When Broadway flops get a second life as student musicals

toggle caption Eva Marie Uzcategui for NPR

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Just three days from opening night, the task at hand is to figure out how to break a glass slipper onstage, or at least make it look like it's broken, since having a bunch of shards on the floor for a student theater production is probably a little too dangerous.

So they add sound effects. And bright flashing lights. And then a blackout. It's honestly pretty convincing.

"The magic of the theater," says Tammy Holder, an artist in residence at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, a theater in Fort Lauderdale. Holder is directing more than three dozen students from middle and high schools across South Florida in an adapted version of a musical that's new for student theater: the 2023 show Once Upon a One More Time, a jukebox musical featuring the music of Britney Spears.

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Because this version of the show hasn't been released yet, there's no road map, no other school to copy or learn from, which means the glass slipper scene has to be created from scratch.

The original Broadway version of Once Upon a One More Time only lasted about three months. But when a show flops — or has a short run in New York — it's not over.

Many shows actually get a second, much larger, life when they get licensed for middle and high schools. In fact, four times as many people see live theater in schools, with student actors and performers, than see shows on Broadway.

toggle caption Eva Marie Uzcategui for NPR

"The secondary licensing world is so much bigger than Broadway," explains John Prignano, the director of education and development for Music Theatre International.