Jack: Before the Ripper

Concept Proposal and Storyboard · Jennifer Jancuska · October 8, 2026

Concept

“Jack: Before the Ripper” (working title) is a 27-minute, fully sung, dance-driven musical. It is a prequel: the night Jack became the man history remembers. Hunted by a skeletal hound, Jack bursts into Hallow Hall and pulls down the kabuki drop shrouding it, waking a house that has been waiting a hundred years for him. He falls in love with the only other living person inside, and is changed forever by what that love costs him.

Logline. On the cusp of adulthood, Jack flees a skeletal hound into a mansion where a girl has been trapped in a birdcage for a hundred years. The house wakes for him, and he falls for her. He believes a kiss will set her free. It does, and the cage closes on him instead. Alone in the dark, he reaches for his knife and rises as Jack the Ripper.

The rule. Only a true kiss can set her free, and the one who frees her takes her place. She knows this. Jack does not.

Why Jack. The house has waited a hundred years for someone who could truly love her. When Jack arrives, it recognizes him: the party wakes to his heartbeat, and the cage opens to his steps.

The stakes. Jack wants to be with her and believes love can save them both. She knows that if they fall for each other and kiss, she goes free and they can never be together again. The house wants the kiss, and keeps pushing them together.

The arc. Jack enters the house hunted and hoping, and leaves it with nothing left to hope for. The kiss he believed would save them takes everything away and puts him in a cage. The madness that follows makes him the Ripper, and the hound that hunted him becomes his.

Polly. The girl in the cage (working name). She is the only other living person in the house.

The hound. The house’s hunter: an oversized skeletal hound built from the bones of Hallow Hall and worked by three puppeteers. It chases Jack into the house, nearly takes his head off, and is sucked back into the walls, becoming one with the mansion again. It returns at the end, when Jack is caged, and no longer hunts him. It waits for him.

The world. Hallow Hall, on the edge of London, 1888. Spiral staircases, portrait paintings that come alive, and a great birdcage hanging where a chandelier should be, all shrouded by a kabuki drop when we arrive. Everything and everyone in Hallow Hall is dead except Polly and Jack.

The dance. Athletic, eye-popping pop-contemporary movement carries the story, with stylized partnering and rhythmic tap as a formidable heartbeat and a passion to be close. Every number moves the plot through the body.

The music. Songs the audience already knows by heart, rebuilt to tell this story. Each one is chosen for where Jack is emotionally: the rush of the ball, the fear of “Crazy,” the joy of “Hey Ya!,” the defiance of “Can’t Hold Us.” Every high lifts him closer to Polly, and every low pulls him nearer to the knife. The score drives him relentlessly toward his destiny as Jack the Ripper.

The impact. Every element is placed to feed the next: the scare that opens the show, the party that sweeps the audience in, the comedy of the bones, the romance at the cage, and the heartbreak at the table. Together they make a complete, satisfying show: thrilling, funny, romantic and devastating in 27 minutes. Audiences leave having felt everything, and wanting to come back to feel it again.

Signature moments of theatre magic

• The kabuki drop: Jack pulls down the drop that shrouds Hallow Hall, revealing the frozen ball in a single stroke.
• The living portraits: Family members step out of their paintings in tap shoes.
• The birdcage: A cage that hangs as the chandelier, opens, swings like a pendulum, becomes a dance partner, and closes over Jack at the end.
• The vanish: In one moment, everyone and everything disappears, leaving Jack alone in the cage.
• Side light: Light from the wings and beyond extends the world past the footprint of the stage, so Hallow Hall feels far larger than the space it stands in.

The show at a glance

A prologue and six scenes, running 27:00.

Listen to all the songs on the Spotify playlist.

Beat-by-beat storyboard

Prologue: The Hunt, the Chase, the Door (0:00 to 1:30)

• The build: A heartbeat in the dark. Every four bars a new percussion layer stacks on (bass pulse, knife on steel, hi-hat, synth swell, choir, tap), louder and faster. Bones begin to rattle and click in time. At full volume, a held silence, then the jump scare: a scream, a white strobe, and the skeletal hound bursts out of the black.
• The chase: Jack bursts out of the back of the house with the hound a step behind. They tear down the aisle and past the front rows, and he vaults onto the stage.
• The near miss: The hound lunges, and its jaws snap shut a hair from Jack’s neck. Then it is sucked backward into the walls of the mansion, its bones folding into the house.
• The door (stinger 1): Jack hits a tall door at full speed. One enormous hit, then silence: only his heartbeat and his breath. The door creaks open.

Scene 1: The Ball (1:30 to 6:30)

• The reveal: Jack steps inside. Everything is shrouded. He grabs the kabuki drop and pulls, and it falls away in one stroke to reveal a ball frozen mid-revel. A birdcage hangs center where a chandelier should be, with Polly inside, frozen, her hand on the bars. One guest is frozen mid-reach for the cage’s lock.
• They know him: Silence, except Jack’s heartbeat. The kick drum picks it up. Every guest turns their head toward him at once, and the choir whispers his name.
• The build: Each step he takes brings a click from the cage lock, a new layer of the song, and another group of guests waking.
• The drop: The cage door swings open as the beat drops, and the ball explodes into stylized, high-energy contemporary ballroom: partnering, lifts and revelry. Jack sings lead as he is passed hand to hand.
• Polly: She steps out of the cage and dances with the company and on the cage itself: climbing it and swinging from its door.
• Almost-kiss 1: They find each other at center and nearly kiss. The house pulls her back.
• Hear: “I Gotta Feeling”, arranged darker: Jack’s heartbeat as the kick, knives and tap under the groove, and a choir on the hook.
• Button: The cage swings down like a pendulum and sweeps Polly inside, and the door slams. A flash, and she is gone. The cage swings empty until Jack touches it still.

Scene 2: The Knife Tap Battle (6:30 to 8:30)

• See: Butlers step out of the walls carrying knives. Family members step out of the portraits in tap shoes. Their intention: let’s see if you’re our guy.
• Move: Knives from one side, tap from the other, and Jack has to answer both. He is nearly stabbed and survives. Everyone stops on the rest: four strikes, then silence.
• Hear: An original EDM track built on knives and tap, with “Calabria” as the reference.
• Button: They slice his shirt off and hand him his own set of knives. A butler hauls the cage back up. Another stands Jack up and shoves him backward. A lighting transition, and Jack is abruptly somewhere new in the mansion.

Scene 3: The Halls and the Cage (8:30 to 12:00)

• See: Jack roams the halls alone. Polly waits in the cage at the landing of the spiral stairs, her part of the house. They cannot see each other.
• Hear: A mashup duet, sung apart. Jack sings “Crazy” (Gnarls Barkley): he is questioning his own sanity in a house that knew his name. Polly sings “Free” (Florence + the Machine): she is longing to get out. The songs alternate, then overlap as their paths spiral closer.
• Button: Jack reaches the cage. The two choruses lock together, sung face to face through the bars.

Scene 4: The Only Two Alive (12:00 to 15:00)

• The reveal: Jack touches the cage and the lights flicker, revealing everyone else in the mansion as skeletons, some puppets and some costumed performers. Under blacklight everything glows except Jack and Polly. They are the only two alive.
• Hear: The butlers start a beat with breath, knives and tap. It swiftly builds into “Shake It Off” (Taylor Swift), and the dead do exactly that.
• The light game: Lights off, and the bones are dancing everywhere. Lights on, and they freeze while Jack and Polly look around, confused. Each round the bones get bolder and goofier.
• Comedy: A whole house of skeletons shaking it off, so hard that bones rattle loose. A head flies off mid-spin and its partner catches it. A loose arm keeps dancing on its own. One stiff old butler is always on the wrong count.
• Button: The bones push Jack and Polly together.

Scene 5: The Tap Swing Duet at the Cage (15:00 to 18:30)

• See: The cage lowers to the foot of the stairs, and they use it the way Gene Kelly uses the lamppost in Singin’ in the Rain: swinging off the bars, riding the door, partnering through the bars, climbing over the top.
• Hear: “Hey Ya!” (OutKast), a duet sung together in soft-shoe tap. It sounds like pure joy while quietly asking whether love can last, which is exactly Polly’s secret.
• Jack and Polly: They end up sitting on top of the cage, alone above the house. His hand on her chest: her heartbeat, four beats and a rest. In the rest, they lean in.
• Button: Polly almost kills him. She knows that if they keep falling, they will kiss and he will be caged forever, and killing him now would spare him. She cannot do it. She drops the knife, screams and runs.

Scene 6: The Long Table (18:30 to 27:00)

• The call (1:30): Knives and tap summon the long table. Cast members carry pieces of the set to center and assemble them into one long dining table.
• The feast (2:30): “Can’t Hold Us” (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton). Jack is seated at the head of the table, master of the house, opposite Polly. Four courses land on four strikes, and the boy with no place grows into his. Jack wants to be with her. Polly knows what will happen if they kiss.
• The freeze (1:30): A hard cut. Everything stops mid-toast and mid-reach, and Polly is the only one moving. She sings “The Greatest” (Sia feat. Kendrick Lamar) through the frozen feast, circles Jack, touches his face and makes her choice.
• The return (1:30): The world snaps back, and “Can’t Hold Us” returns at full force. Now it is Jack’s turn to choose. They dance down the table toward each other, meet at center and are lifted off it.
• The kiss (1:00): His choice, her choice, and finally theirs. Jack believes the kiss will save them both; Polly knows the cost and chooses it anyway. Fog rolls in, and everything vanishes: the guests, the table, the light, Polly. The cage closes down on Jack.
• The end (1:30): His knife lies just outside the cage. A slow, haunting fragment of “Crazy” plays under him as he reaches, and reaches, and reaches. The skeletal hound reassembles out of the walls and circles the cage, no longer hunting him. At the last second Jack grabs the knife, raises it in defiance and screams. Then we hear a creak, the same creak as the mansion door at the top of the show. Is it the cage opening, or a door somewhere out in the night? We never see. Blackout.

Bows

A full-company curtain call to a remix of “I Gotta Feeling,” bringing the audience back to where the night began: skeletons, butlers, portrait family and the hound.

Music plan

Songs the audience knows, two duets built from them, and original percussion that ties the score together.

The pattern. The percussion is two heartbeats: Jack’s, and the mansion’s. At the top of the show they are the hunted and the hunter, racing each other down the aisle. Through the night the two rhythms close in on each other, and by the final scream they beat as one. Underneath it all runs one pattern: four strikes and a rest.

Knives and tap. The show’s two signature percussive voices, and they need each other. Knives are the house: sharp, metallic, dangerous. Tap is Jack: human, warm, alive. Neither is complete alone. The battle in Scene 2 sets them against each other, the bones in Scene 4 fuse them into a groove, and at the long table they play as one. What begins as a fight becomes a single heartbeat, and that is Jack’s transformation, heard before it is seen.

Arrangements. Every pop song is rearranged for the story, with darker colors, knives and tap under the groove, and choir where it helps. The final tracks are recorded once the arrangements are complete and the rights are in place.

Knife safety. All knives are blunted stage props, never sharpened, and choreography keeps them away from faces and hands.

Design

Optional design elements

• Moving staircases and ladders: Rolling ladders through the middle of the stage that lift the action and transport Jack, Polly and the audience to different places within Hallow Hall.
• Hidden trampolines: Concealed in the set, for the dead’s sudden springs and haunting disappearances.
• Costumes from above: Opulent pieces (a layer, a boa, a hat) fall from the ceiling to dress the company for the feast.

Proposed team

BringAbout team

Busch Gardens collaborators, if interested and available for new show development

Development timeline

1. Contract and budget approval, including the five-year leadership agreement.
2. Storyboarding development phase.
3. Secure music rights.
4. Set the script and score.
5. Arrangements and track recording.
6. Design phase: set, costumes, lighting, projections and sound.
7. Physical workshop.
8. Casting: Jennifer Jancuska leads the casting of the original company.
9. Design build and special elements.
10. Studio rehearsals.
11. Onsite rehearsals, tech and dress.
12. Previews, with continued rehearsal.
13. Opening.
14. Ongoing leadership: BringAbout continues to lead the production for a minimum of five years after opening, under an annual contract to maintain, re-set and refine the show.