"One Day More"

Since our reading this week was all about Musical Theatre in High School, I decided to use a video from a performance that I witnessed when I was in high school. This is the drama club called Blue Masques from Riverhead High School performing "One Day More" from the musical Les Miserables. Skip ahead to about 3:10 to get to "One Day More." These students are all in high school in grades 9-12.

This week Jordan and Holt talked a lot about how to be successful when planning a high school musical. There was a lot of discussion on choosing the right show and how to the right show for your school specifically. The chapter mentioned that it is very important for a musical production to be a collaborative effort. I know because of my experience with this high school, that this production was not a collaborative effort. The director of this theatre department does both the musical direction and the stage direction for this show. It is very apparent in this video because both the vocals and the staging suffers. Not to mention, that there is very little actual acting going on amongst the young actors. Had the students had a collaborative production team, they would have been able to work on both aspects of singing and acting separately and in greater detail.

The chapter also talks about picking the right show for your high school. Many high school teachers only think about picking the dream Broadway shows that they want to direct. However, the chapter that it is really important to think about criteria when choosing your musical. Les Miserables is an extremely long musical. This director clearly did not consider the fact that a three hour musical is difficult on both the students and the audience watching. The show is also extremely complex and extremely vocally demanding. I think a lot of this weak performance has a lot to do with the fact the show is very vocally demanding. It is not just the fault of these young actors.

In some of the solo vocals, there are a lot of the issues as far as "belting" is concerned. The chapter mentioned students will sometimes try to belt some of their high notes, rather than singing them healthily. There is a lot of issues regarding that belting amongst a lot of the students in this cast. Additionally there a lot of issues in the ensemble sound. The director clearly did not think about assigning choral parts correctly because there is way too much soprano sound. There is additionally a lot of soprano sound that sounds forced and out of tune. There is one soprano that can actually high the C at the end, but it does not sound good at all because a lot of them are struggling. Not to mention that the staging is very sloppy. This director clearly did not work with a collaborative team because the overall production just seems thrown together. Everything from the direction, the vocals, the sets, the orchestra and the costumes all just seem very mediocre. It is a shame because there are clearly a lot of talented students in this ensemble, they just did not receive they proper direction they needed to a successful high school musical.