@clingyduoapologist made a really cool “what if DSMP were a stage play” post and basically the instant I saw it I was struck by the muse but I don’t want to just chain reblog the dang thing or make one huge reblog with all my thoughts so instead here are all my thoughts on this concept
i don’t think it’s a musical. I think the tone of the story doesn’t fit. But if it were, it would have a Lot of scenes of unsung dialogue, and that dialoge? Would be rhythmic poetry. It’s Shakespeare Appreciation Time baby.
i do however think there would be a live score and an orchestra. A lot of the music would need to be recorded but there’s at least be a few musicians.
different characters speak in different poetic styles at different times to communicate character and plot development.
to elaborate on that: Characters switch from loose ABBA or ABAB rhyme schemes and vaguely rhythmic meter when chatting back and forth to strict perfect iambic pentameter for tense scenes or political speeches.
Techno speaks exclusively in unrhyming dactylic hexameter, an extremely common poetic form for Greek and Latin poetry. It’s what the Iliad was written in. This has the interesting effect of making Techno sound, at first glance, unpoetic. His speech doesn’t rhyme, and doesn’t follow a common English rhythm scheme, so it wouldn’t immediately register as structured. However, dactylic hexameter is actually significantly harder to write in English than expected because of our syllable stress patterns. Speaking like that would be, objectively, a sign of extreme intelligence, but could easily be overlooked as coarse uncultured behavior.
Techno’s chorus - composed of audience members, background extras, and people (in safety harnesses) sitting in the theater rafters - speak largely in Greek and Classical Chinese, quoting sections of the Art of War and Homer’s work. The major exceptions to this are ‘Blood for the Blood god,’ ‘no,’ and ‘do it.’ They all wear a hat or some form of headband that has a glowing LED eye, hidden, but activated when they speak. The audience plants are all in dark clothes, and when the lights go down they don medical masks/sunglasses. Anything to obscure their faces.
The Chorus, a group of robed masked people who broke the fourth wall and often entered the audience, was a vital part of early Greek theatre. I am an intolerable nerd, and the thought of sitting in a dark theatre only to hear an low distorted voice beside you start to comment on the play as a whole choir of voices echo around you, then turning to see your seat neighbor is a masked person with a glowing red eye in your forehead? Literally incredible.
Dream is the only character dressed in even remotely modern clothes.
Dream is first seen as someone (again, in modern clothes) sneaking around backstage in a black hoodie: most of the audience probably assumes he’s a stagehand and not meant to be seen. Then, at some point, he moves from behind a set piece and enters the scene as an actual character, revealing his mask.
interestingly, this is really similar to what I believe is a bit of myth about why ninjas are dressed in all black in modern media. They wouldn’t have been irl, they would’ve dressed like civilians. But stagehands in Japanese theatre would dress in all-black, and were often completely visible onstage moving sets - it was common courtesy to ignore them. Then one day some playwright had the brilliant idea of having one of the stagehands enter the story as an assassin, and suddenly every actor in all-black was a threat. For the life of me I can’t remember where I read that but it’s a cool thought :D
Dream canonically can interact with set pieces, lighting, and curtains.
Dream actively directs lighting in scenes he is not in, sitting above the stage kicking his feet.
Dream is often used to hand off props to characters instead of having them pull them from a pocket and pretend they were pulled from their ‘inventory.’ This begins to get confusing when Dream is acknowledged later on as the he person giving, say, TNT to Wilbur, or wither skulls to Techno.
characters address the audience as ‘Chat,’ (English’s first fourth-person pronoun my beloved) almost constantly, especially for comedic purposes- most of their monologues are addressed directly to the audience as well. For Wilbur, it’s a sign of instability when he stops addressing ‘Chat’ and start addressing the sides or back of the stage.
philza enters from the lower audience, right by the stage, probably after pooping up from the orchestra pit and taking a reserved seat halfway through so no one sees the wings.
Tommy has by far the least structured or rhyming dialogue - if it weren’t for how carefully crafted it was it would sound like normal prose.
Tommy speaks to the audience by FAR the most. Wilbur only addresses them when soliloquizing. Techno barely addresses them at all: they address him. Ranboo speaks to the audience only when alone, and it’s usually phrased like he’s writing in his memory journal. Tommy speaks to the audience at first like a loud younger brother. As he gets older, it sounds more and more like a plea for help, a prayer for intervention that will never come. Exile is one long string of desperate begging aimed our way.
Tommy stops speaking to the audience so much after Doomsday. He starts again when Dream is imprisoned. He stops for good when he dies in there, beaten, alone.
Sam and the Warden are meant to be played by different actors, ideally siblings or fraternal twins. They wear identical stage makeup and costumes, but the difference is there. None of the characters acknowledge this.
the Stage would need to be absolutely massive and curve almost halfway around the central audience, largely because it should be able to be split at times into two separate stages to show different things happening at the same time. This could possibly also work if there were two stages, but getting people to easily turn from one stage to the other without loosing sight of what was happening would be rough.
Doomsday taking advantage of the scaffolding in the rafters and using them as the ‘grid’ for the tnt droppers.
actual trained dogs for Doomsday my beloved. Would cost a fortune but could you imagine.
the entire revolution arc ripped off Hamilton, we all know that, I think we can afford to have a stagehand step forward in that frozen moment in time when Tommy and Dream have that duel, grab the arrow, and carry it slowly across the stage right into Tommy’s eye. For morale.
throughout the execution scene Techno keeps slipping out of poetic meter, especially when he sees/is worried about Phil. After the totem (which would be freaking amazing as some sort of stage effect with like lights and red and green streamers or smthn dude-) he stops speaking in poetry. The scene with Quackity is entirely spoken dialogue. Chat is silent. It’s only when he gets back and sees evidence that his house has been tampered with that Chat starts up again (kill, blood, death, hunt, hunt, hunt-) and he starts speaking in rhythm again.
Every canon death, Dream marks a tally on something in the background. Maybe it’s in his arm? Like a personal scorecard. Or maybe it’s on the person themselves, a little set of three hearts he marks through with a dry-erase marker or something.
phil and techno have a lot more eastern design elements and musical influences than the rest of the cast, except for Techno’s war theme which is just choir, bagpipes, and some sort of rhythmic ticking or thumping. Phil’s also got a choir sting but it’s a lot harsher, the ladies are higher and them men lower, and the chords are really dissonant (think murder of crows)
Tommy’s theme has a lot of drums, but its core is actually a piano melody. The inverse of Tommy’s theme is Tubbo’s, but Tubbo’s is usually played on a ukulele. Wilbur is guitar, obv, and Niki’s is on viola.
Quackity is a little saxophone lick. He and Schlatt both have a strong big band/jazz influence.
None of the instruments that play dream’s theme play anywhere else in the music. I’m thinking harp, music box, and some kind of low wind instrument.
