Uked! – The first play-along ukulele musical – Jane Cafarella

A kooky ukey love story with unique audience participation

Uked! is the hilarious, charming and poignant story of Karla, a lonely and eccentric single woman who is dumped by her violin-playing boyfriend on her 50^th birthday.

Rebecca Morton stars as Karla in the 2019 premiere of Uked! at the Guildford Music Hall.

Between caring for her aged mother and working at Pack n’Track with her friends Julie and Leonie, Karla begins to worry that she’ll never find love. The world is changing and she’s struggling to find her place in it.

Desperate to belong and to prove her musical worth, Karla buys a ukulele and joins a dating site – learning that love and the ukulele have a lot in common.

Uked! is a unique high-concept, highly relevant show about one woman’s search for love and connection, featuring familiar and popular ukulele songs, plus one original foot-tapping simple song that all uke players will love: The Kooky Ukey Song.

Uked! offers unique audience engagement and is perfect for connecting communities.

As Karla learns, the song chords and lyrics are displayed for people to sing and/or play along. Audiences members are also invited on stage to be her fellow-club members.

Hate audience participation? Just sit back and enjoy the show.

Uked! is perfect for theatre groups and ukulele groups to produce as either a small or large cast show.

Genre: Musical comedy/drama

Set: Karla’s living room and a ukulele club

Duration: 120 mins with 15 min interval. Cast: 2 +3 band members (minimum) or 13-20.

Songs: 16, various artists, including one by the author. For commercial performances song licenses must be obtained through your local music licensing agency (in Australia, this is APRA – link)

Production resources:

Powerpoint to display all the songs and lyrics for your audience to play and sing along

Marketing kit

Unique merchandise, including badges, stickers, t-shirts and tote bags.

Production history

2019, GUILDFORD, VICTORIA AUSTRALIA, premiere at Guildford Musical Hall, written and produced by Jane Cafarella, starring Rebecca Morton as Karla and Pete Gavin as Almost Everyone Else, featuring The Uked Band: Fi Chant (Ruth), Tex Morton (Joel), Nicholas Lyon, Rae Moran, James McDonald and Sue Robinson.

2019, NEWHAM, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA, Newham Mechanics Institute, with the Uked! cast and band, as above.