Scribbled on the Back of a Napkin

Ah, community theatre. You never know what to expect. :)

The Ripley Arts Council's Summer musical was originally planned to be the Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera, H.M.S. Pinafore. But the movers and shakers that selected the show forgot that Ripley isn't familiar with opera. All the folks that auditioned were expecting to be involved in a more, um, modern production. This realization didn't take place, though, until our first musical rehearsal, about 3 weeks ago. Personally, I was extremely impressed with the progress we made in the rehearsal, especially since most of the performers had never sung anything like this before. Every one stuck with it, and I left the rehearsal thinking that we might actually be able to pull this thing off.

The cast apparently didn't feel that way on the inside. After that one rehearsal, virtually everyone dropped out. Seriously. At that moment, I was very glad I wasn't the person in charge. :) So, the aforementioned movers and shakers huddled back up and decided that we would embrace a more typical musical, one that would be very approachable: Grease! (And, please note that I'm including that exclamation point because it's part of the official title--not because I'm rabidly overjoyed. I personally think Grease! is a played-out musical, just like Phantom of the Opera and Cats.)

Anyway, we had our first rehearsal for this new music last night. That brings me to the title of my post. EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF MUSIC THAT CAME FROM THE PUBLISHER WAS HANDWRITTEN!!!!!!! Look, I'm sure that handwritten music is very common in the infancy of a new musical--you know, when it's being workshopped. But, a decades-old musical that found its way into American pop culture should most definitely live in Finale, or some sort of other composition software. It was dumbfounding. I mean, H.M.S. Pinafore was written in an era when folks used quill pins, and it somehow found a way to step into modern times with its music (and that's even without the aid of royalty fees). Is it too much to ask for Grease! to do the same? NOT AT ALL! And, just to be clear, it's not like the music was written in good handwriting either. The cast can only make out 90% of the words, the notes often straddle both a space and a line (a big music theory no-no!), and about a third of the measures aren't even completely written out. The scribe opted to go for a fake-sheet approach for those measures, giving me a melody line and a few chord symbols. One page had been xeroxed so many times that the staves were completely invisible. Ugh.

Look, I'm sure there are tons of pianists out there that would have no problem with any of this, and more power to them, but for small communities to fork over hundreds of dollar to rent theatrical music, they deserve a high-quality product....or at least a decent product. This music is a piece of crap.

Thanks for your kind attention. :)