The Original Broadway Cast of Mean Girls the Musical (ph. Joan Marcus)
It’s 2023. You open your phone to the news that Mean Girls The Movie Musical is in production, a movie adaptation of the musical adaptation of the movie of the same name. Do you follow? With the oversaturation of unoriginal content on the Broadway stage and in the surrounding industry, it calls into question why nothing seems to be original anymore; just a retelling of a retelling in a new form.
In recent years, you couldn’t browse the titles on Broadway at any given time and not recognize at least one or two from movies, books, albums or other properties that already existed. Jukebox Musicals like The Cher Show, Jagged Little Pill, Ain’t Too Proud, MJ, and so on or adaptations of films like Mean Girls, Beetlejuice, Moulin Rouge, and the like permeated the market, translate well known and well loved properties to the stage. The question this engenders, then, is why? What makes original work so difficult to bring to stage? Why are we turning to preexisting properties in order to create theatre when original storytelling ins built into the medium’s history?
This, of course, can be answered like any other question in the postmodern world: money. There is ascertain guarantee of capital that reiterations or revivals or adaptations carry with them, either from fans of the original work, or the nostalgia factory that revivals like Company or Jukebox musicals like MJ provide. Ticket sales, then, are practically promised, and ticket sales means the longevity of the musical and the ability for the theatre to keep its lights on. Of course, theatre is a market, an industry, and it would be ignorant to suggest that art needs to meet some kind of moral or artistic standard in order to validate it. Indeed, to suggest that musicals need to be original stories in order to be good is simply wrong, however it is fascinating to see just how quickly the market has shifted away from original work to adaptation.
And they can’t be blamed for this pattern, either. Shows that do present completely original material are often overshadowed by their big-named competitors or the preexisting fans of translated media. As a result, though, we are also seeing the translation in the opposite direction. Musicals like Mean Girls, Wicked, In the Heights, The Prom and countless others are either in the works or already released, bridging the industries the other way, and likely amassing much more capital than a singular stage in a singular city could ever.
The thesis of my entire existence is that capitalism is the death of art, and I stand by that, however I would be remiss not to acknowledge the incredible art that has resulted from these attempts at generating capital. Indeed adaptation and translations of content can be some of the most influential and poignant pieces of art, allowing for material to find new life and a new audience. It is a little sad, still, though, to see media become an echo chamber of art that once was, leaving little room for the potential at something new, waiting to be born.