#Once on this Island

[awhitewomansinstagram]

If you ever feel like you’ve made bad decisions just remember that somewhere out there is a theatre director at an all-white high school about to choose the spring musical

[rainbow-femme]

If you like the idea of a black Little Mermaid but aren’t interested in the new movie, please check out Once On This Island

Aside from the actual mermaid part, it has many of the story beats of the original Little Mermaid but set in semi modern day on a Caribbean island

The fact that the characters are black matters as the story deals with struggles of colorism, there’s a Voodoo inspired pantheon of gods, and in general the music is really good and in parts both funny and moving

[oof-i-did-it-agaaiiin]

Thinking about how many musical tragedies feature the narrative almost as a character of its own. Like a force within the story, divided from the characters. Out of their control at times.

Orpheus had to turn around, that’s just how it goes. That’s the way the story is told.

Tony had to go and get himself killed. Of course he did. He’s Romeo. The story wills it so.

Jesus must die. No matter how much he wanted to live, no matter how much the people around him wanted him to live. It’s his role to die.

Alison can’t go back and change the events of that last car ride with her father. It’s set in stone, there in the past where it will always remain.

And then there are musicals like Once On This Island and Ride The Cyclone that embrace the role of inevitability in their stories and find joy anyway.

And then on the exact opposite side of the spectrum there’s the radical freedom from the narrative that’s seen in Into The Woods. The narrator is dead and now the story is no one’s but the characters. And there’s the lack of protection that comes with that, the chaos and confusion. But it’s theirs and it’s tragic but they make the best with it.

Those themes of Inevitability vs. Freedom and the meta understanding of story within a story. I can’t seem to get enough.

[black-is-beautiful18]

The theater community needs to have a serious conversation about whitewashing. Black and brown performers and those that enjoy theatre already have these conversations, but white thespians are light years behind for some unknown reason. I literally almost got into it with some white lady about the Urchins in Little Shop purposely being Black cuz according to her Black characters are only important enough to remain Black if they’re there to teach lessons about racism. Then had the nerve to call me close minded and racist. This was in the comment of an article uncle addressing this very thing mind you🧍🏾‍♀️.

[owlpuddle]

[filesbeorganized]

On love that triumphs even after death.

The Magnus Archives 167 - Rusty Quill Podcast // A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini // The Magnus Archives 161 - Rusty Quill Podcast // Love Wins All - Lee Ji Eun/IU // The Magnus Archives 200 - Rusty Quill Podcast // And The Gods Heard Her Prayer - Once on This Island // The Magnus Archives 200 - Rusty Quill Podcast // Love Wins All - Lee Ji Eun/IU

[fairytale-poll]

ROUND 1A, MATCH 2 OUT OF 8!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Ariel:

It’s Disneys Little Mermaid, but on stage. With new songs and so fun!

she’s cute :)

Ti Moune:

ONCE ON THIS ISLAND MY BELOVED SUCH A GOOD MUSICAL please listen to it. It’s just over an hour long and it’s a sung through show so you can experience it just through the album. But if you’ve seen it, it’s even better. Ti Moune my beloved, she deserved so much better than what she got <3

sings some of the best songs in the musical theatre canon also she's cute as hell <3

[doyouknowthismusical]

[fireworkss-exe]

MUSICAL BEATDOWN 2023 LINEUP

Newsies vs. Ride the Cyclone

Chicago vs. Once On this Island

Hadestown vs. Les Mis

Little Shop vs. Great Comet

Heathers vs. Falsettos

Carrie vs. JCS

Hamilton vs. Six

Phantom vs. Book of Mormon

[barbossas-wench]

For people who love The Little Mermaid remake that's comes out today,

I recommend go listen to the musical called Once on This Island, and a book called My Love, My Love; or The Peasant Girl by Rosa Guy, it's a retelling of the original story of The Little Mermaid that the musical is adapted from

[starchildrenofdustand-ashes]

My girl Ti Moune was on extra strength delulu pills prescribed by the gods themselves jfc

[thewingedwolf]

the sad tale of the beauxhommes is the best song in musical theatre ever and the blocking for the revival is genuinely genius. papa ge mirroring armand’s movements, death and hate controlling him as he curses the peasant son he mistreated. beauxhommes looking down at his hand and the contrast to the much darker peasants around him as the curse is spoken. “they despise us for our blackness it reminds them where they’re from.” the SPIT at the ending. perfect song perfect musical.

[sisigull]

If you ever wonder what a C sharp sounds like and you’re a theatre kid + loves LotF, you can hear it in “Waiting for Life” from Once on this Island. It’s in A Major, which has 3 sharps, F#, C#, and G#.

The part where she sings “We’ll drive~~~~~!” (around 2:01 in cast recording), the note to belt drive is a C sharp and I can belt that 🤪🐚☝️🤓

Yes I am a fucking nerd

[glimeres]

2002, Rosie O'Donnell Show - LaChanze performs Waiting For Life from the musical Once On This Island

[black-is-beautiful18]

I'm a white theatre person in a mostly white theatre community and you are spot on with them being lightyears behind - pretty much every theatre company I know of locally will have on their website and also on the audition postings that they 'accept anyone etc' but will continue to cast white/able bodied/skinny near exclusively.

No cuz everyone must be everyone.

Take Wicked for example. The West End is the first to have both a Black Glinda and Elphaba. Broadway has only had a Black woman play Elphaba as a swing, which is just as important, but they have yet to cast a Black performer in any prominent role outside of Brittney Johnson as Glinda a few years ago and Taye Diggs as Fieryo in their early years of being on Broadway despite said character literally being a POC in the books! Nessa Rose is always played by an able bodied performer as if there aren’t disabled performers who are very talented and very capable of playing the character. It makes no sense. It’s ok for a Black man to play the Phantom but it takes literal YEARS for a Black woman, or any woman of color for that matter, to play Christine only for Broadway to end its 20+ year run a freaking year later. Then they say “Well we should be able to play whoever we want” but when you get a Black Juliet, a Black Macbeth, a Desi man playing the Green Knight, a Black woman playing King Edward, etc we get called every slur they can think of because that statement is truly only meant for them. It is an excuse for them to disregard the importance of Black and Brown performers and everyone who works in theatre including the fans. Cuz why do you think you have the right to play TiMoune when we can’t even play a freaking fairy in a Shakespeare play without someone saying it’s unrealistic for us to have the role due to the color of our skin???? We can’t even get proper representation in freaking Hadestown which is a show that prides itself on being “diverse”. The audiences are just as much at fault too. Their racial bias is the exact reason why ticket sales plummet as soon as a Black or Brown performer is casted in a lead role. I can’t even find videos of Yola and Phillip Boykin as Hades and Persephone for god’s sake! Two dark skin and plus size performers! Grammy and Tony award winners! We have to prove ourselves to everyone including directors despite our credentials and it’s sickening.

[thewickedbohemian]

Dream Animated Movie Musical Tournament Seed Round Group F

For information on this tournament as well as the seed poll for group A go here

Why these musicals should be animated movies (in my opinion)

Once On This Island: it's basically a fairytale (so kinda feels like a Disney musical without really being one) and animation would be the only real way you could capture some of the things this show tries to do on film (just imagine "Mama Will Provide" alone and see the potential here)

The Music Man: classic old-fashioned musicals always seem like they could work well as animated movies to me and The Music Man seems to be one of the most still-beloved from that era (also the closest thing it's had to a movie recently, that 2000s one with Matthew Broderick, is kinda not well liked among fans of the musical so, like Harold Hill, this could deserve a chance at redemption)

Newsies: on the one hand it's a successful Disney musical adaptation of a successful Disney movie so some cynics might say the next step is to make a movie of that musical for even more money, on the other hand due to things like the addition of Katherine the stage musical does feel like enough of a unique entity it could be made into an animated movie without feeling like Disney's doing that kind of recycling (also one of the closest things Disney's ever done to a project with a pro-labor message, we could use that right about now)

City Of Angels: due to the dual-world nature of the story this could either blend live-action and animation (but animation less goofy than what Who Framed Roger Rabbit did) or black-and-white and color animation, either way this would definitely push some boundaries

Venice: although to some the book could use a few touch-ups (but that's what the second look a movie'd give a show like this is for) I still think at its best it's an underrated powerful show that deserves a way to reach a wide audience and as for why animation it'd help provide a layer of distance between some of the content both for soft-hearted viewers when the plot, y'know, Goes There, and for those in positions of power such that they might feel its political content hit dangerously close to home otherwise

Spring Awakening: the messages of this show are timely enough for it to deserve a movie and animation would both help the distance like with Venice and play into the whole dark romanticism of the show's aesthetic otherwise (if I had my druthers over how this would be an animated movie it'd (even if it had to be "drawn" via computer animation and would have to be 3D-animated as long as it could look close to the 2D vibe) do that thing Batman: The Animated Series did with the black backgrounds but have a more "flowy" sort of style like a dark version of certain Disney movies' aesthetic)

Caroline, Or Change: this is another one where it just feels like it'd work better animated but I don't quite know how to say how but this powerful story does deserve to get more notice