The Seductive "Jukebox" Musical

In recent decades, there's been a proliferation of the "jukebox" musical, a musical show that takes a collecton of songs of a group or of a period, and tries to wrap a story around them.  Unfortunately, what might seem like a simple way of creating a musical is not at all simple. 

Most musicals fail because of a weak or non-existent book - the play/story component of the show (dialogue and stage directions).  In other words, creating a viable story for a group of songs that were never intended to be part of a show is a real challenge.  (See pages 244 and 311-312 in Playwriting for Dummies.)  I speak from experience (www.thedevilsmusic.biz). 

And then there's the 800-pound gorilla in the room:  the unavoidable necessity to get (and pay for) the rights to use any music created after 1923.  Never assume music rights are readily available and easy to acquire.  Check it out before getting to deep into your project.  And never ever stage a show using someone else's music without written permission.  You will be sued, "you" meaning you, the show's creator. 

The bottom line is, it's not enough to have a collection of "can't-miss" songs.  Audiences go to musicals for the music, yes, but also for an engaging and entertaining story.  Resist the temptation to skimp on the latter.  For every Jersey Boys and Mamma Mia, there are dozens of jukebox musicals that crash and burn.  When it comes to jukebox musicals, many are attempted but few succeed. 

Is My Play Idea Comedy or Drama?

Professor, is my idea comedy or drama? 

This may seem like an odd question, but, more often than you'd think, I’m asked by my playwriting students if a play idea they want to work on ought to be written as a comedy or a drama. 

Well, you can deal with almost any issue or storyline as either a comedy or drama.  Take, for instance, the story of a man’s startling discovery that his old-maid aunts have poisoned a dozen or so lonely old men, and had their bodies buried in the basement of their home.  Mass murder hardly seems a likely subject for humor; drama would appear to be the right genre for this material.  Yet the preceding is the storyline of one of the funniest stage comedies ever written, Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring. 

My comfort zone as a playwright is somewhere in between drama and comedy, but closer to drama than comedy.  To date, though I fancy myself as having a robust sense of humor, I’ve not been able to write an out-and-out comedy.  Because I tend to see life as a mixture of dramatic situations and humorous moments (hardly a philosophical breakthrough), when I’ve tried to write a pure comedy, the play inevitably ends up drifting back into the sphere that comes naturally to me — the drama with humor, or dramedy as the hybrid is sometimes called. 

 

The choice between comedic or dramatic treatment of an idea rests in good measure on your slant on the story.  Is your exploration of the idea primarily serious in nature, or do you see it as mostly ironic and humorous? 

As indicated above, another important factor is your particular gift as a writer.  Do you have an inclination toward envisioning and creating dramatic situations, or do you have an unrelenting sense of humor and the knack for writing witty lines?  In the final analysis, the subject matter, along with your writing skills and propensity will take you in one direction or the other.