The British Theatre Guide: Plays for performance by schools and youth theatres (10)

School & Youth Theatre

A few details about MusicLine from Mike Smith, the proprietor:

To tell you about Musicline I have to tell you about me first. (Sorry about that - bit of self indulgence!)

I was trained originally as a classical violinist. Music academy - into an orchestra - didn't like it - into teachers college - into teaching. A familiar path for many musicians !

Out of teaching into the pop business - keyboard and electric fiddling. Had a great time and returned to teaching as a failed pop star. Started writing musicals. Ah - finally getting to the point!

At last found my place in the great scheme of things. All my wonderings around the world of music came together finally in the fact that I discovered I could write tunes that kept people awake at night. And I really loved doing it.

A few more things happened to me before I started up Musicline - like working for Yamaha for 6 years (They wanted a weird teacher to talk to the weird teachers!)

So twelve years ago now I started Musicline. Mainly because I couldn't find a publisher who would take on my musicals - rotten lot!

Now more than twelve years on I have a company that is selling over 60 stage works all over the world. We have an office in Chicago and one in Mudgeeraba, Queensland, Australia. We achieved over 5000 performances of our works in the UK alone during the last year. And this is with works, not just mine by the way, that the major publishers turned down.there are many good, as yet unpublished, writers out there. They are having little luck with the major publishing houses, but may have more luck with us. Also I want to branch out into publishing plays as well as musicals.

However I would not like you to think that I have become a hard nosed box shifter. We get sent quite a lot of material already but only take on a small percentage of it. Some teachers really should stick to teaching. I suppose our catalogue could be about five times as big as it is if we just took on things for the sake of a title. But we don't - utterly counter productive - don't like receiving works back as 'unsuitable' - means I haven't done my job.

But having said that we need more good material!

I've taken a good look at MusicLine's catalogue. They've got a good range of works for both junior and secondary age groups, including pantomimes and shows built around real classics. Megabyte Warrior, for instance, is based on The Magic Flute, whilst The Pinafore Pirates takes its inspiration from Gilbert and Sullivan. There are junior and secondary versions of some of the shows (including The Pinafore Pirates and Ebenzer, which is - obviously! - based on A Christmas Carol).

Prices are quite reasonable, comparing quite favourably with the main suppliers of musicals (Samuel French, Warner-Chappell etc.) and backing tracks on cassette are available for a number of shows: there are even videos for a couple of the secondary shows. It's nice to see a discount for quantities of scripts, too. It's not a lot, but any financial help of this kind is very welcome!

Royalties are charged on the basis of number of seats, ticket price and other variables, so it is impossible to quote them here.

Scripts are word-processed rather than printed - better than the type-written scripts you get for Godspell! - and are comb-bound between light card. And of course you buy them - and the scores and band parts (where available) - whereas with most musicals, of course, you hire scripts and scores, which means you have a devil of a job rubbing out all the moves, alterations etc. before returning them to avoid being charged extra for "cleaning up". And most companies charge the earth if you lose a script or two - and we all know how prone kids are to loosing things!

Megabyte Warrior quite took my fancy and so I had a good look at it. The music is Mozart, perhaps with an occasional modern beat added. The characters are pretty much the same - Papageno is the Byte-Catcher, the hero is John Tammin, a superhero computer genius, and of course we have the Queen of the Night, Pamina, Sorastro and the evil villain Monostatos. The story is, naturally, very much updated, but the basis of the original story is still there.

Full details are on MusicLine's Website at www.musicline-ltd.com - and they now have an online ordering facility.

Go to the eleventh page of plays

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