Fantastical “Disney adult” musical The Single Rider Songbook scooped a Critics’ Choice at this year’s Orlando Fringe International Theatre Festival for “Original Music,” awarded by our own Seth Kubersky and the Orlando Sentinel’s Matt Palm. Kubersky hailed the “divinely diverse score — ranging from 1930s swing to space-age chantey — with devilishly dense lyrics that Disney annual passholders will delight in decoding.” But the local production’s award tour wasn’t over yet. The cast and crew, led by writer and co-director Emilie Jean Scheetz, also took home a Patrons’ Pick award.
Though it would be understandable if Scheetz and company chose to just coast on those laurels through, say, the end of the year, instead they’re staging a Single Rider Songbook revival from Sept. 28-30. This restaging will (also) be co-directed by Scheetz and Aaron Otten. The ensemble cast consists of Lex Bentley, Molly Cabbage, Paige Christoffers, Christian Inirio, Cassie Klinga and Aidan Wamsley.
Taking over the much bigger stage and room that is the Abbey, Single Rider Songbook 2.0 features both new songs and a very (ahem) special guest. Orlando Weekly spoke to Scheetz about the play, the songs and the lifelong theme-park fandom that inspired them.
The whole premise of Single Rider Songbook is something very unique to Orlando (and, I guess, Anaheim). How did it come to you?
I have lived in Orlando my entire life. My nana on my mom’s side was a Disney superfan. My parents met working for Disney, specifically opening MGM Studios [now Hollywood Studios], as it was then called. So Disney’s kind of always been with me. But I think it really came to me more when I started working for Disney. I worked at Hollywood Studios in 2021 and got to do a year on board the Jungle Cruise. That’s where I started thinking more about the lore that the Imagineers and even the hourly cast members [employees] had, the stories that were being told with these rides that you don’t always get on an annual visit to the parks.
Do you find yourself still spending a lot of time at theme parks at this point in your life? Is it something you still enjoy even after working there and seeing so much behind the scenes?
Oh, absolutely, certainly. Since working there, I think that I got a whole new appreciation for it. I saw a whole new side of it. I’m still very much a “Disney adult” in every sense of the phrase.
Walk me through the characters in this story.
There are six characters whose stories we are primarily telling: a starlet from the Tower of Terror, a skipper from the Jungle Cruise, a seeker from Dinosaur, a scoundrel from The Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, a swashbuckler from Pirates of the Caribbean, and a specter from the Haunted Mansion. All of these characters I wanted to represent from the different attractions. Some of them are very specific IP characters. For example, the swashbuckler I modeled after Red from Pirates of the Caribbean, formerly the Redhead in the previous version. The specter is very much the ghost host from The Haunted Mansion. His song is sort of a prequel of how he came to become the host. The seeker is Doctor Seeker from the late great Dinosaur at Animal Kingdom. The starlet, Miss Claire Poulet, sort of lesser known, is the actress that we see in the preshow to Tower of Terror. I wanted to tell her story.
But what was important to me was also featuring the hourly cast members that help tell the story. The skipper on the Jungle Cruise can make or break your entire experience. They are what brings the ride to life. So I wanted to represent the stock character of skipper that I was and met and interacted with when I worked at the Jungle Cruise. And the scoundrel of Smuggler’s Run is a cast member at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, because I think the theming in that land goes really hard in a way that is really magical.
Was it important for you to have a mix of past and present attractions?
I definitely wanted to represent the parks as they exist now, with those classic attractions but then also with those more niche attractions: something for everyone. I knew if I started delving into rides that were now defunct, I would just keep writing songs all day. I needed to put a cap on it somewhere. So I liked representing how the parks look today, especially now that we have an expansion of the show — that didn’t exist in the Fringe version — where all these characters get to meet Walt Disney, and he has to reconcile his foundations of the park, what remains and what has spiraled out a bit. I think that will be a very fun moment.
This expanded Songbook, were these ideas you had at Fringe or is this new work you developed when you knew the Abbey shows were on the horizon?
So definitely the song “Florida,” which is on our cast album, I really wanted to put in the Fringe show, but I sort of ran out of time to develop it. Fringe, am I right? I’m really glad that I had the time to put it together because I think it puts a really good cap on everything that the show had been setting up up to that point. And then definitely I wanted to have a bit more room to talk about Epcot. With the Food and Wine Festival on the horizon, I think I have a song in this new show that is very relevant to that. It kind of dovetails with the dates that we’re performing the show.
I’d like to hear about the research and deep listening that went into writing these songs. You touch on a lot of different genres and forms.
My background is contemporary musical theater, but there’s a whole web of different subgenres. I deeply fell in love with this 1930s, Cole Porter, Gershwin style of music. When I was studying musical theater and working on Hollywood Boulevard at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, that majorly influenced the fact that I needed to write a song for the Tower of Terror. Despite me being terrified of the Tower of Terror and never ever riding it. I was just dying to write a song in that style, and that love of the genre pushed me to find a character that you probably forgot exists and develop her as much as I can. That’s for our song “Drop In,” because I just love all that music in that area.
I definitely wanted to go for more of a pop-punk feel for the Haunted Mansion [“999”] for some reason. That was my hill to die on. I have a very deep love of emo, pop-punk. Give me Fall Out Boy. My Chemical Romance. I wanted to represent how different these characters and areas were from each other, through these very different music styles. It was really fun to play with a lot of different worlds and try to create them through sound.
During rehearsals for Fringe, was there a particular moment where you collectively all knew that you were onto something?
There was just a lot of electricity in the room, just the first time that we got the entire cast together for the first time. I was very lucky to work with some people I have worked with before, some people I have been wanting to work with, some people I’ve never worked with before, but only heard lovely things about. And we all got together in my living room and immediately just started rattling off all these stories about how most of us work at theme parks, as is the legally mandated norm of living in Orlando.
Would you explain the title — Single Rider Songbook — to those who aren’t theme-park fans?
I just thought that Single Rider was a cool name. That is definitely what the name was when I first submitted it for the Orlando Fringe Festival. I realized I had nothing to back it up, so I revised it. But I think in writing and rewriting and rewriting the opening number after I did get accepted into Fringe, I found this theme that I wanted to noodle on while rewriting the rest of the show: All of these characters in some way, whether in their original source material or just in the stories I’ve written about them, are characters either longing for a connection, losing a connection, or having to stand out and break out and be on their own.
I wanted to build this idea that Single Riders never really ride alone. That having to stand independently does not necessarily come at the cost of community. There’s always someone who can relate. Quite literally, if you are in the Single Rider line for a Walt Disney World attraction, guess who they’re going to sit you next to? Other people who also chose to stand in the Single Rider line. Then we do have scenes in the show where the Riders actually get to break through the fourth wall, sort of meet each other, realize they’re not so different and find community with each other in this weird meta-land.
In the initial Fringe run, you got both a Patrons’ Pick and a Critics’ Choice award.
It was really an honor. It was unexpected. The Critics’ Choice was specifically for original music composition. I probably cried just a little bit. And Patrons’ Pick was really lovely. It was really cool to be able to have an extra performance. It was amazing to see just how many, many people showed up and really connected with the show and came multiple times. I was really grateful that we could make something that connected with so many people.
Did any audience members approach you afterward and tell you their Disney stories or anything like that?
I’ve definitely heard a lot of stories of skippers who were very appreciative of all the Society of Explorers and Adventurers logos everywhere. I’ve definitely heard online a lot of responses from people who worked at Dinosaur before it closed. [Audiences were] very grateful to finally have people who were as deep in the paint as they were for their respective places they worked.
How will you adjust the show, if at all, to the bigger room and stage at the Abbey?
One of my biggest concerns at Fringe was the size that our set took up, the size that our props took up, our costumes, because you’re encouraged to use this very small standard-size space. Now that we don’t have those confines, it’s been really fun. Talking to the actors that have been very collaborative in this process, and really know their characters very well, asking them, “What else can we add to your world?” And then build out those sets. We’re working on getting some special effects involved … well, kind of special. Spirit Halloween special effects.
People love that, though.
7 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, Sept. 28-30, The Abbey, 100 S. Eola Drive, eventbrite.com, $23.
