Instant Musicals

Imagine a song called He Punched A Wall Beside Me or even It Might Lead To Bestiality. Well, dream no more, because Melbourne songwriting institutions is here with it's impromptu musical invention. However, when the actor/composer team of Russell Fletcher and John Thorn dust off their improv skills and bring Spontaneous Broadway back to life this year, they will not only be committing to turning audience song title suggestions into tuneful reality, but opening the floodgates of social media. In 2012, you can send your fantasy song ideas via Twitter; meaning you can keep your phones on during the show.

As musical director and onstage virtuoso John Thorn says, “Well y'know, it's an audience participation show. This just makes it even cooler.” Fans of Spontaneous Broadway need not worry, though, because the now-legendary 'bucket of dreams' will return; and from said bucket, hand-scrawled suggestions will still be drawn. “We've generally got about three or four minutes to sit on stage in front of the audience and look through the bucket, and now the Twitter feed, and one by one we get up, do the pitch, improvise the name of a new musical, say where it's set, where the song will fit in and off we go.”

The question here, of course, is just how much Thorn, Fletcher and their guest collaborators work off a template. “We've been having workshops lately; y'know, going through a few fundamentals,” Thorn reveals. “But there's no set formula. We don't prepare anything before we go on stage. Everyone walks on really blank.”

Spontaneous Broadway does have a formula, though. The first half involves the composition of four or five songs and the conception of the musical that each of the songs will appear in. The audience then vote on which show they would like to see 'produced' and in the second half the cast return to create a brand new, one-off musical.

It's not hard to see how such off-the-cuff inventiveness could engage an auditorium. “As far as all the shows I've ever done – and I've done a lot of shows – this is the one that has the biggest buzz in terms of the crowd,” Thorn declares. “They realise that it's a one of a kind and that no one else is ever gonna see it and they love that it's being made up on the spot.”

Likewise, it's easy to envisage things getting out of control onstage. “In Perth about three years ago, we did this kinda late night, adult version and someone chose the title Now Show Me On The Dolly Where The Bad Man Touched You. Anyway, it was done as a duet between two guys and it was the only time onstage where I've been keeled over with laughter.”

WHAT: Spontaneous Broadway

WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 8 November to Saturday 17, Subiaco Arts Centre