theatre

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  Oki-Doki!

  Posted by gmadmin   |   July 5, 2014
  Here’s a sneak peak at what’s cookin’ at Go Musicals!
  

  
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• A Psychopathic Jules Verne?

  Posted by gmadmin   |   May 30, 2013

  The one upshot of procrastination is that the longer I delay really hammering away at writing Havisham, the more the concept evolves and matures. I’ve been thinking for a while that this musical might not be for high schools. Most of my shows have large casts, which makes them ideal for big school groups but impractical for professional theaters. But the more I think about Havisham, the more I think it should be tight, small, and a little edgier than my high school stuff.

  Yesterday I had an idea: what if the show starts with Charles Dickens reading from Great Expectations, and he gets heckled by a lunatic Jules Verne. Verne has been following and harassing Dickens for months, showing up at all of his readings. Verne is NUTS. Completely unhinged. He gets up onto the stage with Dickens and keeps messing with him, ultimately pinning Dickens down on the ground and wresting the manuscript from him. Then Verne basically takes over the story and creates a new backstory for Havisham – one where she lives on an air ship, is a spy for the British against Napoleon, and where jazz was born a hundred years early and effectively put guys like Beethoven out of business. Havisham is a kind of Holly Golightly, dating French military officers and breaking hearts. Verne will play a series of characters, and Dickens is kind of forced to play the role of Jaggers (from Great Expectations), who loves Havisham. So there’s an interesting layer here that appeals to me: on one level, Jaggers suffers because of Havisham, but on another level Dickens suffers for his character, whom he created and loves. There’s a lot of fascinating, cool stuff to work with here, but it’s just not going to be for high schools, I think. Anyway, I just wanted to share those thoughts. I’m really excited about writing a lunatic Jules Verne. I saw a bizarre play called “Heddatron” at Stray Cat Theatre in Tempe a while back, and one character really captured my imagination. I can’t remember his name, but he is basically off his rocker and drives Henrik Ibsen out of his mind. Anyway, we’ll see where this show takes me!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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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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• Audition Songs

  Posted by gmadmin   |   March 1, 2013

  Need a fresh audition song? We let students audition with our songs for free. Just let us know which song you want to use and we will send you the track and the sheet music. We also let students perform our one-acts royalty-free. 🙂

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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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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• Hipster Musical STATUS

  Posted by gmadmin   |   December 23, 2012

  At the beginning of 2012 I made a pretty insanely big promise. I said that four new musicals would be ready to roll by 2013. Granted, I had already written all four musicals, but none of the music had yet been written or recorded yet. So it was a big task.

  The good news is that It’s a Wonderful Life, Night of the Living Dead, and The Phantom Empire! are FINISSIMO. The Atomic Brain! has also undergone a major face-lift, with brand new tracks that are on par with our new stuff. That just leaves Hipster. The update on that is it is sooo close to being finished! All the tracks are done, so now I’m just layering in vocals. I’ll be done with the male vocals this weekend, and Leah will knock out the female vocals before New Years. So we are going to meet our deadline. 🙂

  I’ll do my own rough mixes and put those online so you can hear how the songs go. It’ll probably take a few weeks longer to get polished mixes, but those are just for demo purposes anyway. Lead sheets will be ready by January 10th, and then shortly after that those will evolve into piano/vocal books, and then full scores. Since most schools use canned tracks (which I recommend since we have the best canned tracks around) the lead sheets are all you really need.

  It was a tall order indeed, but we are gonna make it. I’m so proud of the Go Musicals team!!!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• New Site!

  Posted by gmadmin   |   November 6, 2012

  What do you think of the new site design? I think it’ll be faster, cleaner, and more flexible, and hopefully I can optimize it better for search engines. I lost a lot of sleep trying to figure things out in the code (it’s not my forte) so I hope it works!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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• The Kerrinator 5000

  Posted by gmadmin   |   November 2, 2012

  A billion props to anyone who can tell me what the Kerrinator 5000 is! (Hint: it’s in the album. http://snd.sc/YkK0GZ)

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
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