Seventeen (Heathers) Project Essay

If I were to be the tech director for a single scene from a play, I would want to do the sing “Seventeen” from the musical “Heathers”. I choose this scene because, despite its simplicity, it can be incredibly moving if done correctly. For context, this song is right after the start of Act Two, after our high school leads, Veronica Sawyer and her boyfriend J.D., have just witnessed the funeral of the two jocks they had killed and staged as a double suicide the night before. Veronica hadn’t realized J.D.’s true intentions at the time, and when he seems willing to kill even more people, her angry outburst prompts the song. In it, she begs him to give up on his twisted vigilantism and at least try to have a normal teenage relationship with her. The song transitions from fed up and fiery, to gentle and down to earth, to soaring and hopeful, to cautious and fragile. Applying the different aspects of tech theater can help to heighten these emotional peaks and make the scene unforgettable.

My vision for this scene is to create a moment that stands out from the rest of the show as being fantastical in nature versus grounded in reality. Part of the tragedy of “Heathers” is how the realistic toxic relationship Veronica and J.D. find themselves in lead to serious, permanent consequences, and that just hoping things will get better isn’t enough; you have to dedicate yourself to improving the situation and avoid falling into old habits, which J.D. unfortunately fails at. This scene represents the height of Veronica’s love-struck fantasies, trying to hold together a relationship that isn’t worth it because of the pure, almost holy potential she envisions for them. If the scene is put together in a way that draws the audience into that fantasy, it will make them empathize with Veronica, and thus make the end of the show much more tragic, while also highlighting the impossibility of the desired happy ending.

In its original off-Broadway run, the set for “Heathers” was very simple and hardly decorated, just two levels with short stairs on either side of the raised stage. While this abstract set works fine for the show, with the time and budget to expand upon it, I think you could use the location to add to the subtext of the scene. Having two levels to the stage creates an opportunity to use it as symbolism for the real world and the evaluated fantasy world. The scene could be choreographed to have Veronica bring J.D. to the higher level as she wins him over with her idea of their idealized romance. 

Since this scene takes place directly after the funeral, you could have some decorations to show that Veronica and J.D. are still in the church for the song, such as candles (probably not actually lit), a cross standing or on a wall, a pulpit. etc. 

With just these few additions keeping the setting in the audiences’ minds as the scene unfolds, it frames the romance as something holy, which tied into one of the show’s musical motifs - “Our love is God”. However, doing this would also make the scene more grounded during the parts where it is meant to transport the audience out of the real world. To remedy this, you could have the more noticeable props somehow be moved off of the stage before the climax of the song so that it doesn’t take away from the fantasy.

The sound and lighting would be the other major factors that would help create the ethereal effect of the scene. The band/orchestra would have to carry those emotions described in the previous paragraph; listening to the soundtrack, you can see they use lots of strings instruments in this song to achieve that effect. The lighting can make us of the prevalent color motifs in the show as well. In practically every version of the Heathers story, Veronica is associated with blue, while J.D. is associated with black. The other color to focus on in this scene would be red, which is commonly associated with both love and violent rage. Going through the scene step by step, Veronica starts the song in a burst of anger, and feels like she and J.D. aren’t on the same page, so the musical jabs should be loud and harsh, and there should be a red spotlight on Veronica. As she calms down and pleads to J.D., the music should get softer, a second spotlight should appear over J.D., and the colors should shift from red to blue, symbolizing Veronica winning him over. When the song hits the second chorus, the two of them should be on the higher level of the stage, and the floodlights should be on, filling the stage with white and gold, colors tied to heaven and purity. The music should be loud and soaring, really using those strings. Then there’s a moment where Veronica and J.D. get caught up in their emotions and kiss, but then awkwardly end it because there’s a sense that they shouldn’t be getting back into that kind of thing yet. Here the floodlights should go off, and the only light should be a single spotlight that covers both Veronica and J.D. as they face each other. The color can be pink, which has the love connotations that red does but not those of anger and violence, and the sound should quiet down.

To close out, I’ll briefly discuss the characters’ costumes and makeup. Since J.D. is resistant to change and doesn’t care about societal norms, he always wears a black coat, with a dark shirt underneath, and black shoes. He probably wouldn’t dress up for the funeral, the most maybe being a tie. On the other hand hand, Veronica, who has more respect for people, would dress up more. She could wear a black coat (fancier than J.D.'s) and then take it off for the song, with her regular blue  outfit underneath to fit with the color symbolism of the lights.