Hotrods, Ghosts & Hatchet Heads
Hotrods, Ghosts & Hatchet Heads is an original Ken Bradbury musical built as a love letter to Jacksonville High School and its long, colorful history. The curtain rises on the junk-filled attic of the old Newton Bateman building, where four friends — Jenny, Olivia, Madison and Abby — sneak in by flashlight, doing exactly what JHS kids have always done: the opposite of what they were told. Among the piles of yearbooks, dusty boxes and the cast-off "refuse of years and years," they begin to disturb the relics of generations of students.
Out of the shadows comes Eddie, the ghost of JHS — an old janitor who has been pushing a broom in that building for longer than anyone can remember. As the students finger through the forgotten objects, Eddie tells the stories behind them. The history unfolds not in tidy chronological order but the way memory actually works: an object picked up here, a song or a scene conjured there. Through these tales the show reaches back across the school's first hundred years, drawing on real local history — the great fire of March 14, 1918 that destroyed the high school and Trinity Church, the founding influence of Newton Bateman, and the everyday life of a town and its school across the decades.
The first act closes with a trap the girls cannot escape: Eddie explains that before anyone can leave the attic, everyone must believe in the Spirit of JHS — and all eyes turn to the doubting Olivia. Act II rolls forward into the 1950s and beyond, complete with a real motorcycle onstage and an Elvis impersonator, marching through rock-and-roll and the rowdy soundtrack of the school's later years. The show ends only when Olivia finally comes around; she dons a cheerleader's outfit and leads the whole company in the school song.
Musical Numbers
Act I
- Thriller — Thriller Dancers
- Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey? — Singers/Dancers
- Darktown Strutters' Ball — Singers/Dancers
- Rock-a-Bye Your Baby — Singers/Dancers
- Hail! Hail! The Gang's All Here! — Singers/Dancers
- Smiles — Soloist plus Singers/Dancers
- Over There! — Singers/Dancers
- Meet Me in St. Louis — Singers/Dancers
- Give My Regards to Broadway — Singers/Dancers
- My Merry Oldsmobile — Soloist plus Singers/Dancers
- Red Door — Soloist plus Singers/Dancers
Act II
- Love Me Tender — Elvis
- All Shook Up — Elvis plus Singers/Dancers
- Unchained Melody — Ensemble plus Chorus
- I'm Goin' To Woodson — Woodson Singers
- Murrayville Tonight — Murrayville Singers
- Put Another Nickel In — Nickelodeon Singers
- Wild Thing — Nickelodeon Singers
- Louie Louie — Nickelodeon Singers
- The Twist — Nickelodeon Singers
- Shout — Nickelodeon Singers
- JHS Loyalty — the Cast
Cast
- Jenny
- Olivia
- Madison
- Abby
- Eddie — the ghostly janitor of JHS
- Elvis impersonator
The full company also fills out the show's many ensembles, including the Bill Bailey, Darktown Strutters, Rockabye, Hail! Hail!, Smiles, Over There, Meet Me in St. Louis, Give My Regards and Oldsmobile singers and dancers; the Jocks; the Fire Shouters and Fire Crowd; the Diary Readers; the Woodson and Murrayville Singers; the Nickelodeon Singers and Teens; the Kindergarten Kids; and the Finale Speakers.
Production Notes
Written by Ken Bradbury for Jacksonville High School, Hotrods, Ghosts & Hatchet Heads is a homegrown history pageant — a musical that turns a school's archives, anniversaries and tall tales into a stage full of music and ghosts. Its framing device, the attic of the old Newton Bateman building tended by a spectral janitor, lets the show range freely across more than a century of JHS life, from its nineteenth-century founding through the fire of 1918 and on into the rock-and-roll era. The script and supporting materials draw on genuine local sources, including a written history of the school's first hundred years, to ground the songs and scenes in the real story of Jacksonville and its high school.