The Beginning Pops For Hood & Hood

The ‘Such A Drama’ blog refers to seven musicals that were written by Evelyn and me for the Mary Russell School in Paisley. I thought I would reflect on these musicals, as they were not distributed widely but provided much entertainment for the school and the community it served. 

The idea for a musical came from the music teacher at the school, who was looking for material for the school to perform. I had done some accompanying work for this teacher previously, and she also knew of Evelyn’s drama work and writing skills. So the suggestion was made that Evelyn and I could collaborate on a Christmas show. Evelyn was in the throes of writing ‘High-Rise Halloween’ with Adrian Finnerty providing the music, so she was quite inspired to tailor something for the school. 

We established a format of the musical, focussing on the abilities and skills available through all the children at the school. The age range as I recall was from about six years of age to sixteen years, and skills varied greatly as the school specialised in working with children with special needs. 

Evelyn quickly produced ‘Pop Go The Reindeer’, a secular Christmas-time story about Santa’s reindeer who want to form a pop-group rather than pull Santa’s sleigh this year. The narrated story came with lyrics for songs which would intersperse the narration, and be sung by a choir which was located at the side of the stage. 

The lyrics easily leant themselves to be set to music; it took a few hours of sitting at the piano, reading the lyrics and letting my fingers find some melodies and harmonies, using a cassette recorder that was left running in case I had an idea and lost it. Before long it had become a reality on paper. 

The Christmas performance was a huge success; the school pulled out all the stops to make everything perfect. From the youngest to the eldest, everyone at the school played a part in making this world premiere a success. We laughed, we cried, we were surprised and we were bowled over with how well everyone performed. 

The success of ‘Pop! Go the Reindeer’ caught us both by surprise, and we were asked to write another musical for the school. This is continued in the next blog………

Simon & Evelyn Hood