Emo! The Musical!

Two brassy New Yorkers have conceived a zygotic musical based on the discography of Panic! At The Disco. You can find it crowdsourcing on an IndieGoGo near you, maybe because the team are reluctant to pour their own pockets into something that might slide down the same lonely luvvie gullet as Viva Forever! or Kurt and Sid.

The PATD musical’s promotional hashtags seem to refer to remote Welsh villages - #wellwerejustawetdreaminthewebzine, #youknowitfeelsgoodwithfirebackonthetounge - which suggests the production could be quite dull. Seeing as “Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have With Their Clothes On” (Panic! At The Disco have never been on a travelator), I’ve storyboarded my own musical, woven with parables of their emo contemporaries. It will claw back the credibility of the fallen genre that fell over even more when My Chemical Romance’s “Sing” was performed on Glee, the cast flat footed and for some reason wearing flannel, presumably for warmth.

The closest I’ve been to a West End musical is when I get nervous that passers-by will think I’m waiting to see We Will Rock You if I'm meeting someone at Tottenham Court Road station. This might mean I’m underqualified to be a theatre director, so I decided to talk to the Panic! The Musical writer, Christina Rose Sabia, to untether my inner Artaud.

Noisey: Why specifically a Panic! At The Disco musical? Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance has a parallel career in cat comics, surely this would make for a lovely bit of Andrew Lloyd Webber appropriation?

Christina: Panic! consistently push boundaries. They formed a band that chooses innovation over impression; taking risks rather than playing it commercially safe. That passion translates to the audience; the lyrics and musical compositions being so descriptive and intricate, the eccentric theatrics that backdrop their live performances; every intentional detail authored by Panic! makes you think and search for answers. You grow from it.

I tend to hate musical theatre quite a lot and I don’t like boys who sing with their sinus. Will Panic! The Musical convert me?

Alexis- the director- and I come from virtually opposite musical backgrounds. She had grown up in the musical theatre world - belting Broadway tunes, while my interests were in rock bands and concerts. By meshing our genres together, this show introduced a completely original dynamic. I cannot force anyone to appreciate PATD or musical theatre with just words. Musical theatre only became an interest of mine through exposure. Similarly, I began to introduce Alexis to the more “wild” side of rock music. We hope that an audience member will sit in the audience and experience the magic of the two combined. You have to feel it. I know we can accomplish that.

If the band doesn't approve of the musical, how will you try and win them over? If all else fails I guess I could lend you my script.

This show is going to make you think and feel. There is depth and darkness and pure emotion. It is not what would typically come to mind when you hear “musical.” We want our audience to leave intrigued and inspired to live—the same feeling I’ve experienced after a Panic! concert. We can only hope they feel the same way after being exposed to the script and vision. Panic! The Musical has endless possibilities. This show has potential to tour internationally, and even be expanded for film.

Dear god.

PROLOGUE/DIRECTOR’S NOTE

My closest brush with emo was seeing Avril Lavigne at Brixton Academy, which was incredibly moving. A much maligned people, emos didn’t really help themselves with song titles like “Sergeant Gun In The Mouth Reporting for Duty”- by Backstabbers Incorporated. My younger sister was much more invested than me in the “'the spooky kids cult'” as the Daily Mail called them - once uploading a video of herself sewing her lips together to vampirefreaks.com. Her emo magnum opus was running away from home by shimmying down the drainpipe of our fourth floor flat after writing “YOU’LL NEVER GET THE BETTER OF ME” in blood on her bedroom wall, because she was asked to tidy her room. This is the kind of chutzpah that I will channel into my production.

ACT 1 SCENE 1: PICK PICKPOCKETING

The My Chemical Romance act of the play will wrap you in a blanket of tears. Tears that land in your little pot of expensive ice cream. The curtain opens to reveal a low tableau in the band’s history, when they discovered that their drummer Michael Pedicone had been stealing from them. Brian May, who played with the band at Reading and Leeds festivals, acts as Fagin, encouraging his scurrilous actions and singing “You’ve Got To Pick A Plectrum Or Two”. The wardrobe department will have to make it clear that he is meant to look like Fagin and not a homeless Charles II.

SCENE 2: SIGHING, WAILING, AND POETRY

The band’s hit “Welcome to The Black Parade” was originally called “The Five Of Us Are Dying” (true story). At the beginning of Scene 2 we witness the terse argument where the band try to establish who was dying the most.

Gerard and co. had an understandable bone to pick with The Daily Mail after they attributed a teenage girl’s suicide to their music.  The paper was characteristically well informed about the nuances of emo, employing an anthropological approach that would make Bruce Parry proud: “emo conversation is sighing, wailing and poetry.” To continue the paper’s proclivity for iffy proclamations based on completely unsubstantiated non-evidence; “Many of the alluring women of our time - Nigella Lawson, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Lily Allen - have a touch of the Goth about them”. Sophie, Nigella and Lily will sing an aria called “Paul Dacre, Who Checks Your Facts?”

SCENE 3: LIKE A HASHTAG MY HEART IS HATCHED

The denouement of the MCR act is based on when the band broke up in 2013, tearing emoji aortas worldwide. Gerard Way struggled with writing a bowing out message on twitter, instead opting for a verbose letter entitled “A Vigil, On Birds And Glass”, which is honestly well worth the day it takes to read. In this scene, Gerard (played by the singer from The Rasmus) postulates on the constraints of Twitter with a song called “Like A Hashtag My <3 Is Hatched.” Gerard’s letter managed to elevate a fairly pedestrian anecdote about a bird getting trapped in his library (yep) to the status of “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. There will be a ten minute interpretive dance conveying the struggle of Gerard Way trying to catch the sparrow with a duvet.

SCENE 4: EVIL PWN YOU TONIGHT

Alan Rickman will act out this scene celebrating the internet lexicon of the tribe. The term “pwn” is used with gay abandon and is purported to come from the world of chess, not Farmville. Alexander Alekhine, a grandmaster in the 1930s who was known to emit anti-Semitic comments and drink heavily during matches told his opponent “I will pawn to your knight”, but due to being very Russian and very drunk, it sounded like “Evil pwn you tonight”. Another theory is that it is just a word because o is next to p on the qwerty keyboard. This won’t translate well to musical theatre. Alan will sing an adaptation of Billy Ray Cyrus’s hit called “Hurty Qwerty Heart”. The chess pieces will be dancing.

INTERVAL: WALK AROUND SO YOU DON’T GET BLOOD CLOTS, MAKE A FRIEND.

ACT 2 SCENE 1: AMBLYOPIA, DYSTOPIA.

The emo haircut, which some optometrists believe to cause amblyopia (the pleasing scientific name for lazy eyes) died on 4/10/2009 when Pete Wentz got his head shaved onstage. This scene will take inspiration from Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber played by Fall Out Boy’s arch nemesis Brandon Flowers, who has said that he “wants to beat them to death,” and also, “put them in a funnel.” In retaliation to these comments, Wentz invited Brandon Flowers for a sushi dinner; but it was a joke…..he didn’t want to have sushi with him at all! This scene will be criminally underwhelming, Brandon Flowers using a single blade BIC to try and slit Pete’s throat and not even interrupting the ingrown hairs on his adam’s apple.

SCENE 2: SOME COUGHING RACCOONS

After this there is a behind the scenes type number. A smoke machine coughs, the fog dissipates and reveals the cardinal moment that Fall Out Boy wrote “The Pros and Cons of Breathing”. The emos seem predisposed to respiratory problems, perhaps allergic to a strain of carpet mite; every single song contains lyrics about being unable to breathe. I don’t know if it’s Elnett or their insistence on using their vocal cords without warming up but it’s very worrying from a medical perspective. This should be a fairly short song for obvious reasons. The lyrics will go: “Arythmia, sleep apnoea, emphesema, pleuresy/ Bronchitis, asthma, supraventricular tachycardia”. The cast of the chorus will be made up of the foundlings of the emo tribe, who congregate around train stations like raccoons, except not interested in litter or fun.

SCENE 3: BANDS YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF ARE MEAN

If you are prepared to put any acne-scarring experiences aside and log into AbsolutePunk.net, or the “Emo Puddle” forum, you’ll learn that the private lives of some of these bands are rife with scandals that would make Charles Manson hand over his prison pudding. Although frontmen exposing their arseholes to 13 year old girls when on stage and going to prison for being involved in murder is all very riveting, it doesn’t really sound like suitable script fodder for a family excursion after going for dinner at Giraffe.

The scene begins with a metalcore cover of the theme from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. There’s some sand on the floor. We are transported back to 2008, when Ronnie Radke, lead vocalist of “Falling In Reverse” went to the Las Vegas desert for a showdown with a foe, as you do in the 21st century. The actor will throw down an elbow length stripy fingerless glove as a gauntlet. He gets incensed about his glove getting sandy and ends up fatally wounding his adversary. During this jail term for murder - Ronnie has served other sentences for domestic assault against his girlfriend and splitting a fan’s head open - the prison guards apparently hated him because they resented having to sort through his Tower of Babelling fan mail, and not because he is a cunt who treats preteens’ skulls like lychees.

SCENE 4: DON’T WEE ON PEOPLE WITHOUT ASKING

To continue down the yellowed brick road of morally reprehensible frontmen, Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon was accused of pissing on a fan. Tyler, the Creator has also had beef with Oli Sykes, as Oli used lyrics from “Radicals” on a T shirt design. Here the chorus will do a nasal version of “Radicals” without the permission of Tyler, the Creator, and its presence in the musical will entice the 18-25 year old demographic. It’s all about social reach. Finally, this will conclude in a short number which leaks outwards from the Ronnie Radke scene, where the cast will perform an original song which begins "My kidneys feel like sea urchins/ pin cushions of the sea/ because when you left I couldn’t muster the lifeblood to wee." A deluge of urine re-routed from the men’s is delivered through the theatre’s fire sprinkler system over the audience.

CONCLUSION 

Theatre critics say that the sign of a successful production is a suspended silence after the curtain goes down, when the audience is too shellshocked to applaud. Amy Lee from Evanescence uses this oppurtunity to hand out her new folk EP on mini disk. There is a palpable sense of the nappy rash that the audience has developed from sitting on plump urine soaked seats for a very long time. Everybody wishes they’d gone to see Legally Blonde like Jan had originally suggested.

Follow Josie on Twitter: @JosieRaeT

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