There’s a playful irony to the way that a decentralized, collaborative, unsanctioned DIY musical could use the Disney adaptation musical format for something so uncommercial and grassroots, because it’s the exact opposite of what we’ve been led to believe a “Disney musical” is. The Michael Eisner–era “Disneyfication” of Times Square saw the company collaborating with the city to make the Theater District appeal to tourists and corporate interests above all, with Disney’s high-sheen, mega-production-value musicals dominating the theater landscape. But the TikTok Ratatouille Musical - or Ratatousical - manages to subvert the accepted narrative about Disney on Broadway. The theater TikTok trend of making musicals out of strange subject matter began earlier in the pandemic, with viral works like Grocery Store the Musical, but the specific appeal of the Ratatouille musical is the alternate reality of it all: It is not inconceivable that there is a timeline where Ratatouille: The Musical was announced as a big-budget, family-friendly production alongside the likes of Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid. Composers, singers, actors, musicians, dancers, and set designers have come together to write and perform original songs for a Ratatouille musical that does not exist on any stage, but is alive and ever-growing on TikTok. While Broadway is shut down and schools have gone virtual, theater kids and professionals alike are collaborating on the app to create a fully socially distanced musical about one particular muse: Remy the rat from Pixar’s 13-year-old Francophilia flick Ratatouille. Photo: remarkable is happening on TikTok.
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