Pittsburgh in the Round: First, there was Schoolhouse Rock, a series of short educational music videos that covered subjects ranging from history, grammar, and math, etc. The series was the brainchild of a Madison Avenue adman when he noticed his kids could remember the lyrics to rock songs but not the rules of grammar. It premiered on the ABC Television Network in 1970 and it survives today on You Tube and other streaming services.
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School House Rock is particularly hard to translate into a stage production without just performing the SHR songs live. Because of the episodic nature of the original SHR, introducing new characters to the canon that are present throughout the show almost feels like a violation of the SHR rules. The songs have such varied topics that to try and string them into a plot would be impossible, making it impossible for a stage SHR adaptation to be anything other that a musical revue. The presence of a "teacher" feels wrong-- my teachers put on SHR whenever they did not want to teach a particularly difficult concept themselves, so personally, a teacher was never a part of my SHR experience. I think SHR is one bit of nostalgia best left in its original form.
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