Good News/Bad News

The problem with a project like this is that the deeper in you go, the more likely you are to have little disappointments. Sadly, the director I was so enthusiastic about, who had earlier agreed to do the show, is now beginning to have second thoughts about her ability to follow through with the commitment. I can’t say I’m surprised — she’s in another state, starting a new and fairly risky business, and the economy just collapsed in a dusty heap. Even before the financial picture became quite so scary, I was actually very pleasantly surprised when she agreed to do it in the first place, given the logistics of the thing. She hasn’t completely bowed out, and I’m hoping by the time she would really be needed here in NYC — which probably won’t be until the end of February — that things will have stabilized enough for her that she’ll be able to go ahead with it, but for right now I have to at least consider the possibility that I’ll be looking for a new director. She actually mentioned knowing someone who might be well-suited; we’ll have to see where that goes.

Meanwhile, on the brighter side, the way in which all of this came to light was that we were discussing the first reading! Which, as it looks now, will happen the Thursday after Election Day. I was hoping to do it before the end of October, but because of the scramble to find someone else to at least temporarily step in and direct, it just seemed like a little less pressure on everyone — actors, director and myself — to be flexible on the time. The stand-in (stand up!) guy directed a reading of my last straight play at Blue Coyote last year. A really nice young guy, bright, even-tempered and (and this is why I thought he might be a good fit for this show despite his not having any real background in musical theater), when he read Moonchild , he said that he liked it’s “sweetness.” Now, anyone who actually saw that show might not have associated “sweetness” with it, but the funny thing is, it TOTALLY IS SWEET! in places. I wrote it that way on purpose; unfortunately, in that particular production the sweetness didn’t come across, which is kind of understandable since it’s not exactly all right on the surface. But it is there, and he saw it, and that gives me hope. So anyway, fingers crossed, the script alone (no songs yet), will be seen by its first audience in about three weeks. Fingers crossed even tighter, I will have purchased a video camera by then, and since I just discovered that it is (apparently) pretty easy to upload video to this site, I'm kind of excited about the possibility of being able to start actually discussing the show here in some kind of meaningful way.

Oh! I remember what I wanted to say!

So a couple of months ago, I mentioned that I had heard back from my possible director, and that she had said she might be available to work on the show. Since then I have referred to her a couple of times, without ever mentioning that she had, in fact, confirmed that she is interested:

"I have deliberated over this considerably. It has been a hard road these past two years in building this biz and through the course of it, I have become more than grounded. After some serious meditation, I have determined that a project in the artistic world just might do my world worlds of good:) Besides, who could resist your email! I mean, you really know how to write. So, send away--if I am not responding too late!"

And of course, she was not responding too late, because she is the awes and I am so excited about getting to see/work with her again!

And that’s what I wanted to say about that.

Crazy, yes, but also? Awesome.

It's 11 o'clock on a Friday night, and I am still at the office. Why, you ask? Because I have just completed my script.

Because I.

Am.

Awesome.

Okay, that's entirely enough of that. But I did, and I am, so there. And the last fifteen pages or so are a bit raw, but I just e-mailed copies to the director and composer, and hopefully I'll have their input in the next couple of weeks. So, whoot.

And now I'm going to bed. Well, you know. Home and then to bed.

Also? Doesn't Taste as Good

I'm something like twenty lines of dialogue away from being done with the script. It's going to take YEARS! No, it isn't. I really feel like I should be able to finish it up tonight. But of course, that's what I said when I thought it would be done by the end of May, and then again by the end of July, and then again by last Friday (08/08/08! how awesome to finish on such an auspicious day!)

Sigh.

Writing. She is much harder than eating cookies.

Oh, and Yes! I AM insane, thank you for noticing.

So, one of the things that I have completely given up trying to understand or correct about myself is that I have a tendency to get way ahead of myself on things when I'm working on a new show, or at least, on the things that I actually consider interesting and fun. And especially when I consider them more interesting and fun than the actual, you know. Writing.

Which is why I just went on etsy.com and ordered the three dress/costume patterns above, for whatever indefinite future time we may need them.

Slow and steady ...

So a while back I decided to try and get in touch with my director-of-choice for this new project. It wasn't quite so much a matter of putting the cart before the horse as it might sound. For this show, I very much wanted to have a director -- or in this case, a director/choreographer -- involved from the earliest possible stages, for a couple of reasons. First, I'm hoping it will minimize any writer-director friction once the show eventually gets on its feet, by making the director a hands-on collaborator right at the outset. And second, it will enable me to treat the book (before any songs have been written) as a finished play, by having a director on board to suggest revisions, get actors together for a reading or two and possibly even a closed workshop. That way, we know going in that the script is totally working before a single song gets written, which — at least in theory — will save a lot of agonizing over cut songs, songs that wind up not making sense post-re-writes, etc.

Anyway, I e-mailed this woman, and never heard back from her, then tried locating her through a mailing list we're both on, and still nothing, so I was about to give up. Then, this afternoon, I happened to be in the office, I checked my e-mail and there she was! Now, I had known before I even wrote to her that she might not be available, because she was doing this amazing "arts retreat" thing in Vermont, although I wasn't sure how far advanced that was or whether she was still in NY or not. It turns out that the place is actually up and running, and she has moved to Vermont, but ... this is what she had to say:

"Hey there! I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to get in touch with you. I have been swamped with my new adventure in Vermont. I haven't been dabbling in theatre much at all but working with you was one of the most rewarding experiences that I had as a director/choreographer. If you are still interested in me taking a look at something, I would be up for it. I am in VT pretty much full time but still come back to the city often to see friends and such."

So, that's not exactly crystal clear, but it does seem to suggest that she might consider it despite the travel issue. I emailed her back and explained exactly what I was hoping to do, and tried to make it seem as attractive as possible (while at the same time not misleading her in any way about the time commitment). So, fingers crossed. I loved working with this woman, but even if she can't do it, maybe she may have a friend who would be similarly compatible who can. She's such a sweetheart, I can't imagine her having friends who aren't just as great to work with.

small "h" huzzah!

So I finished Act I yesterday! It's one of those weird, let-downy kind of things, because I had been feeling very very optimistic about things, thinking, "wow! this is really ticking along, for a first draft." Everything was developing quite well, there was some humor, a little bit of emotion, and, of necessity, I had been doing a LOT of editing as I went, trimming every syllable that wasn't absolutely necessary, so it had a lovely, astringent crispness to it that is really not typical of my writing, but which worked beautifully with the early '60s "look and feel" I was going for. But it was all going so well that I felt compelled to end the act on a really strong note, and I think I wanted that so badly that I kind of doomed myself to failure. Which is absolutely fine, obviously, because it's just a first draft, and everything else feels pretty tight, and of course I can fix it. But the main reason I was rushing to wrap it up was that I had promised pages to the composer ages ago and hadn't followed through, and I just didn't want to hold off anymore. And that means someone else is going to be reading it, and he's going to be seeing it in a state I'm not 100% happy with.

ANyway, I made this other decision recently that I want to have a director associated with the project even before we start to write songs, which sounds weird. But I want to do at least one or two readings of just the book before we start thinking about music and lyrics. The whole idea is to make sure the script is really working before proceeding to the next step (it's so much easier to cut/edit/revise dialogue than songs), and I think it makes sense to hear the script read in order to determine that. And I have been forceably restraining myself from e-mailing the director I hope will work with us on that, because I don't want to do anything prematurely.

On the other hand, I at least want to make sure her e-mail address is still good, since I haven't been in touch with her in over a year. So I think I'll wait until I hear back from Bob (the composer), at least acknowledging that he's got the script and hasn't changed his mind, and then e-mail the director and make sure I have the right contact info for her.

Oh, and look! I have updated this blog again, and it's less than four months since my last post!

So ... anyway.

So, about four months ago I slapped up my first post on this thingerydoo, and haven't been back since.

Surprisingly, this is not actually the result of sloth on my part (or at least, not entirely). I have actually been working on the show, there just hasn't been too much to post about. It's true that about the only thing duller than listening to people talk about their dreams is listening to them talking about their work, and I guess I kind of instinctively don't want to put up blog posts about how today, I typed four new pages and had an interesting insight into one of my characters, because, well. Who cares?

However, there have been a couple of small, actual developments worth noting: First, the composer I wanted to work with has agreed to do it! There's the small drawback that he lives in California and I live in New York, but at this point, that's not even going to be an issue until it's time to do a sample CD, so I'm not exactly sweating that.

The second thing is that I've decided to do this: http://scriptfrenzy.org, and it's kind of lit a small fire under my ass. I've been working a little more dutifully, and am up to about 28 pages of what I hope will eventually be no more than about a 60-page script. That's 60 pages of book, before music and lyrics. The good news is that by that metric, I'm almost halfway done! The bad news is, I'm nowhere near the end of first act, and there really isn't anything that can be cut so far. Which is a little unnerving, and exactly what I was afraid would happen.

The third thing is that I've discovered that the author of one of the books I read as part of my research for this project has a website, and apparently accepts personal e-mail through the site. This may eventually prove very helpful, if she can point me in the direction of some more detailed information regarding a particular aspect of the story that I've been unclear about up to now (gosh, this is so mysterious, isn't it?).

Anyway, at this point I'm thinking I may start visiting this blog a bit more regularly. So, probably I'll be back again some time in June.

Vroom

This is -- or, eventually, it will be -- the blog for my new show, an original book musical entitled Skyline.

My idea is to track the development of the show, basically from the ground up; from outline to first draft to finding a collaborator; through rewrites, auditions, showcases, etc. My short-term goal is to submit the finished project to NYMF in 2009, although there may be other small workshops here and there in the interim. Well, okay scratch that. My short-term goal is to finish the darn thing. My medium-term goal is to submit the finished project to NYMF in 2009, etc. etc. For the longer term, who knows.

This is my first post, and it's a bit ragged, primarily because this is kind of a big deal for me. Although I started out as a lyricist and librettist, only branching out into straight playwriting in my late twenties, this is only the second musical I've worked on in the last decade. The last one, a sweet, funny, character-driven book show, ended in disaster when my totally unique, original, never-been-done-before idea got put through some sort of burlesque meat grinder by another writing team and turned into exactly the sort of jokey-jokey musical/cabaret/pastiche "people hate musicals so let's write a musical for people who hate musicals!" kind of thing that makes those of us who actually like musicals, and want to write them for a living, recite the serenity prayer while weeping into our vodka tonics. They even used the our title, for crying out loud.

Which is why I'll probably be postponing writing about the actual plot until the idea is a little further developed. Once the show starts to get its legs under it, I'll probably feel a little more comfortable discussing it in detail.

Without giving too much away, though, it's sort of an adult romantic comedy, set in New York City in the early 1960s (yeah, yeah, Madmen. Rosey, meet Zeitgeist; Zeitgeist, Rosey. I'm hoping this can only help us, "something in the air"-wise). The idea actually came from, of all things, a Friday Five question asked of me on my LJ, some three or four years ago. As for where it stands right now, I'm doing exactly what I swore to myself I would not do, which is roughing in the first act, even though I haven't finished the outline yet. I keep telling myself that this will probably be okay, so long as I don't write too far ahead of myself and besides, I figure I probably shouldn't be not writing it, as long as I'm actually motivated to write.

I've got an e-mail out to a potential composer. This is someone I've worked with before, in a manner of speaking. We collaborated on the Raw Impressions series in 2005 (so, technically I guess this is the third musical I've worked on recently, although it's only the second full-length one). This guy is really talented and very versatile, as well as having a really clear-headed, "composer's" (as opposed to "songwriter's") mentality when it comes to approaching a theater project. When we worked together last time, he got all excited when he saw the first set of lyrics I gave him. "Look at all this white space!" He actually said that. I gave my standard, semi-tongue-in-cheek response of "Well, yeah. That's where the acting goes." And he said, "Yes. But it's also where the music goes." Which, duh. In twenty-five years had never really occurred to me before.

When you've spent enough time (which, sadly, I have) with composers who don't understand why the fact that they've set your quirky, up-tempo, comedy lyric as a mournful romantic dirge is a problem, or who, when you point out that the word is not pronounced "def-IN-ite-LY," say, "well, I think my setting is fine and I'm not changing it," you come to cherish the people who actually appreciate the time you've invested in the little throw-away details, like rhyme and scansion. This guy does, and I think he'll be a real asset to the production if I can get him to commit. The only drawback is that he's in California and I'm in NY, but you know, at this point, the technology involved here has advanced to such a point that even I probably won't be too hampered by that.

So. First post!

Awesome. And that's basically all there is to say about that. More as I know it myself.