DRAMA Musical Theater Set Announcement

[jordan.davidsen]

I am excited to announce the creation of DRAMA, the Darrell Riley Actors’ Memorial Adventure.

Set Details:

DRAMA is a 5-packet musical theater set. The set will consist of 20 tossups + replacement per packet, as well as a one-part, NHBB Quarter 2 style bonus question tied to every tossup. In the same vein as NHBB, the bonus part will be related to the same content as its corresponding tossup. These questions are largely vanity, and we make no promises to cover the entirety of the traditional MT canon. With that in mind, we will attempt to craft a musical theater quiz bowl experience that is unique and challenging for musical theater lovers, while not completely excluding those for whom musical theater is a casual hobby.

Writing/Editing Team:

The writing team is myself, Jordan Davidsen (Yale) and Chauncey Lo (Vassar).

Distribution:

This distribution is rather loose and arbitrary. We nabbed the years from the Hal Prince Memorial Tournament. However, we are aiming for the following distribution as of now:

8/8 2000 to present day
5/5 1975-2000
5/5 1950-1974
2/2 pre-1950

It should be noted that these years traditionally refer to the release years of the first iteration of the musicals. We will do our best to focus our tossups on the primary release of musicals that were released earlier but may have relevant revivals. In addition, the set will include tossups on musical media, such as movie musicals, Disney animated films which include popular music, movie adaptations of musicals, or traditionally musical theater-style songs in popular culture. We may also include small bits of content that are from relevant Broadway shows/culture that may not be musicals.

Mirror:

Since the set has taken no more than baby steps, we have not decided on a mirror date. Just know that one will exist, and it will probably take the form of a history bee or duos format.

Our Dedicatee:

This tournament is named after Darrell Riley, former head coach of College of Central Florida QB in Ocala, FL and a longtime theater patron/volunteer at the Ocala Civic Theater. Darrell passed away in December of 2021. He was a longtime innovator in not only Ocala’s quiz bowl scene, but Ocala’s surprisingly great theater scene. As my personal mentor in both areas, Darrell had a profound impact on both my decision to play college quiz bowl and my continued love of musical theater. Half of all proceeds made from this tournament will go towards the Ocala Civic Theater scholarship fund, which sponsors young artists in the Ocala area who have committed to studying the arts in college.

There will be one tossup in every packet that specifically highlights a musical/role that Darrell performed in during his time at OCT. I hope all participants take a moment to remember Darrell and his incredible impact on the qb community during these questions.

We hope you will join us for DRAMA!

[alexdz]

This is awesome and I am looking forward to things coming together!

[Antrobus63]

Me, too.

[JA01]

will the projected mirror be online?

[ValenciaQBowl]

Jordan, thank you so much for memorializing Darrell in this way. His death was a huge loss for the Florida CC circuit generally and for me personally. Darrell was my friend, fellow coach, and sometimes trash teammate since 2005. It's fantastic that you'd write a set about something so important to him, merging his love of theater and quiz bowl. Now if you could just work in some journalism questions . . . .

PS--The Florida College System Activities Association renamed its CC quiz bowl coach of the year award for Darrell at our March meeting.

[jordan.davidsen]

will the projected mirror be online?

Yes! It will be run on either Discord or Zoom. As of now, we are shooting for mid-August but we haven't really set a solid deadline for ourselves.

[jordan.davidsen]

The writing team has decided to remove the bonus questions from the set. The original post has been updated to reflect this.

[jordan.davidsen]

The mirror for this set has been announced: viewtopic.php?p=390813#p390813.

[EvanKnox]

Howdy! I just wanted to check in -- are you intending to post this set? It's entirely possible that wasn't the plan; if so, apologies for bringing this thread back! I just remembered that I wanted to look over some of the questions I enjoyed, and maybe share some of them with folks who hadn't played the tournament.