China the Whole Enchilada on the IHSA Circuit

A few weeks ago I received an email from Natalie Bozzetti. My first reaction was, “Good God, another restraining order?” Happily, it turns out Natalie is a high school senior outside of Chicago and a member of her school’s speech team. She and her speech team partner, Nisha Riley, want to use China the Whole Enchilada in the IHSA Speech competition.

What!?

How do two high school girls outside of Chicago know about China the Whole Enchilada? Which is exactly what I asked her.

“Nisha saw two males perform your script at a speech competition about two years ago.”

Oh, okay. Wait. What?

It seems, and I have no idea how it happened, but high school students in Illinois are using China the Whole Enchilada in Speech tournaments.

“According to Nisha and my coach, a couple of schools have had a lot of success with the piece and have received belly bursting laughs if done well!”

DeKalb students Renee Larson and Jake Willrett nabbed 1st place in the Regionals and Sectionals.

I’m gob-smacked. I have no idea how my show was discovered by high school students. After receiving rave reviews at the World Premiere at the New York Fringe Festival and being awarded Outstanding Musical, the show hasn’t been produced too much. There’s a fine line that needs to be walked when doing it and not all productions have been successful with that walk. One of the more successful productions was by Theatre LaB Houston.

So you can imagine my surprise at getting a letter from two high school students who want to do the show.

“It’s hard to find a well written hilarious script, such as yours. Nisha brought up the idea about China The Whole Enchilada. We read a sample of the script and LOVED IT! We just knew it would be the perfect piece.”

I think I just found my new PR agent.

What Natalie wanted to know was whether having two girls perform it would go against my intent of the show. Turns out there are strict Draconian rules with the IHSA Speech circuit and competitors can’t against the author’s intent. Since my intent was to have the show performed I couldn’t see a problem with two extremely intelligent students with impeccable taste in ribald theatre performing the show.

A Very Brief History of China the Whole Enchilada

What started out as a play about the history of China turned into a musical when the idea of the invasion of the Khans being a musical number popped into my addled mind. I then wrote a waltz about foot binding, a duet for Ming the Merciless and Fu Manchu and several more songs. I was able to trick my good friend Paul Mirkovich into working on the show and his arrangements are amazeballs. A musical was born.

Enchilada opened Aug 8, 2008 (the same day the Beijing Olympics opened) at the New York International Fringe Festival. It was named Outstanding Musical and then was optioned for a commercial run. We did backers auditions in NYC and LA (to our amusement, at ICM) but then the financial world imploded. No one was investing in anything, let alone a three-man musical about China.

For those of you who like to buy holiday gifts early, might I suggest a copy of this wickedly funny comedy.

I am indebted to Eric Hissom, Philip Nolen, Brad DePlanche and Jim Helsinger for the development of China the Whole Enchilada. I wrote the show with them in mind and they all did the workshop and the NY Fringe Festival production. I couldn’t have asked for a better team. They put up with all of my rewrites during the workshop. They dove into now long gone scenes such as the perpetually high Rastafarian panda and the Chinese Language Lesson.

My favorite moment during the workshop was when I was struggling with the Chinese Exclusion scene. All I had was a talking head and it was beyond boring. I went back to the hotel that night and crapped out what would become the vaudeville-esque sketch about a Chinese immigrant trying to enter the United States. I came into rehearsal with a ton of pages. We sat down and dove right in. I made some cuts and then we put it on its feet. Half an hour later we were moving on to another scene. That’s how good they are.

Back to Natalie and Nisha

So, Natalie Bozzetti and Nisha Riley, thank you for wanting to do the show. I hope you defeat your competition like China defeated — um – like China defeated — um –okay, so China hasn’t really defeated anyone, unless you go back to 1522 when the Ming defeated the Portuguese in the Second Battle of Tamao.

So defeat your competition as well as China cranks out counterfeits.  I hope you win the whole enchilada.

And remember: you can’t spell enchilada without C.H.I.N.A.