ABSTRACT
At once a source of streaming video and music, an educational tool, social media platform, grassroots distributor, advertiser, and favorite means to procrastinate, YouTube has become a ubiquitous part of people’s lives. Created in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, it immediately garnered attention from tech bloggers as a “site to watch.” Team StarKid started on the campus of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In 2008, founding members Matt and Nick Lang were theater majors and part of a student-run theater organization called Basement Arts. Team StarKid’s seventh full production, Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier, was the most ambitious project to date. The Lang brothers wrote the book with Eric Kahn Gale. A. J. Holmes returned to compose the music. The musical aimed to be to Disney’s Aladdin what Stephen Schwartz’s musical Wicked was to Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its iconic 1939 film adaptation.
