[Starlitsinger88]

I'm a highschool student, and a problem my school always has is the lack of any talent what so ever in our boys, and we have very few. Which, as you can assume, making musicals pretty hard, seeing as they all seem to have tons of male charecters, and only a few female charecters. So, I have a quest. We're looking for musicals that would be considered doable for high school level, with very very few boys, and even fewer who can sing (I'm talking one or two, three at the very most) and as many girls as you can find. Smaller casts are always nice (8-15) but we can deal with larger as well, as long as the larger portion of the larger casts are female. (Our director is very anti gender-swaped casts, but if you have a great idea, feel free to mention those as well)

Any ideas?

[Sweeney Hyde]

Gypsy really doesn't have that many guys...of course it is not one done by high school too much because of the whole stripper thing.

Little Shop of Horros only requires 4 or 5 guys.

[nycbound]

These shows are almost all women:

"A"...My Name Is Alice (a few very small parts for men)
Nine (can be challenging music-wise, 1 lead male role)
No, No, Nanette (2 lead male roles)

[pish123c]

Thoroughly Modern Millie has 2 leading guy roles.
Then there are 2 supporting guys.
Then theres a bunch of little tiny guy parts with about 1 line each (so no talent really necessary)


Thoroughly Modern Millie has a huge amount of girl parts. Like, a crazy amount. They take up more than half of the cast.

[music is my life!!!]

how about Aida? you need 2 fabulous leading ladies and one leading man, and one character actor. the rest is chorus and you can change that but my strongets suit works really well with lots of girls doing the backings, and it's a fun show to do (i imagine!) and Amneris is the most hilarious part to learn... EVER!

[Luc]

Annie needs like three.

[Sweeney Hyde]

[Luc]

[LittleGavroche]

What about Wonderful Town? The two leads are girls and only one guy sings solo. Then there are three character actors, but the rest of the cast can be girls.

[Carbucketty]

Moby Dick the Musical.

http://mobydickthemusical.com/

[kitty17794]

[Mimi Marquez]

I agree with Thoroughly Modern Millie. You have Jimmy, Graydon, Ching Ho, and Bun Foo.

... then there's the speed tappists, but you only need like 2.

[MsDivaKate]

Actually No No Nanette has at least 3 male leads....plus you need a male chorus for Too Many Rings Around Rosie, as Lucille is supposed to sing it with the boys.


Your best bet would probably be Once On This Island. If you have two strong males for Daniel and Ton Ton Julian (which even he is supposed to be an old man so it could be more character in voice if you had to make it that way due to talent). I guess maybe you'd really need at least 3 guys who can sing well, as Papa Ge also should be a fairly strong male.

However the other two male roles-Agwe and Armand: Agwe can easily be played by a girl and many productions choose to portray it that way, and Armand has very few singing lines, so a boy with a weaker voice could easily sing that role.

Godspell could potentially work as well. As long as you have males for Jesus and Judas (though some progressive productions have used girls in these roles as well) all of the other apostles could be played by girls.


Both shows are small casts, I believe OOTI is 11 and Godspell, the way originally written was a cast of 10, but in the newest revivals it was a cast of 13 (11 apostles, Jesus and Judas). Also, neither show had an ensemble in the original productions, but most schools add them.

[LittleMissCenterStage]

Smile! is a great show that only requires (if I remember correctly) 2 or 3 guys. I'm not sure who has the rights, though, so you'd have to find out for yourself.

[BeeMyGuesst]

I'm thinking "Little Women"

There's only 4 guys needed, and no chorus!

But then again, if it's high school, no chorus might be a bad thing..

[jmsjamz12]

This is a big problem in my school as well. As a matter of fact I was one of the only 9 guys we had in the musical this year. We did Bye Bye Birdie but it requires at least one Singing Male lead for conrad. I played Randolph, i always get the little kid parts but i like them . We had an actor playing mr mcaffee, he wasnt a singer but the part wasnt extremely difficult. i just sang his parts with him. and if i didnt than mrs mcafee did. he really only had to sing solo for 5 lines. Bye Bye Birdie could be a choice.

[snowhite880]

[Set_Buildin_Dad]

Not sure if you could do this for a school show because it is such a small cast, but Nunsense is all female.

[Midoria]

Chicago, perhaps. You only need two guys (Billy and Amos). But I think that show is too sexy for high school.