The high school is doing a production of Sondheim’s “Into The Woods”. They are doing a production that is set in the London Underground, during the Blitz.
This is a fairy tale, (Little Red Riding Hood, etc). There was a Disney movie as well as the original stage version.
I can’t find anything about the history of this production, or where my school got it from, and I’m curious.
It seems a little unusual, but here’s hoping they can pull this off.
I’m all for productions of plays/musicals that do something a little unusual with them, as long as the setting/time period change is to bring out something new in the material rather than just for the sake of doing something different. Or worse…the director saying “look how clever I am!”
One of my favorite productions of Into The Woods, at the Broadway Theater in Pitman, NJ (one of those old movie palaces converted into a live theater) set it in a library. Now, maybe I’m biased in its favor since I’m a librarian myself, but I thought it really did a great job bringing out the theme of the lessons these stories had to teach.
The librarian was the Narrator, a young woman who, the program notes explained, had stayed in the library after hours to revisit the fairy tales of her childhood and see how the lessons could apply to her own life. The props (the beanstalk, etc.), were gradually incorporated into the two-level library setting.
The Giant’s widow didn’t kill the Narrator…instead, she ripped up her book of fairy tales, so the Narrator now had no more idea how things were going to turn out than the characters did, so she had no choice but to remain on the sidelines and observe how they solved the problem.
The icing on the cake: the final “I wish…” of the show didn’t go to Cinderella, but the librarian, hinting that the librarian had learned her own lessons from the events of the night and would apply them going forward.
All in all, it was a great re-imagining of the show and a nice way to highlight the theme of the impact fairy tales and stories in general can have on everyday life.
There’s an “Into the Woods, Jr.” version for performance in grade schools, which cuts the entire second act.
I assume that they didn’t “get it” from anywhere, and that the rental materials they have are the same that MTI rents out to everyone, and that the director is choosing to set it in the underground as their own creative choice. There is no “London Underground” version of Into The Woods available.
[minor hijack providing context]
For folks who don’t know, anyone putting on a musical has signed a contract with a licensing company. Different houses own the rights to different shows, so say I want to put up Into the Woods. I reach out to MTI who owns the rights to the show (link to MTI’s UK website, as I’m assuming the OP is in the UK).
I would then apply for the rights, which might or might not be granted based on what kind of organization I am, whether there’s a tour in the works that might be coming through my region, and all sorts of other things.
MTI would then offer me a contract based on projected ticket sales, house size, type of organization, and maybe some other details.
Then, they’ll send materials- scripts, and orchestra books, some fixed amount of time before show date. All those materials then must be returned at the end of the contract.
There are some shows that have other resources available for rental- tech packages and things like that. You can get a guide to the original West Side Story choreography if you want. But, most of the time, scripts and scores are what you get.
It can depend on the property and the scope of production, but some contracts have language that gets really specific about how you can or cannot deviate from the original staging. And if you want to make changes, you have to run them through the licensing company first. There are details here I’m not privy to, but earlier this year a Broadway revival of A Chorus Line was cancelled, maybe because of other 50th Anniversary productions the rights holders are interested in, and maybe because the scope of the re-imagining was not what they had originally approved.
Most of the time, school productions will just do whatever they do because rights holders don’t have the resources or inclination to police every production. But it’s likely breaking contract.
I just dug up an old MTI contract I had, which includes the following stipulation:
Changing the Play: Under federal law, you may not make any changes, including but not limited to the following:
a. You may not add new music, dialogue, lyrics or anything to the text included with the rented material.
b. You may not delete, in whole or in part, any material in the existing Play.
c. You may not make changes of any kind, including but not limited to changes of music, lyrics or dialogue or change in the period, characters or characterizations in the presently existing Play.
d. You agree that any proposed change, addition, omission, interpolation, or alteration in the book, music, or lyrics of the Play shall first be submitted in writing to MTI so that the written consent of the Authors, if granted, may be obtained by MTI.
[/minor hijack providing context]
Thank you @Eonwe
That was sort of part of my question: I was wondering how the rights and stuff worked.
My school has no ability to create a new production, and the publicity artwork is also many levels above what could be expected from a new production. And (I’m in Aus), if they did create their own production, it would not be set in a London Tube station: there is a native Australian production from (I think) Adelaide University that makes sense, but not one in the London Underground.
I noticed the junior version, and I found how to buy the performance rights, but I haven’t found anything about this production:
I’ve seen the kid’s version and I like that they cut out the second act. When they were performing it at our local community theater, they had to station ushers at the exits during intermission, since the first act ends neatly and people thought that was the whole thing. I wonder if the people who got turned around for the second act wished the would have left at the intermission, since the second act is such a downer.
Yeah, @Melbourne , it does seem odd to set Into The Woods in the London Tube if your audience isn’t directly familiar. I know that here in the states references to The Blitz would mostly pass over audiences- maybe Australia has a stronger connection to modern British history? Or since this is a school production, maybe this is a co-curricular tie-in with something they’re learning about in history class?
And, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the ability of folks, even amateurs, to take a musical and set it wherever they want. They are already designing and building/painting the set from scratch (there are no instructions or patterns that are part of the show package). The director/designer is already having to conceive of and create a set, even if it’s a version of the traditional one. Putting it in the underground, or a space ship, or wherever involves the same amount of effort (or reasonably the same amount) as setting it in a fantasy forest.
Sometimes these decisions also get made based on what sets and costumes they already have in stock. For example, if you’ve already got a bunch of costumes for British people in the 1940s, and you don’t have costumes for fantasy characters, maybe you set Into The Woods in England in the 1940s, and you’ve saved lots of time and money on costumes.
Lastly, the show poster looks like AI. All it takes is one teacher/student/parent with graphic design skills (and/or AI prompting skills) to turn out some quality promotional materials.
Bottom line, I think you’re maybe over-estimating the work involved in taking an existing script and putting it in a different setting as opposed to setting it in its intended setting. When you put on a musical all these things have to be created from scratch:
… so coming up with a new setting is only as hard as thinking it up.
I may, of course, be wrong, but given the possibility of having licensed some put-together version of Into The Woods in The Blitz along with official licensed artwork (I don’t know what else would come with this package- certainly not costumes or anything else you’d have to construct) vs. a teacher coming up with the idea of setting Into The Woods in The Blitz and doing it from scratch, the latter is the much more likely scenario.
One of the high school musicals I saw - and I can’t remember which one right now - sorry, had 1950’s wardrobes (gorgeous dresses is what I remember most) which had been provided on loan to them from some organization, I think in NY, which does this sort of thing.
I had not thought of that, and it is a good point.
I’ve found one previous production:
Royal Holloway University of London, Musical Theater Society
Into The Woods 2015 | rhulmts
Rhulmts Presents: Into the Woods | Facebook
So it seems likely MTS designed the production. Assuming that is the case, how would a knowledgeable high school drama teacher go about getting production design from MTS? What would they get?