Otherwise known as Teenage Hijinx and Tomfoolery: Chapter Eighty-Bazillion.
So I’m on Spring Break from high school at the moment. Two whole weeks of nothing, huzzah! The first week was spent on a cruise, but this week is all just lounging around at home. I love it, but I’ve begun to notice that I’m going a tad bit stir-crazy.
Case in point: Every year my school has a Senior One-Act play festival, in which the seniors can put on short plays at the end of the year for the rest of the school. It’s quite fun, especially since we’re allowed to write our own plays. I’ve written one already, but recently my friend and I got the idea of writing one together. This week, he and I began the creation process.
Sound innocent enough? Of course it does. Until I say that what we are planning to write is a musical one-act.
Oh, and that it’s set during the Gulf War. It’s title? Passion in the Sands.
Scared yet? I know I am. As it stands, I’m writing the book for it, and he’s doing the music and lyrics. And in all fairness, it wasn’t a completely random choice to set it during the Gulf War. Every year the Civic Light Opera (a local Pittsburgh theatre group) has a thing where they tour around to all the schools in the area and put on a little historical musical-type deal. They’re really hokey and generally a waste of time, but Evan (my friend) and I realized that the annual historical musical is a genre ripe for the spoofing. So the musical is really a send-up of all that.
And now, since I love all you Dopers so much, I’ll even run down the plot for you! Think of it as a sneak preview.
Passion in the Sands is a story about two forbidden loves. One is between Buck Lightning, an idealistic young American soldier, and Arabia Night, a strikingly mysterious woman whom he meets during the war. The other, of course, is the secret love between then-president George Bush (senior) and Saddam Hussein. The entire thing is narrated by Norman Schwartzkoff, who speaks in epic verse and hopefully will be carrying a lute.
So far we have a few songs written, including “Passion in the Sands,” the opening number, “We March,” Buck’s theme, “Why Can’t We Be Swiss,” the Buck/Arabia love theme, and “No Matter the Distance,” the Bush/Saddam love theme.
Personally, I smell a Tony.
