Sunday, December 16, 2018

The Making of the Star Wars Holiday Special - Explained! (Sort Of)

Now that people have seen it, the most common question I've been asked this week is "what just happened?!" followed by "Where did you all GET this? It's HILARIOUS!"

I'm originally from St. Louis, Missouri and years ago I got started stage managing at the St. Louis Shakespeare Company. They have an offshoot company under their artistic umbrella called Magic Smoking Monkey Theatre, which started in 2006 with the desire to do Ed Wood's infamous film Plan 9 From Outer Space live on stage. Since then they've done roughly one show a year to hilarious effect. I worked on several productions when I lived in St. Louis and always had terrific fun. A while back I was kicking holiday ideas around with Max and Alika and since they have similarly warped senses of humor I mentioned these shows I'd done. They sounded excited, so I reached out to Donna Northcott, the founder of both St. Louis Shakespeare and Magic Smoking Monkey Theatre, as she is the primary creator of these shows to see if I could get a copy of the It's a Wonderful Life: Live! show we'd done some years ago. She said "Sure, but did you see what we did for our 20th anniversary recently?" And sent me The Making of the Star Wars Holiday Special: Live! script. When Alika realizes she could play Princess Leia the rest was, as they say, history.

We all had a blast putting this insane train wreck together and we all hope that you all enjoy it as much as we did! And if you absolutely MUST see the original... here you go but don't say we didn't warn you. The piece with Ms. Caroll is absolutely as creepy in the original show as it was on the stage.