Written by Tom Pankratz, Drama Teacher
Listen, I know you guys were all jazzed about doing Rent this year but we just can’t afford to put in on. I don’t want you to take this as an insult to your acting abilities — I know you could pull it off beautifully — but our budget just won’t allow it this year.
I mean, god, the sets alone would put us in the red with all those different Lower East Side murals we’d have to paint not to mention buying all those drag queen costumes. I know we could just do it using some of the backdrops we already own but I don’t want to do anything that isn’t authentic.
Some of you might remember in 2009 when we did Grease using our 19th century revolution-torn France Miserables sets . . . quite frankly, it was a disaster. I don’t want to do that again this year, especially with a musical that deals with material as serious as Rent does, so I say we should just do Phantom again.
Yeah, I know we just did it last year but we already have all the sets made, we already invested in the sheet music and we already spent a shit load of money on that goddamn half-face ceramic mask.
Come on though, it’ll be great. We could really nail it this year.
Sure it was good last year but with a whole other year to rehearse we can make it perfect!
Rent is overrated anyways, Phantom is a classic. We can even switch up a few of the roles to shake it up and maybe adapt the story to make it fresh.
We could even write in that the phantom has HIV if you guys are really so hell-bent on this Rent thing.
So it’s settled. Rent is out and were doing Phantom again. Maybe with a couple more lesbians and anarchists than the original. Everyone good with that?
I’m really sorry for all you guys who already learned all the songs for Rent . . . I really would’ve let you guys do it if we could afford it. The drama department sure is underfunded. I can’t think of any bigger problem in our province right now that the crazy prices of putting on musicals!
Is there anything that’s more unfeasible than the price of Rent: The Musical?
