Friday, August 7, 2009

Lost and Found: Hunchback Parody Show

Back in 1998, I spent a few months working as a Technician backstage at "The Hunchback of Notre Dame: A Musical Adventure" in the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park at Walt Disney World.  It was a fun show and got great reviews.  It was unusually artistic for 32 minute long theme park show and all of the singing / acting was live.  It finally closed in 2002 and last I saw, it was a storage facility for Spectacle of Lights.

Anyway, while I worked there, they would put on a parody show once a year for employees.  Inspired by the one I watched, I wrote a line-by-line parody for the cast and crew including alternate lyrics to every song.  Unfortunately, the parody was never performed but the script circulated backstage for a couple of more years.

I dug out that script again today and thought I might post it for those of you who might enjoy that sort of thing (or were directly involved with it).  The parody is definitely centered on the stage show version and the dialog has a lot of in-jokes.  The song parodies are more generic to the theme park stage show experience though so I made a separate copy with just the songs (sample at the bottom of this post).  Musically, it is exactly the same as the movie.

HUNCHBACK PARODY SONGS (word doc)
HUNCHBACK PARODY FULL SCRIPT (word doc)

Need Air (to the tune of Out There)

QUASIMODO:
Trapped behind this rubber mask, and hump made out of foam,
Singing to the people right before me.
Sweating out electrolytes, and wanting to go home,
knowing that I really have to go pee.
All day long I suffer through this heat and do this show
Fighting off the urge to stop and then flee
All my life I've wanted to perform upon the stage.
Not like this though
Is this a heat show?

I'm out there,
Melting in the sun.
Hot inside this orange hair,
This really isn't fun.
I hate this weather.

Out there.
Does anybody care?
What I'd give,
Who's butt I'd kiss,
If I could get out of all this.

Out there are all the people who don't have to wear this crap.
The audience is sitting there and sighing.
Everyday they sit and stare and act like they are warm,
Heedless of the fact that I am dying.

Each time I hit these notes,
I swear my head explodes

I need air.
Please call 911.
Put me on the stretcher.
Please turn off the sun.
How long 'til Winter? - Need air!
I'm working off my buns.
I swear I'm in real pain.
Feeling faint.
Rubber face.
Hot-ass place.
Plastic hair.
It's not fair.
Ox-y-gen.
Please give me air!