Picking a musical

[santeFEEE]

Hello, my friends and I are starting up a youth theater, we have three possible venues that have accepted to have us work there. We just have one problem- picking the first show. Our theatre lets youth ages 7- 18 audition, and everyone who auditions is cast (due to the fact that it is an educational theater.) We had a couple of choices but we would like new ideas, as we don't know if our choices would work.

Our possible venues are as follows:

- a church with a decent size altar doesn't look like a traditional stage. (has a balcony)

-a black box theatre, decent sized stage, 100 seats.

-a middle school theater space has curtains and wings. The stage is wide but isn't that tall.

Our ideas right now are Newsies, Aladdin Jr and Lion King Jr. We need a show that will have many kids audition, and people will want to see. It would be great if there wasn't a huge set (for example Shrek, beauty and the beast, etc) and if the licensing rights weren't super expensive. Any ideas? Thank you in advance!

[dramamama611]

Newsies is likely going to be expensive. Rhe Junior series is really great for a grup starting out, and FAR leas expensive then a full length.

Id suggest looking at Seussical Jr...gads of parts, chorus. And SO much fun.