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Un-Fairytale – a Family Musical Comedy
Story and Lyrics by Jessica Pollack Score by Teresa Chen
A music class of 4th and 5th graders was learning about creating emotion through music and lyrics like in musical theatre. As an example, the teacher asked the students for story ideas, things like ...
"What if Sleeping Beauty couldn't sleep?"
They came up with additional twists on popular fairytales.
"What if Cinderella couldn't find her Fairy Godmother?"
"What if Rapunzel cut her hair?"
"What if the Frog Prince could speak clearly, but his princess couldn't?"
And "What if three out of four Prince Charmings didn’t ever want to kiss their princess, ever – uh uh, no way, no chance, never gonna live happily ever after."
The talented music teacher, Teresa Chen, was teaching students how to use expression in their singing. She had been fascinated with Western Fairytales since she grew up in Taiwan where she wasn’t exposed to these stories as a child. Teresa knew musical expression well as a Popstar in her native Taiwan and as an Opera singer trained in Italy.
As a last minute project, the regular classroom teachers were unable to help the students write the story themselves, so Teresa enlisted the help of writer and mother of one of the class members, Jessica Pollack. Teresa gave Jessica a list of the story ideas the children originated and described which students would play which parts and asked her how soon they could start practicing. A week later, a partial draft was in the works and the opening song was written. Three months later, the classroom project became a school–wide project and was performed on stage.
Unfairytale is the musical comedy created from these ideas and performed on stage by the students who originated the basic storylines.
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