We have a director ...

It'll probably be just a few quick and dirty updates from here on in as we build our team, but welcome to our new director/choreographer Jason Blitman!

It's official ...

You can now like us on facebook and follow us on twitter:  @skylinemusical!

Hey! We’re in the Fringe! (2014 Edition)

No, this isn't just a re-run of the last post.  We're in again, and this time we're actually doing it.  We got our notification a couple of weeks ago, and then literally about three days after that, I got slammed with an abscessed tooth that damn near killed me, and in all the hibbity-boo I totally forgot to mention it, but yeah!  And now the screaming starts.

I mean, not really.  I’m very excited and happy!  But I’ve never done a musical in the Fringe before, and the Fringe shows that I have done have been kinda stressful, and I’m trying not to freak out too much about it.  I’m especially trying not to freak out too much about the fact that the polar ice caps are about to end up coursing down the street in front of my house in Brooklyn, and that “Manhattan hurricane season” has not only become a thing, but that that thing seems to occur right around the middle of August, and I really don’t know if I could go through that again.  But still!  This show is finally getting a production, and that’s awesome.  More to come!  Keep watching this space.

New Penn Station Documentary coming!

Filmmaker Michael Rossi's new Penn Station documentary airs on PBS' "The American Experience" on February 18 of 2014.  Check it out, and keep watching this space for news of a "Skyline Reading" around that same time -- and just in time for a slightly belated big, lacy valentine to New York!

So, did I forget to mention ...?

That we actually did get accepted to the Fringe?  I know I wrote about it elsewhere, but apparently I never got around to posting it here. 

So, yeah.  We got in!  Unfortunately, there was a massive clerical SNAFU and we never got our contracts in the mail, or an email from them, or really anything.  Neither I nor they have any idea what happened.  But by the time we found out, Taylor had already committed to an out-of-town job, and there was no way I could have put together an entire showcase single-handed at that point, so.  In a way it was the best case scenario.  We got the ego-stroke of actually being accepted, but without the headache of having to rush to put together a production, or the second-guessing of constantly wondering whether we should have just held tight and gone for NYMF in 2014.  Which is what we are going to do.  I'll actually be starting to contact people in the next few days to put together a demo recording of the score.  With luck we will also have a small reading in mid-October, on or very close to the 50th anniversary of the start of the demolition.

Keep watching this space!

Speaking of History (again)

This has nothing to do with this show.  I just needed a place to upload it.  Circa 1994.





Music by John Mercurio/Performed by Marya Grandy.

Speaking of history ...

It's possible that I've written about this before, I really don't remember and I don't feel like scrolling through all the old posts to check.  It has to do with how this show came to be, and it's kind of a funny story.  Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, when this new "blogging" fad had become all the rage, there was something called a Friday Five.  (Seriously, does anyone else remember those?)  It was basically a weekly writting exercise to encourage people to actually post things on their blogs.  It started out as a series of five completely generic questions (What was the name of your second grade teacher?  What's your favorite shape of Lucky Charms? etc.) that would make the rounds every Friday, and anyone who wanted to could answer the questions in a post.  Eventually, it evolved into a more sophisticated meme, where people on your friends list could ask you specific questions they had designed only for you, and which required you to actually write something.  Or five somethings.  So anyway, at one point my friend Leonard (hi, Leonard!), asked me a series of 5 questions, one of which was:

"If you were writing a 1960s-ish romantic comedy, what New York landmark would be its centerpiece and why?"


And this was my answer:

"Penn Station. The old one, the one they tore down and replaced with the big concrete pile of Velveeta Cheese boxes it is today. Fuckers! Because it was beautiful and glamorous and sexy and all it really needed was a little love and attention and instead they blew it UP! BASTARDS! It would be about two wacky activists born before their time — it’s only like, what? 1962, ‘63? And the whole lying down in the street and protesting thing won’t become fashionable for at least another five years, but they’ll be all “save this beautiful building, history is irreplaceable, you don’t get another one once you throw this one away!” Which is something I believe so much it makes me want to cry. Crazy stupid blinkered pig ignorant asshole thugs who fucking demolish the Hippodrome so we can have another big ugly pile of glass and cinderblock, because God knows, there aren’t nearly enough of those! They should be lined up against the wall of the nearest Starbucks and publicly sodomized with jackhammers before being summarily executed!! JACKALS!!! It would be a whimsical confection, frothy and playful. Something with Kate Hudson, probably."

And about halfway through writing it, I realized I was actually crying a little bit.  I mean, I got really agitated and emotional, and somewhere at the back of my brain, a little voice said, "you know, you might have something here.  Maybe you should write more about it."  And it took like, six years but eventually I got my ducks in a row and sat down and started doing it.  And then I started blogging about it.  Full circle.