David & Goliath – the musical
\nWritten & performed inside four days (8-11 Jul 2003)<\/p>\n
Israelites: Saul, David, other soldiers including David’s brother
\nPhilistines: Goliath and other soldiers<\/p>\n
No.1
\nPh: Here is the star of the Philistine crowd
\nGoliath of Gath is his name
\nHe’s big and he’s loud and he’s strong and he’s proud
\nEveryone knows of his fame<\/p>\n
G: Look at these Israelites, servants of Saul
\nLining up there for a fight
\nReally these soldiers are weaklings, and all
\nAre cowering yonder in fright<\/p>\n
Listen you boys, cos I have an idea
\nOne which for me will be fun
\nYou Israelites are much weaker than we are
\nWe’ll settle it now one on one
\nGive me a man!<\/p>\n
Ph: Honestly, we have an over-reliance
\nOn this guy, Goliath, down here
\nHear our champion’s shameless defiance
\nWe safely stay back in the rear<\/p>\n
G: Give me a man! That’s what I say
\nSend out a fighter to fight
\nI defy Israel’s army today
\nWhere is your courage and might<\/p>\n
Give me a man! Send out someone brave
\nIf he’s lucky enough to defeat me
\nEach of us you may then count as your slaves
\nThen again, no one can beat me<\/p>\n
Ph: They’ll be our subjects if our bloke should win
\nNone of us doubt that he will
\nCome on, King Saul, come and send a man in
\nSomeone Goliath will kill<\/p>\n
G: Saul was a hero, the star of his clan
\nCome on down tackle me now if you can<\/p>\n
Ph: Pick a man, choose him, you’ll probably lose him
\nYou’ll never outmuscle our man in a tussle
\nHe is the champ of the Philistine camp<\/p>\n
G: Give me a man!<\/p>\n
No.2<\/p>\n
Soldier:
\nHere his challenge, this mean giant
\nChallenges us to fight
\nHe keeps tauting us, defiant
\nCould he really be right<\/p>\n
Look at him, he’s such a rough one
\nKilled many men, you bet yourself
\nIf face to face with such a tough one
\nI’m fairly sure you’d wet yourself<\/p>\n
Saul:
\nA great reward is up for whoever
\nKills Goliath – riches and
\nHis family will be tax-free forever
\nAnd he may take my daughter’s hand<\/p>\n
Brother:
\nBut we sit here in abject shame
\nWe need a soldier who is brave
\nBut none of us at all are game
\nSo we’ll – Oh, hello Dave<\/p>\n
David:
\nWho defies the living LORD
\nThis heathen do not fear
\nJust see – reward or no reward
\nI’m in. I volunteer<\/p>\n
Brother:
\nBack to the sheep now, little brother
\nYou’ve got no chance at all
\nThis should be left to another
\nYou’re a boy, he’s nine feet tall<\/p>\n
David:
\nIn the pastures I have fought
\nLions and bears and killed them all
\nGod is on my side, I ought
\nTo fight. My I try now, King Saul?<\/p>\n
Saul:
\nDavid, you’re the bravest one
\nYou might need my armour then
\nTry it on! Get ready, son
\nLORD be with David! (All: Amen!)<\/p>\n
David:
\nThankyou sir, but this big suit
\nOf armour is too heavy for me
\nWithout it I will fight the brute
\nI’ll use my sling – just see<\/p>\n
Goliath:
\nThis fellow must be very brave
\nTo come at me with stick and stones
\nHe’s hardly old enough to shave
\nWe’ll see who will break whose bones<\/p>\n
No.3
\nYou come at me with pointy sticks
\nYour body dressed in armour
\nI dont need that weaponry
\nCos I’ve got God’s power<\/p>\n
Today the LORD is on my side
\nHe’ll help me win the battle
\nWith your sword I’ll cut off your head
\nAnd use it as a rattle<\/p>\n
And with your dead soldiers
\nWe’ll take them back home
\nAnd the birds and animals will come to feast
\nPicked clean like a fine toothed comb
\nDavid slings a stone at Goliath. It hits him and he falls down dead. The triumphant Israelites chase the Philistines off and return.<\/p>\n
No.4
\nGoliath had it all
\nGoliath was so strong
\nHe measured nine feet tall
\nBut now he’s nine feet long<\/p>\n
Not by human might
\nNot by spear or swords
\nDavid won the fight
\nBecause it was the LORD’s.<\/p>\n
The End
\nNotes on the creation of this piece at MADD Camp, July 2003<\/p>\n
Even the simplest story turns long if you want to make it a musical. We needed something short enough that we could write something and learn it in three days, and which would involve everyone.
\nWe chose the story of David and Goliath. That was the only one which seemed short enough with enough people. Most of the Bible has a very low proportion of women (as we found out doing a play of the story of Joseph at my church the previous month) and this one was perfect for an all-male group.<\/p>\n
The story of David and Goliath is in the Bible in 1 Samuel 17. We looked through that to find the longest sections of one person talking. (If you ever want to make a short story into a musical, start by finding the longest stretches of one person thinking or talking). They are Goliath challenging the Israelites (8-10) and David as he comes up to meet Goliath (45-47). We made these numbers 1 and 3. No 2, then, was everything between them: The Israelites terror, Saul’s offer of a reward and David volunteering to fight. No 4 is the Israelites’ triumphant song at the end. We worked out music for Nos 1 & 2, No 3 is spoken and for No 4 we used “We wish you a merry Christmas” in 4:4 time instead of 3:4.<\/p>\n
Tris played Saul (and guitar), Sam was David and Ian, Lenard & Reuben made up the Israelite army. Joel & I played Goliath with Craig & Brendan as the other Philistines. Gerald played keyboard. Being the music rather than drama workshop group, we payed little attention to staging and didn’t bother with the movements in No 2 one might interpret from the words there. And since we were holding both scripts and microphones we there wasn’t much we could do.<\/p>\n
I was amazed that we got from talking about making a musical on Tuesday to performing it on Friday, considering that we only spent 1-1\u0153h of workshop time each day on it. In the past I’d created computer games in a 3-8 day timeframe when they usually take as many months or more, and I had been hoping to do the same thing producing something for the stage, and this was it!<\/p>\n
If I was going to use this in the future, I’d probably omit No.4 (although I love the “nine feet long” line) and rewrite No.3 (the only lyrics I didn’t write here).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David & Goliath – the musical Written & performed inside four days (8-11 Jul 2003) Israelites: Saul, David, other soldiers including David’s brother Philistines: Goliath and other soldiers No.1 Ph: Here is the star of the Philistine crowd Goliath of Gath is his name He’s big and he’s loud and he’s strong and he’s proud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-35","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35\/revisions\/47"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric.mappage.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}