Occupy-Inspired Musical Launches Ambitious Kickstarter Campaign

The Big Bank is a musical comedy about a bank that loves to foreclose on people, a banker who falls in love with a middle-class florist whose shop he's been sent to foreclose on and a radical environmentalist who uses his ambitious 11-year-old daughter's idea to spark a revolution against the bank from a single tweet.

Sound familiar? It might sound like a social media musical response to the Occupy Wall Street movement, except for the fact that the script was written 16 years ago.

The project was started by Jacob and Dan Seligmann in 1995, and although it received some attention, including a comparison to the Gershwin brothers by The New York Times, a musical about foreclosure didn't seem to be what producers were interested in at the time.

After years of sitting on the shelf, recent revolutions in digital media — as well as the start of the financial crisis in 2008 — brought the show back to life. The Big Bank has been altered to become one of the first social media musicals in existence. The original plot was to blow up the bank, but the scene was later regrettably removed and replaced by the daughter's idea to tweet a revolution.

The Seligmann brothers reunited to produce the show they hadn't touched in years. It was performed at the Emerson Theatre Collective in Mystic, Conn., which led to its acceptance in this year's New York Musical Theatre Festival, where it sold out every night from Sept. 30 through Oct. 4.

Ironically, as the musical's brief spot on the stage came to an end, Occupy Wall Street was just beginning to fire up in New York. Jacob Seligmann, the composer of the musical, grabbed his accordion and performed numbers from the show for protesters in Zucotti Park, such as "We Repossess," a comical number about the items banks collected from houses as casually as if they were baseball cards.

"The Big Bank is a musical of the movement, there's no question about it," says Seligmann. "We want this movement to move on and into the whole culture, and theater is a great way to do that, and laughter is a great way to bring people into our movement of love over money."

Inspired by the synchrony, the Seligmann brothers are using Kickstarter, an online funding platform, to bring The Big Bank to a New York City stage. To do so, they would need to raise $100,000 — more money than has ever been raised for a musical on Kickstarter before.

"We chose Kickstarter after a lot of research, and believe that people are more willing to give on Kickstarter for several reasons," explains Seligmann. "One, it's the most well-known site, so people feel comfortable. Most importantly, it is the only site that requires that the projects get fully funded before receiving any money. We think people like that concept, and like to give when they know that the project they're giving to will only go forward if fully funded."

Previous productions that have successfully raised money through Kickstarter include One for my Baby, which raised $67,605 in June, and Hereafter Musical, which topped off at $61,250.

Other wildly successful projects on Kickstarter include the LunaTik, a multi-touch watch kit that's original goal was $15,000 and made Kickstarter history when it raised an incredible $942,578.

In addition to seeking its own funding, Seligmann has remembered to keep the heart of their musical's main theme in mind. They are cross promoting Occupy Love, a documentary about the entire occupy movement because, according to Seligmann, "they have the message of the movement." Seligmann says they've only met the makers of the film via Skype.