When my drama teacher first announced that this year's Whole School Musical Production would be Moby Dick, everyone was a little confused.
I'd only read Moby Dick as a novel (an abridged version at that) while most of my friends didn't even know what Moby Dick was at all. Even after we were told that it wasn't just Moby Dick, but it was Moby Dick: The Musical, we weren't sure what to think of it. Our teacher played the opening song from it, I realised that it was going to be something very different from musicals that I was used to.
It was a musical inside a musical (whoa.. mind blown, right?), where girls at a falling-apart school try to raise money by putting on a musical (can you guess what it's about? Hint: the title of the actual musical).
For the first time in my life, I didn't really know which character that I wanted to be. They were all very.. dynamic. There was a goody-two-shoes that took on the role of the narrator, a tomboyish girl who became a savage 'people-eater' (yes, that's actually a line in the musical). The headmistress also takes on a role in the musical, which is Captain Ahab (who is the sole reason why this whale-killing expedition starts in the first place). He's got a whole backstory about losing his leg to Moby Dick, a white whale... but I won't get into too much detail.
I think getting to know the existence of the musical itself had changed my rather fixed perspective that the main characters in the play have to be perfect (and not so quirky). So.. I'm interested to see how my teacher will cast the team — it's a different way of casting to what normally happens in a musical audition. You don't 'apply' for a certain role; our teacher looks at how we present ourselves and what we're capable of doing and matches up with the characters. Perhaps I'll be cast as the first mate, Starbuck. She seems to have a really cool solo :)