MAYBE NOW THEY HAVE MUSTACHES AND HATS.
- Chorus gets to be all happy and utopia-y in the song 'Where They Know Me' and the reprise.
- Claire is the ice-cream vendor.
- Everyone gets to be flames from the Camp Fire. IF SOMEONE WANTS TO BE A TREE TO BURN DOWN, THEY CAN DO THAT, TOO...
- Really, go wild. IF YOU THINK IT, IT'S PROBABLY COOL, MINOR GUYS. Suggest a part, and one of us will write it in.
Other dudes
Directing: Katurian for the script, Andy for the songs.
Costumes: Luna, Momoko
Set Design/Construction: Kate, Cassie
Choreography: Andy and an NPC Natasha sends along.
Pit 'Orchestra': Marceline
Lighting: Stein
Script
The musical is periodically narrated by a NARRATOR.
Act I
The play opens with a LITTLE GIRL who lives with her parents, the GOOD FATHER and GOOD MOTHER, where life is always beautiful and perfect, etc. [Happiness at Last - Good Father, Good Mother, Little Girl] The mother is a modern dancer and the father provides moral support. One day, the whole family goes to the dance studio to practice the week before a big show. There is a lot of excited, hopeful set-up for this show, so you know it's just going to end awfully. [Opening -- Good Mother, Good Father]
While practicing, the mother snags herself in a rope off stage and brings down one of the columns on set. The column crashes down, barely missing her and instead shattering a large, glass elephant that had been prepared especially for the show. She is showered in shrapnel and blinded. The father rushes to her aid, but in their panic, they trip and strangle themselves in the ropes. The little girl, meanwhile, is playing out in the lobby of the dancer studio, twirling like her mother, the dancer. When she finally checks on them, they're long dead. [Closing -- Narrator ]
The little girl is sent to a FOSTER FATHER and FOSTER MOTHER, who, as we know from Katurian's stories, are pure evil. Although they don't know her parents, they blame the little girl for their death because they're cruel. And pure evil. [Family -- Foster Father, Foster Mother] They deliberately pick on her by pretending to get food poisoning from her cooking (of course they make the little girl cook), trying to run over her and then blaming her for almost causing an accident, and doing various other horrendous things to convince her that everything she touches turns to ashes. [And This Is Why They Left -- Foster Father, Foster Mother]
They tell her stories about a place far, far away where everyone goes after they hurt the people they care about. They promise to bring her to this place and she believes them. [Where They Know Me -- Little Girl] She goes willingly.
They take her to a river, tie rocks to her limbs and drown her.
However! The little girl opens her eyes and finds herself in a strange new world. (How strange this is, I'll let the set designers decide. You heard me.) She quickly learns that she's in a land where all the people go who have hurt someone they love. She wanders around, gleeful to meet all the new people, confident that she has found a place where she truly belongs. [Where They Know Me (cont.) -- Little Girl ]
SONG LIST
Happiness at Last -- Good Father, Good Mother, Little Girl
Opening number. The Good Father, accompanied by the Good Mother and the Little Girl, reflect on how they feel their life is (finally) perfect. Although the Good Father opens this number, each of them sing a chorus and the song ends on the Little Girl. It's an upbeat and hopeful number (think banjo…) with minimal dancing.
Opening -- Good Mother, Good Father
An optimistic duet about the Good Mother's show. It's a bit swing inspired, though it ends on a jazz note in Andy's overambitious attempt to tie it into the next song.
Closing -- Narrator
Very jazzy with not a lot of singing, it's very upbeat and weird. Inspired by the previous number, it's very swing centered, the deaths handled in the dance (more dance than singing, the inverse to the opening song). The Good Father and Good Mother dance together before they die.
Family -- Foster Father, Foster Mother
Get ready for the WASPiest song ever. The Foster Parents's song begins seeming friendly, optimistic, and then gets more and more passive-aggressive, and then just cruel in the last few stanzas.
And This Is Why They Left -- Foster Father, Foster Mother
The Foster Parents singing to the Little Girl, a song filled with several different cruel barbs to abridge what she's going through. It's kind of a long song, tone-wise a bit like ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mexcOJOnxpU ). Probably guitar.
Where They Know Me -- Little Girl
The Little Girl reflects on the stories her Foster Parents tell her, and the place they tell her about. She describes what she imagines in a quasi-optimistic but escapist number.
Where They Know Me (cont.) -- Little Girl
Part II, after the Little Girl wakes up to wander her new environment. Sort of Wizard Of Oz inspired.
Act II
Not all is right in this world, however - unfortunately, because everyone hurts the people they love, friendship is an impossibility. The girl doesn't yet see this, however, and tries desperately to set down her roots. The first being she encounters is a SNAKE. The snake is kind and polite and, quite frankly, the sweetest snake she's ever met. He defies all stereotypes. [Slick and Slither -- Snake] He shows her the best places to buy ice cream (he prefers 'mouse flavor') and the best park playgrounds. He promises to do absolutely anything for her. After his tour, they stroll into a forest and snake declares that he loves her so much that he's going to kiss her. The kiss, however, is in reality a bite, and the little girl just barely manages to avoid it. As it turns out, the snake has been mistaking bites for kisses for his whole life, and has poisoned and kill every one of his friends while he remains none of the wiser. [And Strike -- Snake] The little girl escapes and the snake stays behind, heartbroken, unable to understand what he's done wrong.
The girl runs deeper into the forest where she encounters the embers of a CAMP FIRE that, strangely enough, sounds like it's trying to speak. She uses supplies at the camp site to fuel the fire until it grows stronger and gains more of a voice. The fire thanks her profusely, then goes on to talk about how she's in love with the world around her. The trees, the animals. The sun. Every time she burns out, she's separated from this, which devastates her. [Burning For You -- Camp Fire] She asks the little girl to make her taller so that she can see farther, and the little girl obliges. However, as the fire grows and grows, she reveals to the little girl that she's going to escape from the campsite so that she can be with the rest of the forest forever. The little girl tries to stop her, but the fire rages out of control and catches all of the trees on fire. The girl escapes, choking on the smoke. The whole forest burns down. Once the fire consumes everything, it sputters out and dies forever, having lost its drive to live.
The girl cries in the ashes of the forest. As she cries, two figures approach her, revealed to be the GOOD MOTHER and GOOD FATHER. The two of them have also been sent to this world, they explain, because of the unhappy accident that killed them - they were both responsible for each other's deaths. They hug and comfort her, and, for a moment, everything seems like it's going to be all right.
The mother and father wonder aloud, however, that if the little girl is here too, maybe it is her fault for their deaths. Although this distresses the little girl (and they try to calm her down, 'how could we think that?' etc), their own thoughts spiral into the 'what ifs' and their dispositions grow darker and darker. They begin to actively blame her for not preventing their deaths. [Home Again -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father] The little girl, horrified that her greatest fears have come true, sobs and tries to push them away. [No -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father] She knocks her father down, who falls backwards off a ledge and onto the wreckage of a tree. He impales himself on one of the branches and dies. Her mother, now enraged, dances towards the little girl, rattling off al the ways she wants to kill her for revenge (in elaborate detail), and then moves to grab her. They scuffle. The mother is distracted, however, by the sudden reappearance of the Snake, who is still desperately fond of the little girl and grew worried when he heard her shouting. The girl takes this opportunity to duck under her mother and kick her over the ledge too, where she dies.
The little girl, calm and quiet, sits with the snake and muses that perhaps the people she killed weren't her real parents, that they were how her Foster Parents wanted her to see her parents. They were manifestation of her greatest fears, which she has now conquered. [Happiness at Last (Reprise)-- Little Girl, Snake] As the lights dim, she explains to the snake that she's tired and asks him to give her a goodnight kiss.
EPILOGUE
The lights rise again, the narrator steps out and explains that the police found the little girl's body in he river where she was drowned and that the foster parents resisted arrest and were shot to death. However, it ends on almost uncharacteristic tinge of hope, suggesting that, perhaps, the little girl had found peace.
SONG LIST
Slick and Slither -- Snake
The Snake's introduction song. A piano-heavy, jolly song. Probably Andy's favorite. Actors are encouraged to snap their fingers.
And Strike -- Snake
More piano. And tambourine. The story of the Snake's ill-fated life, and ill-fated friendships.
Burning For You -- Camp Fire
Guitar, a semi-hopeful song from the Camp Fire. Though as it progresses, the song gets a bit angry, frustrated, bitter, as the Fire describes what she cannot have. (Andy, get over it.) But it ends on the same hopeful note it began with. The end of the song is several minutes of just instrumentals without lyrics.
Home Again -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father
The song Andy hated writing… it is at the beginning a happy reunion, but then it progresses into the doubtful tune of the Little Girl's anxieties, with the Good Parents chorusing.
No -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father (maybe the Snake)
Mostly instrumental, paralleling some of the music from Closing. More deaths disguised by dance, though not swing this time. Maybe ballet? Or a pastiche of it since Andy doesn't know a lot about ballet.
Happiness at Last (Reprise)-- Little Girl, Snake
Final song. It samples most of the same music from the opening song, but with lyrics relevant to the situation. It's less upbeat (think not a banjo) and more melancholy, but happy. Bittersweet. The melody of this one reoccurs in the Epilogue to make up for the lack of a song in the Epilogue.
Main Cast
NARRATOR - Henri Morel, NPC.
LITTLE GIRL - Emma Carr, NPC. Twenty-one, small, wispy.
GOOD MOTHER - Olivia Masket, NPC.
GOOD FATHER - THE MAJOR.........
FOSTER MOTHER - Talia Victor, NPC.
FOSTER FATHER - Spike.
SNAKE - Joshua White, NPC.
CAMP FIRE - Meghan Rios, NPC.
Minor Cast
- Arkady
- Claire Stanfiled
- Mew
- Jessica
- Zoidberg
- Andy Bernard
- Abby
- A bunch of NPCs!
All members are part of the chorus but have occasional lines and as well. These are ideas that I'm just throwing out there, but honest to goodness, feel free to improvise in their parts. Give them lines to memorize! Shenanigans to deal with!
- All minor character actors are members of the dance studio in earlier scenes.
- Zoidberg and Claire bring in the glass elephant in Act I.
- Andy and Jessica are a loving husband and wife daughter, neighbors of the Little Girl and her family.
- Abby, Mew and Arkady dance together in the dance studio scenes.
- Chorus returns to be freaky and disconcerting as shit when the Foster Parents come into the picture. Andy and Jessica are still neighbors, but play different characters that are more sinister. MAYBE NOW THEY HAVE MUSTACHES AND HATS.
- Chorus gets to be all happy and utopia-y in the song 'Where They Know Me' and the reprise.
- Claire is the ice-cream vendor.
- Everyone gets to be flames from the Camp Fire. IF SOMEONE WANTS TO BE A TREE TO BURN DOWN, THEY CAN DO THAT, TOO...
- Really, go wild. IF YOU THINK IT, IT'S PROBABLY COOL, MINOR GUYS. Suggest a part, and one of us will write it in.
Other dudes
Directing: Katurian for the script, Andy for the songs.
Costumes: Luna, Momoko
Set Design/Construction: Kate, Cassie
Choreography: Andy and an NPC Natasha sends along.
Pit 'Orchestra': Marceline
Lighting: Stein
Script
The musical is periodically narrated by a NARRATOR.
Act I
The play opens with a LITTLE GIRL who lives with her parents, the GOOD FATHER and GOOD MOTHER, where life is always beautiful and perfect, etc. [Happiness at Last - Good Father, Good Mother, Little Girl] The mother is a modern dancer and the father provides moral support. One day, the whole family goes to the dance studio to practice the week before a big show. There is a lot of excited, hopeful set-up for this show, so you know it's just going to end awfully. [Opening -- Good Mother, Good Father]
While practicing, the mother snags herself in a rope off stage and brings down one of the columns on set. The column crashes down, barely missing her and instead shattering a large, glass elephant that had been prepared especially for the show. She is showered in shrapnel and blinded. The father rushes to her aid, but in their panic, they trip and strangle themselves in the ropes. The little girl, meanwhile, is playing out in the lobby of the dancer studio, twirling like her mother, the dancer. When she finally checks on them, they're long dead. [Closing -- Narrator ]
The little girl is sent to a FOSTER FATHER and FOSTER MOTHER, who, as we know from Katurian's stories, are pure evil. Although they don't know her parents, they blame the little girl for their death because they're cruel. And pure evil. [Family -- Foster Father, Foster Mother] They deliberately pick on her by pretending to get food poisoning from her cooking (of course they make the little girl cook), trying to run over her and then blaming her for almost causing an accident, and doing various other horrendous things to convince her that everything she touches turns to ashes. [And This Is Why They Left -- Foster Father, Foster Mother]
They tell her stories about a place far, far away where everyone goes after they hurt the people they care about. They promise to bring her to this place and she believes them. [Where They Know Me -- Little Girl] She goes willingly.
They take her to a river, tie rocks to her limbs and drown her.
However! The little girl opens her eyes and finds herself in a strange new world. (How strange this is, I'll let the set designers decide. You heard me.) She quickly learns that she's in a land where all the people go who have hurt someone they love. She wanders around, gleeful to meet all the new people, confident that she has found a place where she truly belongs. [Where They Know Me (cont.) -- Little Girl ]
SONG LIST
Happiness at Last -- Good Father, Good Mother, Little Girl
Opening number. The Good Father, accompanied by the Good Mother and the Little Girl, reflect on how they feel their life is (finally) perfect. Although the Good Father opens this number, each of them sing a chorus and the song ends on the Little Girl. It's an upbeat and hopeful number (think banjo…) with minimal dancing.
Opening -- Good Mother, Good Father
An optimistic duet about the Good Mother's show. It's a bit swing inspired, though it ends on a jazz note in Andy's overambitious attempt to tie it into the next song.
Closing -- Narrator
Very jazzy with not a lot of singing, it's very upbeat and weird. Inspired by the previous number, it's very swing centered, the deaths handled in the dance (more dance than singing, the inverse to the opening song). The Good Father and Good Mother dance together before they die.
Family -- Foster Father, Foster Mother
Get ready for the WASPiest song ever. The Foster Parents's song begins seeming friendly, optimistic, and then gets more and more passive-aggressive, and then just cruel in the last few stanzas.
And This Is Why They Left -- Foster Father, Foster Mother
The Foster Parents singing to the Little Girl, a song filled with several different cruel barbs to abridge what she's going through. It's kind of a long song, tone-wise a bit like ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mexcOJOnxpU ). Probably guitar.
Where They Know Me -- Little Girl
The Little Girl reflects on the stories her Foster Parents tell her, and the place they tell her about. She describes what she imagines in a quasi-optimistic but escapist number.
Where They Know Me (cont.) -- Little Girl
Part II, after the Little Girl wakes up to wander her new environment. Sort of Wizard Of Oz inspired.
Act II
Not all is right in this world, however - unfortunately, because everyone hurts the people they love, friendship is an impossibility. The girl doesn't yet see this, however, and tries desperately to set down her roots. The first being she encounters is a SNAKE. The snake is kind and polite and, quite frankly, the sweetest snake she's ever met. He defies all stereotypes. [Slick and Slither -- Snake] He shows her the best places to buy ice cream (he prefers 'mouse flavor') and the best park playgrounds. He promises to do absolutely anything for her. After his tour, they stroll into a forest and snake declares that he loves her so much that he's going to kiss her. The kiss, however, is in reality a bite, and the little girl just barely manages to avoid it. As it turns out, the snake has been mistaking bites for kisses for his whole life, and has poisoned and kill every one of his friends while he remains none of the wiser. [And Strike -- Snake] The little girl escapes and the snake stays behind, heartbroken, unable to understand what he's done wrong.
The girl runs deeper into the forest where she encounters the embers of a CAMP FIRE that, strangely enough, sounds like it's trying to speak. She uses supplies at the camp site to fuel the fire until it grows stronger and gains more of a voice. The fire thanks her profusely, then goes on to talk about how she's in love with the world around her. The trees, the animals. The sun. Every time she burns out, she's separated from this, which devastates her. [Burning For You -- Camp Fire] She asks the little girl to make her taller so that she can see farther, and the little girl obliges. However, as the fire grows and grows, she reveals to the little girl that she's going to escape from the campsite so that she can be with the rest of the forest forever. The little girl tries to stop her, but the fire rages out of control and catches all of the trees on fire. The girl escapes, choking on the smoke. The whole forest burns down. Once the fire consumes everything, it sputters out and dies forever, having lost its drive to live.
The girl cries in the ashes of the forest. As she cries, two figures approach her, revealed to be the GOOD MOTHER and GOOD FATHER. The two of them have also been sent to this world, they explain, because of the unhappy accident that killed them - they were both responsible for each other's deaths. They hug and comfort her, and, for a moment, everything seems like it's going to be all right.
The mother and father wonder aloud, however, that if the little girl is here too, maybe it is her fault for their deaths. Although this distresses the little girl (and they try to calm her down, 'how could we think that?' etc), their own thoughts spiral into the 'what ifs' and their dispositions grow darker and darker. They begin to actively blame her for not preventing their deaths. [Home Again -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father] The little girl, horrified that her greatest fears have come true, sobs and tries to push them away. [No -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father] She knocks her father down, who falls backwards off a ledge and onto the wreckage of a tree. He impales himself on one of the branches and dies. Her mother, now enraged, dances towards the little girl, rattling off al the ways she wants to kill her for revenge (in elaborate detail), and then moves to grab her. They scuffle. The mother is distracted, however, by the sudden reappearance of the Snake, who is still desperately fond of the little girl and grew worried when he heard her shouting. The girl takes this opportunity to duck under her mother and kick her over the ledge too, where she dies.
The little girl, calm and quiet, sits with the snake and muses that perhaps the people she killed weren't her real parents, that they were how her Foster Parents wanted her to see her parents. They were manifestation of her greatest fears, which she has now conquered. [Happiness at Last (Reprise)-- Little Girl, Snake] As the lights dim, she explains to the snake that she's tired and asks him to give her a goodnight kiss.
EPILOGUE
The lights rise again, the narrator steps out and explains that the police found the little girl's body in he river where she was drowned and that the foster parents resisted arrest and were shot to death. However, it ends on almost uncharacteristic tinge of hope, suggesting that, perhaps, the little girl had found peace.
SONG LIST
Slick and Slither -- Snake
The Snake's introduction song. A piano-heavy, jolly song. Probably Andy's favorite. Actors are encouraged to snap their fingers.
And Strike -- Snake
More piano. And tambourine. The story of the Snake's ill-fated life, and ill-fated friendships.
Burning For You -- Camp Fire
Guitar, a semi-hopeful song from the Camp Fire. Though as it progresses, the song gets a bit angry, frustrated, bitter, as the Fire describes what she cannot have. (Andy, get over it.) But it ends on the same hopeful note it began with. The end of the song is several minutes of just instrumentals without lyrics.
Home Again -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father
The song Andy hated writing… it is at the beginning a happy reunion, but then it progresses into the doubtful tune of the Little Girl's anxieties, with the Good Parents chorusing.
No -- Little Girl, Good Mother, Good Father (maybe the Snake)
Mostly instrumental, paralleling some of the music from Closing. More deaths disguised by dance, though not swing this time. Maybe ballet? Or a pastiche of it since Andy doesn't know a lot about ballet.
Happiness at Last (Reprise)-- Little Girl, Snake
Final song. It samples most of the same music from the opening song, but with lyrics relevant to the situation. It's less upbeat (think not a banjo) and more melancholy, but happy. Bittersweet. The melody of this one reoccurs in the Epilogue to make up for the lack of a song in the Epilogue.