Musicals are a great way to embed a sense of unity while working towards a shared goal, building confidence in each child, and creating camaraderie and lasting memories. But where to start? How do you find the right musical for your cohort and setting? At Out of the Ark, we pride ourselves on creating musicals that offer a huge amount of flexibility, and resources that enhance each aspect of putting a show together.
Our Musical Finder is a great way to quickly create a shortlist of musicals that fit your cast size, age range and preferred duration. Once you’ve got your shortlist, you can have a quick listen to snippets of the songs and a quick look at an excerpt of the script. In no time at all, you’ll find what you’re looking for!
If you find a title that you’re really excited about, but it doesn’t fit your cast size, there are always suggestions within the product as to how to increase or decrease the number of speaking and non-speaking parts.
All of our products come with suggested stage directions, costume and prop lists, Words on Screen™ and editable scripts to make everything that little bit easier and flexible, and many of our products have solo and group-singing opportunities and harmony parts, choreography videos and other resources for a really professional performance.
If you or your class have never put on a musical before, it is good to start with something shorter and simpler to gain confidence in putting on a polished performance that will be a positive experience for all. To make things easier, our musicals for younger performers (3-7 year-olds) have large narration parts so that a teacher can take these and just give the children the short lines of script to learn. All of the songs are catchy, fun and therefore easy to learn, particularly with Words on Screen™.
For older performers, consider using one of our curriculum-linked mini-musicals from the That’s What I Call A Class Assembly! series. Each has only three or four songs to learn that are always fun to sing, full of drama and packed with facts! The staging is incredibly simple and written specifically for a class to put on easily, and each only lasts between 15 and 20 minutes. You can choose a topic you have been learning about, from Shakespeare to Antarctica, or just pick one to do for fun and learn about it along the way.
If you’re looking for a starting point to inspire you, you’ll find lots of videos of performances from schools that are doing our shows! Search on YouTube for the musical title plus ‘Out of the Ark’ to get a glimpse of how your next musical could look on stage in a real school setting!
There are several great ways to save some time and still put a fabulous musical together, with a top-notch performance! Try some of the following:
- Try repeating verses instead of learning lyrics for the whole of each song. This often works particularly well with the younger musicals. If the songs are telling a story or moving the story on in some way, then this is not an option, but often there are ways to repeat the odd verse instead of learning all of the verses.
- Hold smaller rehearsals whenever you can for little sections of the script. Going over and over a small section with a few children for five minutes is a great way to embed the learning and not have to wait until everyone is free for a rehearsal together.
- Have the songs playing in the classroom as often as you can, even as children are coming in or tidying up, etc. Young brains absorb the lyrics even when they’re not actively learning them and are busy with something else.
- Split a longer song into lots of solos so that each child just has to learn a line each – a great way to instil performance confidence and give lots of children a chance to shine.
- If any children are struggling to learn their lines or have a large part with not much time to learn it all, consider using some well-placed props to subtly help. Try to find something for them to hold with some cues or lines on that is in keeping with their character – a large cardboard shell for a mermaid; a clipboard for a worker or a tour guide; a newspaper for various characters; a table for some characters to sit at with some of the lines stuck on it, etc.
We have vocal tracks to use as a guide for the children to learn the songs and backing tracks for the performance itself. Our Words on Screen™ player synchronises the words with the music as the song plays and with the double-click function you can also play a line at a time, to make teaching the song so much simpler.
