Teachers have got used to the difficulties of the ‘rights and licenses’ system for shows. As performing arts professionals, we recognise how important it is for writers and composers to be rewarded appropriately for their work – and we realise that these are important lessons to pass on to our students.
We’re also used to rights being unavailable or withdrawn because a ‘professional’ company has bought them. I’ve always thought the idea odd that staging a school performance where the audience is mainly made up of devoted parents could potentially stop people from wanting to go and see the professional version, but that appears to be the argument.
Appropriate for all
So there's much to celebrate with the recent High School Editions trend. They enable young people to engage with great shows in a usually much-reduced format, often when the ‘full show’ itself has many complications surrounding its performance rights.
At my school we were very excited when we realised that Chicago: High School Edition had become available – it's a show that we’ve been keeping an eye on regularly, eagerly awaiting our chance to perform it.
The Biz Group in Woking also performed the show in August, and director Erika Vincent was very positive about it. ‘I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing the full version with a non-adult cast,’ she says, since there is so much sexualised content in the professional version of the show.
I discovered that when it comes to the alterations, some are indeed good. In the famous ‘Cell Block Tango’ the words ‘My ass!’ have been changed to ‘My foot!’ which makes some sense (except that ‘ass’ stays in the show elsewhere). And in ‘Roxie’, ‘Sophie Tucker will shit I know’ has made way for ‘faint I know’ – changes that can't really bother anyone. An authorised official version means that school directors don't have to tweak these details for themselves if they feel that their students or their parents would be made uncomfortable.
However, also in ‘Roxie’, ‘boobs’ has been replaced by ‘legs’ – which prevents a teenager from potential embarrassment and therefore seems wise, until you remember the terrific lines (that remain) in ‘When You’re Good to Mama’: ‘They say that life is tit for tat, and that's the way I live. So I deserve a lot of tat for what I’ve got to give’ which is a far more embarrassing reference to the size of the character's breasts!
Critical cuts
The changes go beyond lyrics, however. Some substantial cuts have been made to several of the numbers – and in ways that not only abbreviate running time. Introductions to characters such as Mama Morton and Billy Flynn are significantly reduced by the cuts that have been made to ‘When you’re good to Mama’ and ‘All I care about is love’. Poor Mama Morton also loses her other song ‘Class’, turning the part into something of a cameo role.
There may be very good reasons for cutting ‘Class’ completely – it's not a brilliant number and there are several rather crass rhymes including ‘pain in the ass; and ‘passing their gas.’ However, due to these cuts, the play loses its sense of satire, an aspect that is important for students’ education – it's crucial for them to understand that theatre can be about more than just entertainment. And why has ‘I know a girl’ gone, except to relieve pressure on the actress playing Velma?
The greatest shame is in the loss of ‘A Little Bit of Good’ from the character of Mary Sunshine. In a show totally dominated by women, the fact that the character is often played en travesti gives another male student a chance to shine. Surely schools could decide to cast a girl if they felt that their audiences couldn't cope with a teenage male in drag?
All of which leaves me feeling a little bit frustrated. Of course, I'm a fervent believer that anything that enables students to engage with more and more brilliant shows is to be applauded. I also recognise that a show's creators would understandably want an authorised version, rather than allowing schools to make all sorts of alterations for themselves.
However, many of these changes patronise our young casts and the teachers who work with them. The students at my school (and their parents) can cope with the occasional ‘ass’!
High School Editions of shows such as Chicago can be licensed from MTI Europe. Browse through available shows at: