meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta

[spatch]

I just noticed an ad for the North Shore Music Theatre that advertised its upcoming season, which included a stage adaptation of Disney's raging phenomenon (doo doo dee doo doo) that is their made-for-TV teen movie High School Musical. I haven't seen the thing, but you can guess from the title that it's a show about a high school putting on a musical. And, according to several Disney-watching sites, schools have already expressed interest in getting the stage rights for their own performances. So if the rights were granted...

We'd have a high school.

Putting on a musical.

About a high school.

Putting on a musical.

Oh, sure, shows-within-shows ain't nothin new (sup, Kiss Me, Kate; how ya doin, The Producers?) but this... this is almost just too meta for me.

Unless one was to write a screenplay about a high school... putting on a musical... about a high school... putting on a musical...

(ka-BLOOIE!)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As I recall, back when Rob and I were acting in our high school production of KISS ME KATE, I had a somewhat similar idea. KMK is a show about a divorced couple of actors who reunite to appear in TAMING OF THE SHREW and wind up falling back in love. The leads in our production were played by two seniors who had dated for a long while and broken up, more or less amicably. Plus, our directors had this weird, not especially well thought out idea that somehow if they added some weird framing material to the beginning of the show they could make it a play within a play ... within a play. Add to this that SHREW is itself a play within a play, though they frequently cut the stuff with Christopher Sly at the beginning, and it's not used in KISS ME KATE ... BUT, there is the song "We Open in Venice" in which the actors who play the actors who play the characters introduce themselves as a troupe of travelling actors in Italy. This may be a nod to the Christoper Sly stuff, or it just might be that Cole Porter wanted to write a song with a dirty joke about quail. So we, in 1993 at Amherst High, were staging a play within a play within a play within a play. Obviously we needed to add one more layer.

The idea was that we could write a musical using a bunch of Cole Porter songs -- along the lines of CRAZY FOR YOU -- set at a high school production of KISS ME KATE, starring a broken-up couple who reunite as their characters reunite (not that that happened with our leads). This could potentially be a play within a play within a play within a play within a play.

Let's do it!

Noah