Why we let the Dean write the entire show this year
While undeniably fun, writing Law Follies is no small task. Typically, putting together enough material to fill the show’s runtime requires significant contributions of time and effort from the entire writer’s room. For this reason, we were equal parts grateful and perplexed, when, this year, Dean Iacobucci offered to personally write the entire thing.
We spent hours trying to impress upon the Dean the extent of the responsibility he would be undertaking. We were unable to dissuade him. The Dean argued (perhaps reasonably) that he is, himself, the essence and life blood of this law school. He went on to explain, in a moving and clearly well-rehearsed speech, that the show could only be truly representative of the U of T Law experience if 100 percent of the live sketches, video segments, and musical numbers were penned by his own hand.
Unable to argue with this proposition, I, Kate Mazzuocco, and the rest of the writers’ room simply accepted our reduced role as mere creative consultants offering input.
Of course, there have been creative differences. For instance, our directors initially balked when the Dean demanded that the entirety of the props budget be earmarked for croissants and other baked goods which, he suggested, could be fired at the audience through a t-shirt cannon at the climax of a (since scrapped) musical number entitled “Paint it Yak”.
While we did what we could to accommodate the Dean’s vision, tensions inevitably boiled over. When, for instance, an early draft of the show’s script included a four-hour, shot-for-shot reenactment of “Titanic”, with the Dean playing both Jack and Rose, we were forced to put our collective feet down.
We explained that the satire would land only if the script were altered to include some kind of allusion to law or legal education, and if the Dean agreed to play at most 2 out of 3 of the film’s central characters. After that, the Dean’s feelings were pretty obviously hurt and we didn’t see him again for another three weeks.
Just when we had begun to assume that the Dean had given up and abandoned the whole project, he returned with a fresh batch of scripts, including a whopping four-and-a-half hours of additional content. The Titanic transcript was still in there, but this time he had attempted to hide it in a footnote, to be shot as a sort of flashback. Given the staggering length of his submissions, we initially assumed that the Dean had been aided by a team of privately hired, professional writers. Yet this intuition seems to be rebutted by the sheer attention to detail devoted to every line of the eight, separate sketches which explored the John Sopinka clerkship experience.
To this day, we’re still not entirely sure what motivated the Dean to undertake this project. Our only clue is the number of times he gushed to us about how excited he was to supplement his already impressive biography with such distinctions as “Follies Head Writer”, “Only Dean to write a Follies” and “Only Iacobucci to write a Follies”. Apparently quite satisfied with the experience, he has pressed us urgently for news on renewal of his contract.
This development may, no doubt, sit uneasily with those of you who view Follies as a satirical outlet for the student body. But, given that the Dean is no longer threatening to move the show to a Friday morning and to make it mandatory, we remain convinced that we made the right call.
*Editor’s Note: Zac Kroll was one of the Head Writers for Follies this year, along with Kate Mazzuocco.
**Editor’s Other Note: Follies is February 6 at the Opera House. Doors at 7:00pm, show at 8:00pm. Afterparty until 1:00am. Tickets will be available for $10 in the Atrium at lunch until February 4. The Dean had no role in writing the show.
