BAT BOY: THE MUSICAL
Directed by Gail Springer
Music Direction by Ron Strauss
Greer Garson Theatre Center
Weckesser Studio Theatre
1600 St. Michael's Drive
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Celebrate and support the reopening of the College of Santa Fe
Performing Arts Department
October 30, 31, November 6, 7 at 8:00pm
November 1, 8 at 2:00pm
Tickets $12
Call the GGT Box Office 505 473 6511
Director's Notes
Like most of America’s current musical mega hits, Bat Boy: The
Musical is a highly entertaining piece of contemporary theatre that
tells an engaging fantasy story about a misunderstood and tortured
protagonist. The scores express the characters’ emotions with
catchy tunes and rock rhythms, and the scripts deliver a healthy
dose of sex, violence, love and magic.
Some, like this play, make satirical comments on contemporary
society. Three years ago, the Performing Arts Department produced
another successful, and deeply satirical, Off-Broadway to Broadway
hit, Urinetown: The Musical. Like Urinetown, Bat Boy is filled with
characters starving for love, respect, power, and a sense of
security. Fueled by their fear and desperation, these characters
transform their hunger into the many faces of human foolishness,
including hate and violence. The contradiction between their public
and private faces provides a lesson in the evils so often justified
in the name of capitalism, religious extremism, or politics.
Keythe Farley, Brian Flemming, and Laurence O’Keefe constructed Bat
Boy from a deliciously diverse palate of theatrical styles and
devices. Theatre lovers will recognize elements of Oedipus, Hamlet,
and Pygmalion. Musical déjà vu’s abound including quotes from
Sondheim’s Into the Woods, and Elton John’s Lion King. The script
and score are filled with the most delightful traditional techniques
of satire: humor, wit and exaggeration.
Bat Boy tells the story of a struggling community in the mountains
of West Virginia. The coal mines have quit producing, and the
citizens of Hope Falls are trying to bring their shattered lives
together by switching from mining to the predictably unsuccessful
business of ranching in the mountains. When a half-boy, half-bat is
discovered in a nearby cave, the citizens variously see him as a way
out of their miserable misfortunes.
For reasons of their own, the local veterinarian and his family take
the poor creature into their home, protect him from the town, and
give him the love and attention he craves. While Bat Boy thrives
in the safety of the Parker home, mistrust and fear build in the
community. Driven mad by prejudice and suffering, the townspeople’s
hatred is easily fed by Bat Boy’s animal nature: like other cave-
dwelling vampire bats, he survives by eating fresh blood.
As Bat Boy fights for his life, and the citizens of Hope Falls face
the terror of a monster in their midst, no traditional values help
them. Neither religion, law, love, family, nor education give them
the understanding they need. As the Bat Boy’s humanness grows
greater, so does the monstrous inadequacy of the people around
him. Ultimately they all are trapped in a cage of their own natures.
Fortunately for the audience and the players, Farley, Flemming and
O’Keefe maintain their primary interest, to construct a thoroughly
enjoyable evening of musical theatre. And yet, when the romp of Bat
Boy: The Musical is over, the ensemble turns to the audience to sing
the morals of the story: love your neighbor, forgive, keep your
vows; let go the fears to which you cling, and don’t deny your beast
inside.
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