Well, friends, since I only received captions from 4 people (thanks Mike, Kevin, Rachel, and Joel!), I thought that I might give you guys just a little bit longer to get inspired. :) And as some motivation, I wanted to share something that one of my students, Jaren, wrote for my diaryland page: a musical about our sets crew. If a high school junior can write an entire musical for this page, doesn't that make writing just a few captions seem less intimidating? :)

Here's a bit of back-story on how this script came to be. Basically, when we're working on a musical it's really, really easy to get the songs stuck in our heads. Jaren and I were building a platform one day back in October and were joking around, changing the words to our fall show, Disney's High School Musical, to be about sets crew. It was so much fun that I suggested we write a musical about sets crew called "Screw It!". Jaren and I talked through all of these ideas about the plot (he was determined to kill off a main character, I disagreed) and the songs. We thought it would be easiest to use the melodies from the songs of the musicals that Jaren's worked on since he started high school (Beauty & the Beast, Hair, Carousel, and Tommy).

So I emailed Jaren my ideas, and he disregarded all of them, and in just one weekend, he slammed out this musical (high-schoolers' brains are way sharper than old folks' like mine). I was so impressed that I decided to submit it to our Student Productions' show (where the kids write, direct, and act in their own short plays), which went up last weekend. I edited some things, making the stage directions a narrator's lines, and presenting it like a promo for a new musical on Broadway. But I decided to post the original musical Jaren emailed me, in all of its glory� and I only added the parts that Jaren added once rehearsals for Student Productions started.

I hope you guys can enjoy this, despite the massive amount of inside jokes (which I will explain in footnotes at the end!). You are about to read an actual show that has actually been performed (in a slightly different format) to an actual audience about a typical show at my work (for the most part!)!

To start things off, here's a picture that Jaren included in the email when he sent me the original script:

Already the inside jokes! Apparently Jaren felt I was pressuring him a bit to bust out some songs (so unlike me!). Also, the sneeze-threat is referencing this time I may have accidentally sneezed on one of my crew members (sorry, Leslie)! :)

--------------------------------------------

Characters:
Freshman
Kiki (which is what the kids call me!)
Mysti
Crewhead (which is what we call the student who leads the crew)
Gaeb
CREW

Play opens.
FRESHMAN, realizing that he can't sing or act (1), wanders aimlessly between crews, trying to decide which one to join. Then, he sees the sets crew.

KIKI: Yeah, we have some wood over there� and some drills. Yeah, those are important� and, uh, yeah. That's about it. We don't really have any rules� whatever you do, don't sing in the shop! (2)

FRESHMAN:

The FRESHMAN decides to join sets crew. After several freshmen CREW have gathered in the set shop KIKI gives the shop tour accompanied by the CREWHEAD.

KIKI:

CREWHEAD:

Only the one FRESHMAN is left after the song. He is ordered to screw. The CREW circles around him in upbeat singing and dancing.

CREW:

The CREWHEAD goes to the crewhead meeting. The CREWHEAD sings in rejoice after the budgets are announced. The CREW joins him and begins to dance and play with the tools.

CREWHEAD:

KIKI is mortified by the behavior of the crew and spends some time searching for a firmer authority to govern the crew(7). She decides to take a break and as she updates the Theatre website, she sings to the monitor, the desktop of which is brazenly decorated with abundant pictures of an identical cat in various containers. (8)

KIKI:

KIKI finishes and as she walks back to the shop, she finds MYSTI being aggressively hugged by GAEB (9). Since they want to have a short design meeting, they ponder whether or not to leave the crew by themselves for just 5 minutes.

KIKI:

Once KIKI and MYSTI abandon the crew, the CREWHEAD goes into the paint shop and never returns (10).

CREW (paint):

Then, in some of the most impressive theatrical dialogue ever written, the CREW leaves the shop to handle the latest tape measure related accident (11). KIKI returns, and stands amidst the mess the crew left.

KIKI:

KIKI exits to look for crew. MYSTI comes back and follows the trail of scraps to the wood shop where the FRESHMAN was left alone, where he began to practice sawing without prior instruction. She picks up a piece of wood that's been cut at an impossible angle, and looks to see that the FRESHMAN is holding the other half.

MYSTI:

Mysti exits to pick up her kids from daycare. Kiki returns from the paint shop, where she discovered that while she was gone, the CREWHEAD joined the paint crew. Deeply affected by the loss of the CREWHEAD, KIKI reminisces about the positive qualities of the crew on her laptop.

KIKI: Dear Diaryland.com....

KIKI:

Finale! KIKI looks at the shop and sees hope in the FRESHMAN of the CREW. Everyone except KIKI sings about it.

ENTIRE COMPANY:

KIKI (speaks, as she raises drills in both hands):

Curtain.

--------------------------------------------

Footnotes:
(1) It's a common rumor that crews are just a place for failed actors. :) But it's not true! There are some kids that don't want to be on stage!
(2) There ARE rules in the shop- lots of them, in fact! My kids just like to act like there aren't any! Although the one rule that they work very hard to enforce is one they added themselves: "No Singing In The Shop!"
(3) This is actually an inside joke with my kids� and I choose not to ask questions about it. :)
(4) We use pieces of 2-by-4 to hold up platforms, which are called "legs". If those were made out of styrofoam instead, you could imagine how useless they would be.
(5) When someone screws into really dry wood, it makes this awful squeaking noise, which my kids refer to as "hitting Catholic mice", because that's what they think it sounds like.
(6) "P.O." = "Purchase Order". It's how the students buy supplies.
(7) Sooo... on my monitor at the high school, the desktop is a picture slideshow of Zooey in different boxes. :) The kids find it strange, especially when the picture changes and I say "Kitty in a box!" See how I can't have a "real job"?
(8) Mysti is my co-worker who runs the auditoriums and also does technical direction. If we were to play "good cop/bad cop", she would definitely be the "bad cop"� not because she's mean, but just because the kids respect her authority a LOT more than mine!
(9) Gaeb is a hugger. Mysti is not! Sometimes I have to explain to Gaeb that when he gives Mysti his full-body hugs, it makes her feel uncomfortable. :)
(10) This is a direct reference to one of our old crewheads, Josh, leaving us to join paint crew this year!
(11) Believe it or not, we have a TON of tape-measure-related accidents. Those things are sharp! Plus, the popular opinion around the high school is that whenever I leave, someone gets injured (and it's pretty true!).
(12) I had to put in a little PG-13 rated edit there. :)
(13) I don't know if Mysti was ever a "biker" per se, but she definitely has the leather jacket for it, so she's gotten that reputation!
(14) No matter how the crew is treating me, any reference to a big car accident I was in 5 years ago softens them up instantly. That's how they refer to the accident, as "the time that someone threw a car at Ciara".
(15) Oh, geez, this is a long story, but trust me, it's pretty funny (as Demoree told me). It involves this play we saw where this woman went crazy and heard voices, and a time that I told my kids that I was born 2 weeks late because I liked being in the womb so much (I mean, come on, it's soft, warm, someone else was feeding me, and I had no responsibility!). You can put the rest together!

:) Thanks, Jaren!