#14: Orcs — The Musical
Student houses are stereotypically full of old pizza boxes, unopened cleaning products, and stolen traffic cones. They are also home to an assortment of obscure items abandoned by previous owners. This was how I discovered Orcs — The Musical.
Our house had a ‘scary cupboard’, a graveyard for mouldy blinds and broken hoovers. It was the kind of cupboard that conceals a dead body. Naturally I decided to empty it.
The first crusty old shoe set a sinister tone to my rummage. Suddenly even the colourful ball pool balls rolling about between the junk seemed like props from a horror film. It was as if, object by object, I would learn the house’s dark secret.
But I had no internet to entertain me, so one bauble at a time, I waded deeper into the mess, a confusion of objects that had nothing in common but the layer of grime coating their surfaces.
Then I found a ragged khaki T Shirt and pair of leggings in a carrier bag. There is something about a stranger’s worn clothes that creeps me out, so I quickly buried them in a bin liner.
It was only then that I saw the pages of Orcs — The Musical peeping out between the cardboard boxes. Suddenly I realised I had just binned a handcrafted orc costume.
I knew I had discovered a gem.
For those of you unfamiliar with The Lord of the Rings and, like my housemate, currently imagining dancing killer whales, orcs are actually a fictional race of goblin-like creatures. Like killer whales, they are almost entirely unsuitable subjects for a musical, but, in true student fashion, someone had thrown all mature instinct into the wind (probably over a beer) and produced it anyway. I know this because I watched it on YouTube.
Needless to say it was not a success.
Orcs — The Musical features some recognisable songs with unrecognisable lyrics. ‘Fame’ becomes ‘Maim’ and at one point ‘The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Screaming’.
What makes this find so brilliant is its obscureness, its true commitment to the spirit of students. An essence that meant, four years later, the same house rattles again with the sound of screaming.
Perhaps we can tell most about a period of someone’s life by what they leave behind, by what is temporary not permanent, by the objects so specific to that moment that they are ruthlessly abandoned in a ‘scary cupboard’ somewhere.
Everything we throw away once meant something, otherwise we would not possess it to dispose of in the first place. Every object lurking in an attic or a skip once had a purpose or a significance. Even if it was just the packaging round another object. Even if it is now broken beyond use. These objects still hold stories, like the pages of a forgotten musical, and they still tell these stories to complete strangers, as a different group of students re-enact the terrible musical in their living room.
Perhaps the least treasured objects are actually the most revealing.
