It's a musical within a musical.
The show, performed in Aurora last weekend, was also the first production of Claire Rice's youth musical theatre company in Aurora.
Written by Rice and performed by a group of 11 young actors, Summer Musical! The Musical took to the stage at the Aurora bandshell in Town Park for a three-night appearance from June 17 to 19.
"It actually refers a lot to the rigidity of theatre schools for kids or any theatre for kids. Actually, any theatre shows as well as a performer," Rice said.
The story follows a group of kids who are working on writing their own musical, sick of doing the same old shows. Illustrating this is one of the lyrics in the show: "We’ve followed the Yellow Brick Road, but we’ve had enough of Oz. We wanna put on a show that you’ve never seen, because because because because because."
This is the message at the heart of Rice's business, Creative Music and Theatre with Claire.
"The story of the characters putting on their own show is what I'm hoping my business can be and it gives the kids a good example of that," she said.
Rice grew up in Aurora and Newmarket taking dance lessons, being involved in school plays, and other local musicals. She also went to the Randolph Centre for the Arts in Toronto.
After that she began working with kids mostly in after-school theatre programs and moved out to Vancouver for several years. However, she said one day she had enough of doing the same things over and over again.
"There's just so much rigidity about you know, how the kids are supposed to perform. And then there's also just so many similarities between all the shows, all the popular shows that we do over and over and over again," she said.
Rice said she knew she wanted to start her own business and decided it would be best to move back home to Newmarket to do this.
She started Creative Music and Theatre with Claire right before the pandemic and began by doing music programs for parents and toddlers. She wanted to start doing her own theatre classes for kids but then COVID-19 hit.
It wasn't until this past year that she was able to write her musical and get her theatre program off the ground. Since the goal with her program is to eventually have kids writing their own musicals, she knew she couldn't start with an existing show.
"I wrote the entire thing in a couple of months after Christmas, because I was like, it's really hard to get kids to sign up for classes when they've never heard of you. But if you post audition notices people actually want to do that," she said.
After a couple of months of rehearsals, the show ran this past weekend and Rice said it was a hit.
"I do think it was really successful in the sense that it was a first — it was a first step. It really does feel like a very, really valuable and important first step," she said.
The kids who took part are already talking about the next show, Rice said, which will be in the works for the fall. Before that she will be running a summer camp program in July. She said anyone who is interested should keep an eye on her website for updates and registration when it opens.
