"Will You Buy My Story?"

My San Tan Valley hairstylist told me today that she has seen Wicked: Part I more than 60 times, which is amazing on many levels, but mostly because it only premiered less than seven months ago. Even as a movie lover, I cannot think of a movie I've seen even 20 times, let alone 60. 

We continued to talk about musicals as my head got buzzed, and that gives me a nice opening for today's ephemera. One of the first musicals I remember seeing is The Fabulous Fable Factory in the 1980s. But the crazy part is that I don't remember when or where. It was either fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh grade, and I went to four different schools in three different states over those four grades, so I can't nail down for sure when I saw it.

I know that it was a bus field trip, possibly to a local college. I don't know if was a full class trip or just the extracurricular chorus I was part of (in which case it was Montoursville, in fifth or sixth grade).

And the only part of the musical I remember is the extremely catchy Thomas Tierney/Joseph Robinette song "Will You Buy My Story?" That tidbit allowed me determine that it was 1973's The Fabulous Fable Factory and eventually to track down this worn copy of the book and lyrics.

The synopsis from Dramatic Publishing states: "Monroe wanders into a seemingly abandoned factory and accidentally trips a lever which activates the factory 'machinery,' an assembly line of seven actors who create fabulous fables. Then he meets the factory owner, a Mr. Aloysius A. Aesop, who explains that the factory has been idle for over 2,000 years because of a missing part."

According to this book, the one-act musical was first produced by Glassboro Summer Theatre at Playhouse 121 at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in southern New Jersey. That's another connection for me. We lived in Clayton, just a few miles from Glassboro, in the late 1970s.

Here are a few images from the book...