Bubble Boy

Bubble Boy is a musical with music and lyrics by Cinco Paul and book by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, based on the 2001 Touchstone Pictures' film Bubble Boy. Like the movie, it tells the story of Jimmy Livingston, a boy born without immunities who is forced to live in a plastic bubble room. Thematically, the musical explores the idea that we all have our "bubbles" which prevent us from being all we can be, and that we need to break out of them. The musical's first professional production opened November 6, 2013 at Hamilton Stage in Rahway, New Jersey. An original cast recording was released by Ghostlight Records on July 14, 2017, and the show was subsequently published by Dramatists Play Service and became available for professional and nonprofessional licensed productions. Background The original movie Bubble Boy was a commercial and critical failure that didn't turn out the way that Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio wanted it to. They saw turning it into a musical as a way to redeem the story and tell it as they originally intended. The first production was in February 2008 at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza's Scherr Forum and featured a cast of high school students. The musical was subsequently chosen by the Disney ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, headed by Stephen Schwartz, who became a champion of the show. He has said, "Bubble Boy is one of the cleverest, funniest, and most endearing musicals I've seen in a long time." This led to workshops at Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State University, and several readings in New York City.