How To Organize A School Concert

So you've decided to organize a concert for your school, but you're clueless about dancing and music, you have no previous experience and you're completely lost in the planning stage.

Never fear! This user friendly, step-by-step guide will have your concert up and floundering in no time.

* Step One: Just Add Water

First, you need to consider what your concert is going to feature. It could contain acting, singing, dancing, or a combination of all three. A musical is ideal for this purpose.

Apart from being greatly enjoyable for audiences of all ages, a good musical has the potential to immerse your entire school in a warm blanket of song, dance and high spirits.

Observe the following. It's a promotional video for Sri Cempaka's We Will Rock You Musical last year. Yeah, they did a musical based on Queen. So what?

Click to watch. It's a really fun, inspired piece of work.

* Step Two: Pick A Theme

You see, every concert needs a theme. However, the less original the theme the better.

As I just mentioned, last year Sri Cempaka did a musical based on Queen. That wasn't very unoriginal. And worse, the entire soundtrack consisted of rock songs!

If you let rock into your school, sooner or later you're going to end up with rock and roll, and your school concerts are going to start kicking ass. We don't want that. No way. It's a school production. Ass kicking has no place in an institution of learning.

Going back to the selection of an appropriate theme, what about one that allows for diverse selection of content while retaining watertight criteria for selection?

...Yeah, you probably didn't get that.

What it means, is that with the right theme, you can have a whole lot of different performances, yet make sure that everyone in those different performances sticks to the plan.

Sounds like getting to have your cake and eat it too, doesn't it?

Figure 1.0 - Cake

Well the cake is present, it is delicious and it has a name.

Dances From Around The World.

No... wait for it... Traditional Dances From Around The World. See? That way you can have a whole bunch of people doing anything you want - you have an entire world full of nations and cultures to pick from - and an easy way to remove any aspect you don't want. Just say it's not traditional enough!

Crazy huh? And as if that wasn't enough reason to go with Dances From Around The World, you can even take the chance to seed a little patriotism into the audience. Or force it down their throats.

See, you could have a couple of actors going all around the world, checking out all the dances in all the countries and eventually coming to the realization that there's no place like home. Brilliance!

So what do you think? I think we nailed it.

* Step Three: A Cast Of Thousands

Before deciding how many students you want to include in your production, consider this. Three hundred students will inevitably have more parents than a hundred students. And as a school, parental support is important. Think about it. Would you really pay to see a show staring someone else's kids?

You don't exactly get a warm and fuzzy feeling looking at it, do you?

See? See! That's magic.

All parents would prefer to look at the second picture, the one with their child in it, compared to the first one, which is almost identical but full of strangers. Similarly, a concert with their own child in it will garner more of their support than one without. How do we ensure that we reap the benefits of this support to its fullest?

You guessed it: a cast of thousands.

* Step Four: Rome Wasn't Built In A Day, But We're Not Building A City Here

There are several fundamental rules to a production of any kind. Observe the following.


Keeping this rule in mind is vital. You can't have everything.

If you want to have an awesome concert with maximum student participation, the sheer multitude of factors involved mean it's obviously not going to come together in a couple of weeks.

If you want to architect a great show but you haven't got a whole lot of time, you'd most likely have to give the spotlight to a handful of students who already know what they're doing and don't need weeks of practice to prepare.

If you want to involve as many students as possible, but you don't want to mess up too many of their lessons in the process, some quality will inevitably be sacrificed in bringing the show home.

We've already established that we want to pack as many students onto that stage as the UN will tolerate, so what are we going to sacrifice? Quality or lesson time?

Back up a minute, why is this even a question? If you detract pupils from the syllabus, you're going to get lots of complaints from parents! Besides, most moms and dads don't care how bad the show is, as long as their kids are in it they'll whoop and cheer all the same. It's high school!

* Step Five: Burn The Ships

Cortes had a plan, he wanted to lead an expedition into Mexico to obtain its many treasures. He presented his plan to the Spanish governor, who was so excited that he gave him eleven ships and seven hundred men.

Cortes did not tell the men or the governor the complete plan. After months of travel the eleven ships landed in Veracruz. Cortes had the men unload everything from all eleven ships. As they headed into their new adventure the men turned back and saw all eleven ships burning!

Their reaction was to fight back, as surely an enemy had initiated such an attack. Cortes halted the men, as this was in his plan, he had ordered the ships to all be burned.

Cortes did not know what he and his men would encounter in their expeditions. What he did know was that by burning the ships he had completely eliminated their option of going back. At the same time creating an intensely powerful motivation to succeed.

Figure 2.0 - Burn them good

What does this have to do with your concert? Well, it's hardly on equal terms with an invasion of Mexico, but what both ventures have in common is that they're, well, ventures and whether a venture is made or broken depends heavily on the level of commitment of the people involved.

Since you have no ships to burn, how do you ensure that your cast remains dedicated? Here's an idea: why not issue a directive that requires students to remain in a dance once they sign up? Most students will sign up for the concert as soon as they get the chance, and often don't check the details first. In a way, it's kinda like making them sign a contract with the devil, but less fair.

If any parents complain, just tell them that their child should not be in the school at all if they are unwilling to follow the rules. Don't forget to mention how many people frequently beg for a place in the school, even if the last time that happened was in 1994.

Congratulations! Now you know how to organize your very own school concert!

Good luck, and don't forget to check out Around The World With Wesley on the 22nd of July (this month)! Our dancers have been practicing real hard an hour a day, four days a week for about three weeks now!

Wait... by the time you're reading this, all the tickets for seats in our own highly exclusive, limited capacity hall have probably sold out.

Oh well.