Audience: The Musical

Since I'm hyped from watching the musical today, I was firing with all cylinders, and I had this idea for Audience: The Musical. Before I continue, I would like to stress that all these ideas are mine, influenced by ImprovEverywhere and Fried Rice Paradise and actually any musical which ever existed.

The basic premise is this: you have a musical where the audience is the stage and the performers are scattered around the auditorium. My basic story involves these random people who are part of the audience coming to watch a musical. The performance fails to begin on time due to technical difficulties, and the audience gets restless. The actual musical begins when the first performer in the audience begins to sing (probably about his irritation at why the show hasn't started). This continues in the vein of a normal musical, touching upon the stories of a few random "audience members" in a musical fashion.

Current ideas I have of potential numbers are: a young couple on a date; a man running in late; a family of four; a troupe of schoolchildren on a field trip; the supposed performers of the musical is actually there to watch on the real stage; and a STOMP-inspired percussion piece.

Of course, to be successful, the real audience cannot know the premise of the show before they are in the theatre. I'm wondering if it's false advertising to promote the show as something else, or maybe to keep it mysterious, secretive and vague about plot details. Then of course, in true ImprovEverywhere fashion, you have to get the actual performers to enter the auditorium with the real audience, blending in with the crowd, with their wireless microphones discreetly hidden under their clothes.

One of the snags I have right now is that once the surprise wears off after the first song or two, it will mostly be a musical, albiet that the performers are in the audience. Performer placement is another big worry as they have to be in a spot where everyone else in the audience can see them. A backup idea I had was to use live-feed cameras to spotlight on the performers, but that kinda takes out the whole, "unrehearsed spontaneous musical" feel.

Aside from that, this is something that I really really REALLY would like to do. Maybe it won't work in Singapore, or maybe it will, given the right creative team. All I need now is songwriters and lyricists and performers and a theatre and a director-producer-lights-and-sound team.

Shouldn't be too hard.
The Edna Man