Road Show #1 - Monopoly

The first Road Show I participated in was clearly my favorite. I have no clue what the theme of the show was. But it involved almost the whole ward and was short on script and long on dancing and singing.

The beauty of this show was its simplicity. We had one prop -- a massive Monopoly board. That board dominated the entire back of the stage. Along the border were dozens of light bulbs so the board was not only prominent, it was extremely bright as well.

During the play the main characters made their way around the board. At each block of properties a different group of participants would come on stage wearing brightly colored costumes. They would sing and dance about their portion of the board. So, rather than changing stage sets, we simply had different groups performing.

I can’t remember why my part was, but I do remember one group sang and danced with plungers. They were likely connected to the Water Works square. The trick to their dance was slamming their plunger on the floor of the stage in unison and then successfully removing it from the stage.

I remember during practice, the plunder troupe would put the plungers on the youngest kids’ heads. As I was one of the younger kids, I often had a plunger plopped on my head. I thought I would die for I knew where many of those plungers had been.

Those who wrote the lyrics used Bugs Bunny’s idea of teaching appreciation of classical music. The lyrics were written to different arias and famous classical music. It was a blast to learn the words, and to this day, I can still remember the main song, called, oddly enough “Monopoly.” It was written to the aria Habanera from Carmen. (Thanks, Karen for helping me to find this great version of the aria.)

Our ward won first place with this Road Show. It had great music, wonderful costumes, full participation, and the greatest prop in the history of Road Shows. I still have a strange fear of plungers…