drama

• Tired of MTI Musicals?

  Posted by gmadmin   |   June 29, 2013

  I’m sure Music Theater International is a fantastic company, but schools and theaters need an alternative to the same repertoire of shows that get produced every year. Seriously, how many times do you want to direct Guys and Dolls?

  MTI gets the biggest shows straight from Broadway and Disney, so they are limited in how flexible they can be to accommodate smaller drama programs. Those shows weren’t written for high schools or community theaters. And at sixteen I personally wouldn’t have wanted to perform in anything with “Jr” in the title. For grade schools that’s fine, but not for high schools.

  Our mission at Go Musicals is to provide people with a fresh alternative to the MTI catalog of musicals. We hope you’ll take a look around the site and check out what we have to offer. 🙂

  Kevin and Leah

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• Hipster Musical

  Posted by gmadmin   |   April 2, 2013

  Kevin Frei’s Post-Modern Hipster Musical (You’ve Probably Never Heard of It)

  Or the “Hipster Musical” for short. I was thrilled to be able to see the premiere production of Kevin Frei’s Post-Modern Hipster Musical (You’ve Probably Never Heard of It) at Freedom High School just a few weeks ago. The show was a great success. I got there half an hour early and the place was already packed. They ended up bringing a bunch of extra chairs in because the show was over-sold. Here I am with the cast:
  
  You can see more pictures from the show at our facebook page. (Be sure to “like” us while you’re there!)
  You’ll find the music, a synopsis, and other information at the Hipster Musical show page. Or you can dig this little audio player I made using Youtube!
  If you would like to audition with any of our songs, be sure to check out our audition songs page.
  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• It’s a Wonderful Life! the Musical

  Posted by gmadmin   |   April 2, 2013

  It’s a Wonderful Life! the Musical is ready for production!

  Go Musicals presents It’s a Wonderful Life! the Musical, the latest musical adaptation of the classic Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart movie. In addition to offering free perusals of the script, we are letting students use our music as audition songs for free! That includes this song by the character Violet:

  
  Just tell us which song you would like to perform and we will send you the sheet music.

  You can find all the music from It’s a Wonderful Life! the Musical as well as a synopsis and information on the cast and instrumentation at the show page.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• Search Engine Optimization for Theater

  Posted by gmadmin   |   January 21, 2013

  Wow. My little experiment with SEO worked extremely well! Googling “New School Musicals” brings up my blog post on top on google search. What shall I do with this new-found power? What search terms shall I claim for my possession? Soon I will dominate the internet! Mwa ha ha!

  Ok, I’ll try not to get carried away. But seriously, it’s pretty bananas how well that experiment worked. Now the real question is: am I going to spend all my time on SEO, or am I going to get to work writing a new musical??

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• New School Musicals

  Posted by gmadmin   |   January 15, 2013

  I was thinking about search engine optimization yesterday and googled “New School Musicals” (with the quotes). What showed up as the top link? A jokey youtube video about the High School Musicals movies by a couple of kids with only 99 views. Granted, if you leave off the quotes that video does not come up as high, but it still goes to show that Go Musicals could be ranking a lot higher for a lot of key search terms.

  So consider this post an experiment. I renamed an old Go Musicals video “New School Musicals” and made the title of this post “New School Musicals.” I’m repeating the phrase “New School Musicals” in the text of this post to see if that makes a difference, too. Finally I’m going to embed that video titled New School Musicals here:

  Let’s see if this post ranks high in google when I search for “New School Musicals” in a few weeks! 🙂

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• GIT-R-DUN!

  Posted by gmadmin   |   December 4, 2012

  We are working like crazy here to get everything ready before the end of the year. The tracks for Kevin Frei’s Post-Modern Hipster Musical (You’ve Probably Never Heard of It) are coming together beautifully. Piano/vocal books, full scores, finishing touches on the scripts… We’ll git-r-dun. 🙂

  I had a lot of fun recording vocals for a song called “Fixie Meltdown” last night. Here’s a rough mix as a sort of preview:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• Cast Size: Professional and Amateur Theatres

  Posted by gmadmin   |   September 24, 2012

  The other day I got a letter back from a theatre where I had submitted “It’s a Wonderful Life.” They said that while the show was a good fit for their theatre, they can’t produce musicals with casts larger than five people. High schools and community theatres, on the other hand, typically want gigantic casts so that lots of people can participate. It really illustrates how playwrights have to choose which market they want to serve: professional theatres that need small casts, or amateur and school theatres that need big casts. (Go Musicals primarily serves the latter.)

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• Encounters with Beauty

  Posted by gmadmin   |   March 4, 2012

  Just spent the day soaking in the Senora desert at the Saguaro National Park and Tucson Desert Museum. Reading the plaques and learning about the desert flora and fauna, I started thinking about how we handle encounters with beauty. Works of art, nature, people, history, politics, math – no matter what it is, I always approach it the same way.

  When something stirs my emotion or catches my interest, the first thing I do is just observe it. I give it my full attention. Gradually the observation becomes active and the imagination is engaged. I want to be able to see and feel and hear and maybe even smell and taste the thing even in my mind’s eye. The process is meditative. It’s what you do when you stop, look, and listen.

  Next there is learning. I delve into the history, the complexity, the details of the thing. The more I learn, the richer it becomes. Already the distinction between subject and object is dissolving. I find myself melding with the thing, losing myself in the object of my attention. Almost everything is intrinsically interesting. Like looking at a Magic Eye picture, when you engage the complexity of a thing the chaos gradually takes form.

  Then I want to share it. Talk about it, show it to others, spread the experience. “Hey, read this.” “Come look at this.” “I want to show you something.”

  Finally I have to create. Take the object of beauty and transform it into something new. If it’s a fact from history, I want to transform it into a story or a portrait. If it’s a beautiful plant or animal, I want to transmute it into a work of art. For me, that’s where musicals come from.

  This last part is so important. It’s why I create. If people are going through life without creating anything, I honestly don’t know how they manage. I create because there is so much beauty in the world to encounter, and I don’t know any other way to let it pass through me. The input has to become output or else the whole works will break down.

  People need to be producers of art at least as much as they need to be consumers of art. It’s how we handle our encounters with beauty.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• NOTLD coming along nicely

  Posted by gmadmin   |   February 28, 2012

  Making great progress with Night of the Living Dead. This might be the most fun I’ve ever had writing a script. 🙂

  Oddly enough, I’ve had almost no ideas musically for this show. That’s fine – I have ideas for the placement and subjects of the songs, and I have plenty of time to come up with the songs later – but it’s just unusual for me. Usually the music comes first and the plot comes later.

  I’m pretty much all set for Tampa in a few weeks! Woo!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• Night of the Living Dead begins!

  Posted by gmadmin   |   February 25, 2012

  First day of writing Night of the Living Dead (after extensive outlining) went really well!!! This one is practically writing itself. It’s going to be great. It has very little in common with the movie, though.

  I’m also thrilled with how the demo tracks for It’s a Wonderful Life are sounding. Leah sounds amazing in “Live for Today.” Looking forward to recording another song or two for Hipster in the near future. I might forego doing backing tracks for The Phantom Empire at all because I really think that musical should be played live anyway, and there are already plenty of recordings of those songs to use as a reference.

  I really want to write a musical about Paris. I have some great ideas. Maybe 2013 (hopefully I’ll get to write on-location!).

  For now I’m enjoying my first-ever laptop computer. I got it on Craigslist for $200 and it’s sweeeet. I’ve always been prejudiced against laptops because I like to have plenty of room at my desk and laptops feel so cramped, but this will make it a lot easier for me to get work done while traveling. Maybe I’ll start going to Starbucks to write and become one of THOSE guys lol.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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