TRIAL A MUSICAL

All our musicals are tried out before publication. This enables our writers to ensure that the musical works well for the children and for the audience. Trial schools get first chance to stage an unpublished musical and to shape its final form by giving us feedback – and of course the licence fee is waived. They automatically receive a free copy of the published musical and a free copy of any A&C Black music book. If you would like to be a trial school, this is what would happen:

We would send you a trial pack in the half term prior to your performance

Your trial pack will contain:

a piano/vocal score of all the songs

a script, also containing helpful additional material for staging and cast list

an audio CD, containing backing tracks for the songs and orchestral music for your own performance, and performances of the songs to help you rehearse.

all the materials and all the information and support you require for your performance. 

What we ask you to do
We would like to come to see your production, and we will contact you to ask when you intend to hold your performance(s).

Also, with your permission, we would like to video your production.  This is purely so that the writers can remind themselves of it when they are revising their work; we do not make copies of the video for anyone else other than your school, should you want one, and the quality of the videoing is at best very amateur!  I should also point out that we have no objection to you videoing the production, even though the musical is currently unpublished.

After your performance, if it is possible for you and other members of staff to talk to us about your experience in preparing the production and the performance itself, that would be very helpful to us.  We would like to hear of any comments or feedback – positive and negative – that you might have. We are aware that it can be extremely hectic after a performance, so if it is not convenient to speak then, perhaps we can arrange to speak on the telephone before the end of term.

What would we like to know
We are interested in anything you consider important about your experience of putting on the musical – for instance, how you prepared and rehearsed, favourite and least-favourite songs, level of difficulty of the songs, effectiveness or otherwise of the script, what worked and didn't work for you, how long the production took to prepare, reasons for changes you might have made, staging problems, additional support or advice you might have liked, and so on. 

Thanking you for helping us
We sincerely hope that you and your school would have a rewarding experience participating in our school trial. We will thank you and your school for helping us in the acknowledgements section of the book when it is published, and we will, of course, send you a complimentary copy.

In the meantime, we would offer you a complimentary copy of any A & C Black music publication of your choice from our current music catalogue.