LLF: Don't Trust The Boyz! THE MUSICAL at Bergen County Academies

An imagined modern sequel to Shakespeare's "Loves Labors Lost" is devised into an original new musical! The UN Secretary General, now in her second term with 40% of the world at war, passes the Divisive Language Bill, placing draconian fines on all words considered divisive when used in art and music. Following the suspicious death of King, the CEO of the #1 global record company, Lance Agit Records, his daughter, Princess, must choose the next band to sign while attending a concert at the Muse of Fyre Festival: the bland boy band, Dont Trust the Boyz, or JacQui B, an emerging rap artist who Princess and her posse, Katherine, Rosaline, and Maria, immediately love. While at the concert, Princess receives a text from her father, King, saying, "Don't Trust The Boyz" seconds before dying from a mysterious poisoning, which seems to indicate signing The Boyz was his dying wish. With the help of her power posse, Princess launches a 3-month long audience-choice competition between the two groups culminating in a battle of the bands. In flashbacks, we see Nathaniel, CFO of Lance Agit Records, and Holofernes, their head research scientist, two of Kings most trusted employees, as well as Maria, and the UN Secretary General secretly performing a series of tests on Katherines deceased sisters congenitally blue and constantly happy triplets hoping to find the ingredient to world peace in order to end the wars and make lots of money. Meanwhile, Armado, a stylist hired to make over Dont Trust the Boyz, transforms The Boyz into a new and improved band, as JacQui B develops divisive raps, ignoring the UN Divisive language bill. The scientists, secretly experimenting on the triplets discover prions, a protein in the triplets blood, that causes the blueness and happiness, and determine a way to transmit theminto The Boyzs merchandise to help achieve world peace by turning the population homogenous. The merchandise is then distributed to the general public causing the wearers skin to turn blue, block out the noises of the wars, and spread happiness. A power outage at the Lance Agit Compound, caused by Dull and Costard, the company roadies, creates a mixup of important letters which end up in the wrong hands, revealing upsetting information to several key characters. At long last, the battle of the bands, held on an island in Bali, between Dont Trust the Boyz and JacQui B occurs. Security storms the stage arresting JacQui B for her failure to pay her accumulated fines. A riot breaks out, JacQui B is dragged off stage. The play ends in a state of unrest leaving both the characters and audience members with one lasting question: Is world peace realistically attainable and is homogeneity or diversity the way to get there?