STORY // Short and Long

TITLE

Off The Track

(SHORT) SUMMARY

After failing to be a great leading man that he was expected to be in his living musical, Oakley Colton ventures out of his small town to find a different beat to sing and dance to.

Or

There's a small town in the middle of the woods (in 1950's America) that's set up as a musical (it's discovered later that there are a few more around) with a large curtain at its entrance. There are also stages, lighting rigs and backgrounds are set up all around. Silent stage hands get props ready for the next musical number, and chorus members have no lives outside reacting to the dramas around them. Those dramas belonging to the leading characters.

As the son of two of these leading characters, it's expected that Oakley would effortlessly become one too. However he's always been full of nerves and awkwardness so he's regularly teased and bullied by the rest of the town.

When he and his understudy Ela discover Marco wandering outside of the curtains of the town looking for shelter they click instantly. Wanting to rebel for once Oakley invited Marco into their town where they disguise him as a stage hand.

As Macro is unused to the way the town is set up, along with all the singing, he gets frustrated and breaks the town's giant metronome in anger. He's instantly kicked out of the town, while Oakley and Lea offer to make sure he stays away and find a new metronome.

This is mostly true, as the two are now able to discover the outside world with their own tour guide. This is mostly Ela's plan of action, as it takes Oakley more time to realise that he wants to leave the town for good.

[...they do explore new musical towns, discover those, hang, help out bit, possibly pick up more people along the way, but not too many]

They come back to their town with the metronome to replace it, and the town sees that Oakley and Lea are much more confident now and expect them to return. Instead, Oakley stands up against his old town and rejects this idea to venture off to find somewhere that suits the needs of all three of them.