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.