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New Covers for Mini-Musicals

4/22/2023

Whenever I have looked around at prospective publishing sites, the hosts say "make a colorful cover" for your piece. So, I have spent some serious time learning to use Photoshop to create or fix my watercolor art. It has actually been quite a journey. Teaching this old dog new tricks has been difficult. I tend to get overwhelmed by technology. However, I can appreciate the many artists and techno-wizards that have made these powerful tools available to mere mortals.

Actually, I am quite pleased with the results of the few covers I finished this week. "The Tale of The Three Billy Goats Gruff" cover began as a coloring page prepared by my daughter Katelyn. I took her figures and placed them in a full color background suggestive of the scenes in the show. Then I was able to place the title and other credits over the artwork.
My little granddaughter says the troll looks scary with his green skin and a wart on his nose!

For mini-musical "The Tale of Dick Whittington and His Cat" I may have taken inspiration from looking at many, many children's book covers. I had known that this story had been around for centuries, but I had no idea that it had been made into so many children's picture books!

That got me started, but I did my own work. Then I used the same artwork for the full-scale show as well, "The Adventures of Dick Whittington."

And then I had to stop creating because something went wrong with my tablet and stylus. Told you I was overwhelmed by technology!!!!

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Being Flexible

4/14/2023

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If there is a universal truth in doing Children's Theater, it is that Directors must be ready at all times to be FLEXIBLE. You never know the make up and abilities of a cast until the children show up. And even then, you do not know if these young children will grow and demonstrate untapped talents or retreat into stage fright.

Often, you must choose a piece to perform before you see the children. This play must do the job of advertising and enticing the children (or parents) to want to sign up. And yet, you cannot be certain if you will have the actors with the right qualities to mount the production. You cannot know even the ratio of boys to girls that will ultimately be involved. So, your best course is to find a piece with parts that can be played by either boys or girls, with or with out much developed talent. Being FLEXIBLE is key!

A few years ago I was asked to provide an after school Drama Club at an Elementary School. Adding a Drama Club was new to the after school club options. So, we did not know how many children to expect. I was told only that there could be between 10-20 1st-4th graders signing up. I also needed to pick a play that could be FLEXIBLE enough to work for a group of that size and be mounted in just 10 hours of rehearsal time (including a performance) over the space of 10 weeks.

Obviously, I needed a small show since I would need to teach other rudimentary skills to these few children. I decided to try out one of my Mini-Musicals. I chose "The Tale of the Musicians of Bremen" because it could be done with a FLEXIBLE cast. That turned out to be a good decision because we ended up with just 3 boys and 8 girls all in the 2nd to 4th grade age-range. Having three boys was just enough to cast the Farmer, the Rooster, and one of the Robbers who were definitely Male characters. The other characters could be either gender.

Most of these children were very young with no experience in acting, singing or dancing. So, everything was new for them. They worked very hard to learn their show in just a few weeks. The biggest problem was that they could only practice once a week, so they had six days to forget all they worked on in the last rehearsal. When they finally got to use props and wear costumes, that really helped. And when they got on stage in front of an audience, they performed like pros.

What a fun and FLEXIBLE tale from the Brothers Grimm!

And what fun to write with a German Polka flavor!

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Pieces of Music

4/4/2023

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Once when I was seeking some guidance for an arrangement, a noted composer gave me this bit of advice. He said not to worry about revisions. Our compositions are called "pieces" because we may go back and fix different fragments any number of times. How true that is. I often go back and rewrite bits to better suit my performers. Sometimes I write in new characters and augment the story lines. Then I may feel that the new character needs his own song, and so forth.

You just never know in Children's Theater who will come out for your show. Sometimes a talented kid appears out of the blue. Their abilities may trigger ideas that start the creative juices flowing. Once that happens, there is simply no turning back. New characters, new story lines, new scenes, new songs, or at the very least, new pieces of the music must be fixed.

Then again, as a composer, you may have need to use bits and pieces of your music for other purposes. I was given an assignment to make short videos of exhibits in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Provo Pioneer Museum. The Museum Director knows a lot of interesting stories behind the various exhibits that other docents may not. So, I followed her around the museum catching snippets of her explanations.

Sometimes knowledgeable docents are not present when visitors come. So, this is an effort to allow the museum to be enjoyed even if the visitor must observe the exhibits mostly on their own. These videos point out certain highlights to be sure not to miss. The other hope is that the English and Spanish transcripts may help visitors from other countries. They might even take a picture of the text with their phone and access Google Translate if they need a different language.

My task was to edit the material into very short videos to put onto tablets so that the visitors can get a brief tour of exhibit highlights before they go off wandering on their own. The videos seemed like they needed musical underscoring for the title slides. So, I have used little 4 to 7 second bits of some of my Musical Theater and Choral pieces. Why not? I control the copyrights for these original pieces of music. So, we surely will not get into licensing disputes.

This is one of the short videos we have created for the Tour Highlights of the Museum, the Children's Corner Case. The music comes from "The Adventures of Dick Whittington" and incorporates an Old English Nursery Rhyme "London Bridge is Falling Down." It seemed appropriate.

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New Covers for Mini-Musicals

Being Flexible

Pieces of Music

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