Girl In A Blue Wig In Musicals is a series of short videos on TikTok by the creator Emily Evans (@ehmilyevans). It started with one-off short POV skits about an obnoxious, narcissistic high school girl, who believes herself to be far, far more naturally talented in musical theatre than she actually is, auditioning very poorly for school musicals, characterised by her bright blue wig that she is never seen without, hence her gaining the nickname “Blue”. The skits gained an audience through their relatability - almost every high school theatre department has had that one girl who acts like she’s more important than she actually is and makes life a chore for everyone else - and they eventually expanded into a full-blown series with an overarching storyline, featuring a variety of colourful, far more likeable characters all played by Evans herself.
The character of Blue originally debuted in skits in late 2020, with the first series debuting in early 2021, starting with Blue’s audition for the lead role in Beauty and the Beast in which she manages to break almost every rule of auditioning for a musical and eventually showing her meltdown at being cast in ensemble instead. Her consistent poor behaviour in rehearsals, disrupting and disrespecting her fellow actors, eventually causes her to be kicked out of the show altogether, which she does NOT take well. At suggestions from viewers, Evans added more characters in the form of more cast members, especially the three actors playing the main roles in Beauty and the Beast, who are far more friendly and supportive with each other and genuinely love and enjoy being in theatre and each other’s company. Their distinct characterisations and chemistry with each other, coupled with the healthy drama from Blue, and the relatability of the series with current and former theatre kids alike got many viewers heavily invested in the series and allowed it and Emily's account to gain a large following.
After Beauty and the Beast wrapped, the series gained a second season in the form of the next school musical, Heathers. The series is currently still ongoing and available to watch in full on TikTok @ehmilyevans
, while the first season of the series is uploaded in full on Evans’s YouTube channel for more convenient viewing.
Girl In A Blue Wig In Musicals contains examples of:
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Acting for Two: Acting for at least a dozen in this case - every single character in this series is played by one person putting on a different outfit, hat, and voice for each character. - Adults Are Useless: Zigzagged - Director #1 was quick to dismiss Blue for her awful behaviour, plus the stage manager and most of the backstage crew are no-nonsense and don’t hesitate to shut her down. However, Director #2 gives Blue a lead role in Heathers despite allegedly watching the last show and seeing her barge onto stage and tolerates a LOT of Blue’s misconduct before finally kicking her out. Blue’s mother is also a classic Pushover Parent who often outright encourages her daughter’s disrespect.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: The audience of Beauty and the Beast gives Elliot a standing ovation when Blue barges on stage mid-scene, and Elliot manages to stay in his Beast character and ad-lib ordering her away. The cast, crew, and director later congratulate him for his stage professionalism.
- Blatant Lies: Sunflower denies that she is the one who cut up Belle’s gloves, up to and including when she's shown the security camera footage of her doing it.
- Beautiful Singing Voice: Given this series is about theatre kids, it follows that (almost) all of them can sing very well. It helps that they're all voiced by a real-life version of this trope. As a few examples:
- Anna has been in musicals since she was a kid, so it makes sense that she sings beautifully, especially as Belle. (Though her soft, light soprano voice later struggles slightly with the belting required for Veronica in Heathers).
- Jake has also been in musicals since childhood, often performing with Anna, and he's acknowledged to be a talented singer. He lands the very vocally demanding role of Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, and later Heather Duke in Heathers, which is even more challenging as a guy singing the octave up.
- Even Elliot, despite this being his first show, has some impressive vocal chops once he comes out of his shell. He nails the very hard song "If I Can't Love Her" relatively early on in rehearsals and impresses longtime theatre kids Anna and Jake. It was likely that the director seeing his potential was what caused him to get as Beast over the more experienced Jake.
- Madison in Season 2 has a background in professional theatre, so she is exceptionally vocally talented and harmonises beautifully with Anna in "Seventeen".
- Ivy, the girl playing Martha in Heathers, sings "Kindergarten Boyfriend" beautifully - hell, Elliot is practically enchanted by her voice.
- This trope is heavily subverted with Blue and Sunflower, naturally. Blue's singing is either flat or shouty and she refuses to accept ANY critique during her expensive vocal "lessons". Sunflower is also a weak singer, though she can at least carry a tune better than Blue.
- Berserk Button: For both Jake and Anna, it's anything to with Jake's bad family. He unloads on Blue when she blames his hostility towards her on his bad home life (as opposed to being awful herself) and Anna straight up slaps her for it at the end of Season 1 - and she's not afraid to do it again.
- Chewing the Scenery: Blue does this constantly, both during rehearsals as part of her It's All About Me attitude (see below), and as Emily's performance of her.
- Color Motif: The leads for both musicals are both associated with the colour blue - Belle wearing a blue dress at the start of Beauty and the Beast and Veronica wearing a blue uniform in Heathers. No wonder Blue keeps going so hard for them - she even tries to get the costume designer to change her character of Heather Duke’s colour from green to blue during Heathers so she can keep her blue wig.
- More subtly, Jake’s roles seem to be associated with the colour red, from Gaston to Ram in Heathers. This is both to match his signature red flannel shirt and as a foil for Blue’s, well, blue, as he tends to clash with her the most often. This is subverted slightly when he lands the role of Heather Duke after Blue is kicked out, a role which is associated with the colour green (and later red).
- Comically Missing the Point: Elliot turns up late for the first full dress rehearsal because his dad drove him to the track after Elliot said he needed to "run some lines."
- Determined Defeatist: Even after Blue is kicked out of multiple shows multiple times and even banned from the theatre, she still continues to audition and show up to rehearsals, including “disguising” herself in a pink wig (that she puts over her regular blue one), acting as though she has a much more important part than she actually does, and even uses the same rehearsal space at the same time to “produce” her own original musical.
- Blue’s mother, too, will not stop barging into rehearsals and insisting on her daughter being let back into the show, even after being told multiple times that she’s not allowed in and even her own daughter telling her not to come as she “could handle it”.
- To a lesser extent, Sunflower still turns up to the opening night of Beauty and the Beast despite being banned for destroying costumes and still aids Blue in sabotaging the show by giving her a stolen mic.
- Did Not Think This Through: Sunflower puts on a pink wig to “disguise” herself as Blue while cutting up Belle’s gloves … but 1) she cuts the gloves up in the hallway in plain view of the security camera, and 2) she doesn’t change her trademark sunflower sweater, making her easily identifiable.
- Most of Sunflower's actions can be chalked up to this trope - attempting to make Blue look bad would be one thing, but Blue gets kicked out of shows and banned from the theatre department entirely through her own actions. Blue was already kicked out of the show and had the full contempt of the cast and crew before Belle's gloves were stolen and destroyed, meaning Sunflower's actions only make herself look bad.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Blue on several occasions - aside from always claiming that the only reason people don't like her is because they're "jealous" of her "talent", she protests being kicked out of Heathers for, in her view, insisting that she keep her blue wig for the show. In reality, she was kicked out after disrespecting the tech crew by saying they don't work hard, which was the final straw for the director.
- Establishing Character Moment: Blue’s very first scene in the series - also the very first scene in the series period - is her auditioning for Beauty and the Beast, while straight-up telling the director she deliberately dressed up as a “modern interpretation” of Belle in a dark red dress, and then proceeds with a VERY shouty audition of "Dead Girl Walking" from Heathers (a less-than-appropriate song for a family-friendly show) and sings right over the director’s instructions to stop. The character had been in one-off skits before the start of the series, but this gives the viewers a pretty good overview of Blue’s character - that she’s oblivious, self-important, and a Giftedly Bad musical theatre actress and singer.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": This is applied to almost every character in season 1:
- The main cast members are called by their character names, “Belle”, “Beast”, and “Gaston”. Their names are revealed in the very last episode of Season 1, as the show is over.
- Both directors are only referred to as “the director”.
- The stage manager is simply referred to as such.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Played with. Sunflower destroys Belle’s gloves during Beauty and the Beast and attempts to frame Blue for it by wearing a pink wig (as Blue had previously done once) in an attempt to make her look bad - well, worse. Blue’s actual track record of poor behaviour and stealing/wearing Belle’s costumes convinces the director of her guilt until the security camera footage reveals the real culprit. It’s enough to get them both banned from the theatre … until the next show and a new director.
- Frame-Up: Not only does Sunflower attempt to frame Blue for destroying Belle’s gloves, but she tries to frame Blue for trying to frame Elliot for it (because Elliot kept rejecting her attempts at flirting) by planting the gloves in the pocket of Elliot’s Beast costume.
- Good Parents: Anna's two mothers are this to her, acknowledging how hard she's worked for the show and booking tickets to see her perform every night. They are also this to Jake, taking him into their home after his family rejects him and outright calling him "family".
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Blue's "classical training" only lets her land an ensemble role in Beauty and the Beast. Justified in that she barely actually learns anything in her vocal lessons due to her refusal to accept critique, making this hardly Hard Work.
- Invoked also with Elliot landing one of the title roles in Beauty and the Beast despite having no experience and only auditioning as a joke.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Blue’s singing somehow gets worse throughout the series despite nearly three years of “classical training” - she goes from being able to hold somewhat the tune of "Dead Girl Walking" from Heathers during her audition for Beauty and the Beast, to not being able to hold a C note or sing the solfège properly while she was still in Heathers.
- It's All About Me: No matter what role (or lack thereof) Blue has in the show, she will ALWAYS try to be the centre of attention and assert that she has a more significant, more important part than she actually does. To list prominent instances:
- Over-emphasising the singular line she has in the Beauty and the Beast ensemble ("What are we going to do?!"), calling it "the most important line in the show".
- She claimed she was "promoted to assistant director" when she was kicked out of the show and asked to join tech after apologising. The director gave her an "I'll think about it" answer, which was all Blue needed to waltz backstage like she was in charge.
- After she was once again given the boot, she THEN claimed her role was the "should-be understudy for Belle" even though Belle already HAD an understudy.
- After landing the role of Heather Duke in Heathers, Blue constantly emphasised her role as a "lead", claimed the director had put her in charge of vocal warmups before rehearsal, and constantly sang over other people's parts.
- After being kicked out of Heathers, she then starts proclaiming that she is writing, directing, producing, and starring in her OWN show and using the same rehearsal space at the same time as the other cast members running lines (which means singing LOUDLY over them and being incredibly distracting). She even asks the director if she can sing her songs before the show and during the interval. The director bluntly refuses.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Blue’s constant cries that the directors are playing favourites are mostly unfounded … until it’s revealed that Madison is the new director’s niece, hence likely why she landed the lead role of JD in Heathers.
- Jake's complaining about initially landing the role of Ram in Heathers instead of JD is also a bit uncalled for until said nepotism reveal.
- Conversely, the director's own Nepotism could be considered this - casting her own niece in a lead role was always going to look bad, but Madison is undeniably talented as a professional actress and more than capable of taking on the role.
- Karma Houdini: Though both Blue and Sunflower are kicked out of the show and even banned from the theatre after their many attempts to sabotage Beauty and the Beast, the arrival of a new director means that this ban is lifted, and both are free to audition again. However, this doesn’t last too long, with Blue’s uncivil behaviour towards the cast and crew causing her to get kicked out of the show once again.
- Madison starts to slip into this during later Season 2, belittling the costume manager's work. Being the new director's niece, she gets away with it, while similar behaviour from Blue got her kicked out of the show.
- Limited Wardrobe: The characters almost always wear the same outfits day after day, barring contexts where it makes sense for them to wear different clothes, like when they’re performing. It makes sense - since they’re all played by one person, the different outfits are the only way to distinguish them at a glance.
- Moment of Weakness: Jake finally breaks down about his family issues in front of Blue of all people, about how his family shamelessly ignores and neglects him and doesn't like or accept him being in theatre, while Blue is from a well-off background with a mother who panders to her every need. He admits that being in theatre is ALL he has going for him, and he's even willing to be civil to Blue if it means not being kicked out of the show.
- Nameless Narrative: None of the characters are given proper names in season 1, with almost all of them being called by their defining “roles” - the main cast members are called by their character names in the show Beauty and the Beast, the girl in the blue wig is called Blue for obvious reasons, and Sunflower being named for her jumper.
- Nepotism: The director of Heathers puts Madison, her own niece, in a leading role in the show and even considers adding Blue and Sunflower back into the show despite their awful track records at Madison’s suggestion. Subverted slightly in that Madison has a background in professional theatre and is more than qualified for the role.
- Only Friend: Sunflower is this to Blue, though their "friendship" is sketchy to say the least.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: After Blue is kicked out of Beauty and the Beast, she turns up to the next rehearsal "disguised" in a pink wig over her usual blue one.
- Sunflower later dons the same pink wig to disguise herself as Blue to frame her without taking off her usual sunflower sweater.
- Parental Abandonment: Jake's family never shows up to any show he's in, and it's later revealed that he spends most of his away time at Anna's house because his parents won't open the door for him even if he's banging on it.
- The police officer who comes to apprehend Blue and her mother for refusing to leave backstage during Beauty and the Beast turns out to be Blue's mother's ex-husband, who divorced her five years prior. While it's not outright stated that he's also Blue's father, and while you can hardly blame him for wanting to get away from her, one has to wonder if Blue may have turned out better if she'd spent more time with him instead of her mother (though given that it's implied they divorced because he cheated, this is dubious.)
- School Play: The main plot threads of the series revolve around the troubled high school productions of the stage musicals Beauty and the Beast and Heathers.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: At the end of Season 1, after Blue confronts the main three cast members at the Denny's post-show cast party, they decide to make a swift exit for Anna’s house rather than be accosted by her mother.
- Ship Tease: Plenty between the main three cast members. Jake makes a comment about him possibly being on a date with Anna and Elliot when Blue accosts them in a restaurant. The others don't exactly object to this.
- There's a healthy amount of this between Elliot and Ivy while hanging out at Anna's house.
- Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Inverted to the absolute max - Blue will snatch ANY opportunity to be the centre of attention (She even says she wears the bright blue wig because it “gives her character”), barges into the rest of the group's conversations, and won't back down no matter how many times others try to put her in her place.
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So Bad, It's Good: Madison's reasoning for adding Blue and Sunflower back into the show as Kurt and Ram, pointing out that since the show has been a train wreck almost the whole time, they might as well make the casting "hilariously terrible." This idea is quickly shut down by the stage manager, who refuses to allow Blue to be a Karma Houdini. - Sore Loser: Blue throws a hissy fit after losing the lead role to Anna during both shows, stating that Anna "isn't even trained!" even though Anna has been performing since childhood, so she has plenty of experience (and can actually carry a tune). Much later in the series, she attempts to bribe the director for the role of Kurt after she was kicked out.
- Jake shows shades of this during Season 2 after he is initially cast as Ram in Heathers, claiming that he would've been better as JD than Madison, even though she's previously worked in professional theatre.
- Subverted surprisingly with Sunflower, who takes both her ensemble role and getting the minor part of Ms Fleming in stride.
- Take That!!: Blue sings an “original” song for her musical about how she’s innocent and talented and how everyone hates her for it … and it’s on ukulele. Sounds awfully familiar …
- Wham Line: “THIS IS ALL I HAVE!” From Jake, after Blue provoking him causes him to react badly and endanger his role in Heathers.
- What Do You Mean, It's for Kids??: An in-universe example - Blue auditions for the role of Belle in Beauty and the Beast with the song "Dead Girl Walking" from Heathers - a song about (and sung during) sex. Her poor song choice for a family-friendly Disney musical is lampshaded by the other characters.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The main three call each other by their character names all the way through Season 1 up until the very last episode, claiming that they've always done it for every show as it helped them get into character - only they've mysteriously stopped doing it during Heathers in Season 2. You can't even argue that they're doing it for the sake of the new people in the cast since Elliot was also new in season 1, and they still called each other by their character names.
- Of course, the Doylist reason is that Evans hadn't come up with real names for them yet, but this could also be a joke as to how many of the roles in Heathers had to keep being recast due to actors either being absent or getting kicked out; therefore it would be somewhat confusing for characters to keep changing names.
