Let's Write WICKED JR | Realistically, what would be changed to make the Musical work in an educational environment?
It's been a week since I first posted this onto r/musicals based on an article I read on Onstage Blog, discussing whether the time has come for the musical to be staged in high/middle schools across the US and Canada, I know the tour is still going around the place over there hence why I could see MTI releasing Wicked as either a high school version or a Broadway Junior title at some point in the lead up to the musical's 25th anniversary on Broadway, or just do what The Phantom of the Opera did for it's 25th anniversary and release the rights specifically for high school, college and university productions. Hear me out, it could work. But for now, I'm talking about what would need to happen in order to make a Wicked Jr, apart from all the obvious reasons (permission, approval, etc.):
- The songs would need to be trimmed down a lot, some songs could be performed as they are on the OBC album by only loosing a verse or two. Eg. During DG, Elphaba could just cast the Levitation spell on the broom while singing the second verse and then go straight to "Come with me. Think of what we could do, together...". Some of the keys need to be adjusted to suit a child's vocal range.
- Some songs and parts of the script would need to be removed to meet the standard run-time of a Broadway Junior musical. Furthermore, some of the staging would need to be simplified as most schools simply don't have the time or money to spend on constructing Glinda's bubble machine or the Wizard's gigantic robotic head.
- The dancing parts would need to be watered down significantly.
- Given the popularity of the movie franchise, and the fact that it would be impossible to wrestle the story of Wicked into a single film without doing major damage to the material, my ideal approach is for this adaptation to be split into two parts as Stephen Schwartz said you can't follow Defying Gravity without a break, license Wicked Jr, license Wicked Jr: For Good for free!
It's also worth mentioning that Universal Studios Japan staged a 30 minute version of Wicked in their Land of Oz section of the park from 2006-2011, constructing the finale of the show to be Defying Gravity, with snippets of For Good woven in. An alternative approach to add another 30 minutes onto that adaptation and put that out to license. I'm actually in the process of writing a Wicked Jr for the fun of it.