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INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: First Rehearsal

October 23, 2016

A guest post from Alana Jacoby, the lyricist and librettist for this year’s Festival show Mortality Play, written with Scotty Arnold. Mortality Play was featured in the Songwriters Showcase at last year’s Festival.
Today is our fifth first rehearsal for Mortality Play. As I put on my Black Death European Tour shirt this morning (which I think I’ve worn to every one), I played them all back in my mind. There was the first first rehearsal, for our thesis reading at NYU’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program: the first time anyone outside of our program said these words and sang these songs; the first time we felt like real musical theater writers. There was the second first rehearsal, for ANT Fest at Ars Nova: the first time the show left the safe space of an educational setting and went out into the world. There was the third first rehearsal, for the Yale Institute of Music Theatre: the kick-off of an amazing two-week workshop and the longest period of time when Scotty and I got to be in full-time writing mode since graduating. First rehearsal number four, for our Joe’s Pub reading two years later, felt like getting the band back together after too much time away. And here we are at first rehearsal number five, walking into the room with this overwhelmingly talented cast and amazing creative team.
First rehearsals remind me of birthdays. It’s perfect that this one happened this week, because Scotty and I just celebrated our shared birthday two days ago. It’s a day full of excitement and promise, all about watching something begin to unfold. Listening to each song during an initial read-through feels like opening presents. Peeking over my script to see the actors’ faces as they fearlessly dive into a cold read, wondering how they’ll react, hoping they’ll laugh at that joke, hearing how each song will sound in their particular voices. It’s like giving and getting presents all at the same time, which Scotty and I are used to, as collaborator birthday buddies.
This show has grown up so much over the past five years to get to this point, and each first rehearsal has been a chance to look at it through new eyes. Not just the eyes of the new people around the table, but through our own, which have also grown up and changed. My mother died between first rehearsal number three and first rehearsal number four, which turned my world upside down and made me think about death and loss, such integral themes of this piece, in a much different way. And on my birthday two days before rehearsal number five, my boyfriend and I got engaged, which made me hide in my binder today and take a much closer look at the dialogue in our proposal scene. It makes me wonder, with some fear and some excitement, where we’ll be and what will be happening in our lives as we head into first rehearsal number six.
For now, Scotty and I are sitting in this room enjoying this best of all possible birthday gifts, soaking up the amazing energy of our teammates and thrill of being part of this festival. We can’t wait to share our excitement by presenting Mortality Play in front of our NAMT audience a week from today!

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 NAMT FESTIVAL: One Week Away

October 23, 2016

A guest post from Mindi Dickstein, Nolan Gasser and Kirsten Guenther, the writers of this year’s Festival show Benny & Joon.
We cannot believe we are only a week away from the NAMT Festival presentations. From the moment Ciera Iveson called us with the wonderful news that we had been selected, it has been a whirlwind of activity. Casting sessions with Michael Cassara, a flurry of excellent advice from the wonderful Kent Nicholson and Paige Price (what a godsend the consultant part of NAMT is), intrepid support from Karin Nilo and gracious leadership from Ciera (who somehow manages to wrangle 8 teams of writers effortlessly), and, oh yes, feverish rewrites, re-rewrites, new songs written and discarded, and deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!
Most challenging has been the 45-minute cut. We chose to do an abridged version of our first act (which runs about an hour and 10 minutes when fully performed). And we’ve made several drafts since we started in July. A friend said: “Why not just do the first 45 minutes?” Of course, that would have been so much simpler. But then there would not be the pleasure, again, of hearing Hannah Elless, Mamie Parris, Andrew Samonsky and Zak Resnick singing our act one closer: “Dinner and A Movie.”

At this point the work continues and most likely there will be tweaks and revisions till the last minute – when aren’t there? – but we are digging in to this last week feeling blessed to have this wonderful chance to share a little of our show. Indeed, at moments like this, poised to go forward but feeling the energy of our work together so far, we look back with wonder.

To the earliest days, when Nolan and Mindi – who met through a mutual friend – began writing spec songs for MGM based on Benny & Joon to demonstrate the title’s musicality as well as our passion for the story and the characters. To connecting with Kirsten and beginning work in earnest on our first draft of book and score, which culminated in our first reading – when there was only a half a score – in January 2014.

After that there were two more readings (with full score, thank you) and a trip to the Running Deer Musical Theater Lab in the mountains around Washington State’s Columbia Gorge region, a glorious and inspiring setting. We went with Larry Hirschhorn, our producer, and Jack Cummings III, our director, and we all bonded over notes and rewrites and cocktails at 5 PM with our hosts, Brisa and Mark Trinchero and Sally and Jim Peters. We wrote furiously there but also somehow found time to visit an alpaca farm, explore local caves, and to make the discovery of an ancient box of Chicken in a Biskit at the local general store.

When we did our Developmental Lab last fall at The Transport Group, we got a taste of what it will be like to see this musical move on its feet, which was thrilling. In January of this year, we were invited on retreat to TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Redwood City, CA, where we were able to work intensely on revisions under the aegis of the kind and generous Robert Kelley, artistic director, and Giovanna Sardelli, New Works director. It was a gift – as all retreats are – to be able to gather as writers and work without interruption, to try out changes, and to explore the rich culinary variety of the area.

And so here we are a week away from this great NAMT milestone. It’s a week away from what feels like the culmination of three years of work. We feel poised to begin what we hope will be the next phase of our journey: finding a theater to host our first production. Just writing those words makes us say “whoa” – but we are ready.

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: Orchestrations

October 14, 2016

A conversation with Daniel and Patrick Lazour, the writers of this year’s Festival show We Live in Cairo.
Patrick: So Daniel.
Daniel: Patty O.
P: You being the composer in this arrangement, tell us what orchestration does.
D: Well, it takes the score the extra mile, I think. You listen to a Rodgers and Hammerstein score played on piano and it’s just a totally different thing from the, ya know, 70 piece orchestra.
P: And that’s how it was intended.
D: Back in the day.
P: Because they had the money.
D: But it’s funny.
P: It’s all about money.
D: You’re right. But not quite. Because the resourcefulness you have to have now, leads to some pretty interesting things.
P: What’s a good example of that? Because what comes to mind for me is Urinetown.
D: Urinetown! That’s such a great point. Super resourceful. And really, sort of bizarre instrumentation. Bizarre in the best sense, in that it gives this sort of dystopian sound. The reed and the brass give it this neo-baroque feel.
P: Neo-baroque. Definitely. Even this archaic…
D: Ancient! Or something…. But what about you? What are your favorite orchestrations?
P: I would say Sunday in the Park with George.
D: Kills it.
P: Because of its specificity to the time. I think that is also getting to what we talk about with our show—the way that Michael Starobin homed in on period and the artistic sensibility of Georges Seurat.
D: I think of that French horn interval. Bahm-bah. And you’re so right. It’s so 19th century. So Belle Époque.
P: Right. And Georges Seurat. Not to intellectualize this conversation, but he had manifestos. He was a writer just as much as he was a painter. So finding ways to orchestrate those thoughts to create a soundscape is what transports me.
D: Sunday. So great. And rather remarkably, we had the opportunity to work with Michael Starobin…
P: At the O’Neill on We Live in Cairo.
D: He’s just a master. He’s a master of what works and what doesn’t work. He taught us the orchestrator’s job. That is, to take sketches from the composer and fill them in. Talk about painting. It’s a matter of shading and adding detail and “completing the thought.” He said that. He totally understood that We Live in Cairo is a groove-based show. He and I also talked a lot with our Oud player Hadi Eldebek, for example, about how he should really use what he knows about his instrument and culture and filter that into the show. To authenticate it.
P: And this brings up a good point. How much is orchestration a collaborative process?
D: I think it depends. In the olden days, it was much more of a pass-off situation.
P: But that’s old world. That’s ancien regime. What’s nouveau?
D: I think today is much more collaborative, in that musical theatre is sounding more like bands that we listen to. And bands inherently are a team effort. So I think it’s the idea of getting musicians in the room, like Hadi, our incredible percussionist Jeremy Smith, and Eli Zoller our music director. Jeremy for instance heard this score in its super nascent stages and had ideas to contribute even before things were fleshed out on my end. It’s about how our different interpretations can come together.
P: It’s also worth mentioning that with We Live in Cairo, from the first weeks of writing, the idea of orchestration was in our conversation. Am I right?
D: Absolutely.
P: And that, I think is a little bit of an anomaly. There are different ways of going about a show, but usually orchestration comes close to last. But because this show was based in Egypt, we wanted the score to reflect traditional and contemporary Arabic music. Oud, Percussion. And then we needed to figure out how to contextualize these sounds in a musical theatre idiom. And that was all orchestration. What that meant was that we had to start making relationships with musicians who knew this world—and that meant connecting with the Arab community in New York. Fellow Lebanese and, of course, Egyptians.
D: And at NAMT, we’re so thankful to have the opportunity to continue to work with the band.
P: I think, just to wrap up, orchestration is knowing your score in and out, and going from there.
D: And we always try to remember that another instrument’s interpretation of a melody, bass line, accompaniment figure, can be more “right” than the instrument you wrote it on. And that’s the magic of orchestration, really.

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: Gordon & Julia: 2 NAMT 2 SERIOUS

October 13, 2016

A guest post from Julia Meinwald, composer of this year’s show The Loneliest Girl in the World, written with Gordon Leary. Leary and Meinwald have previously been a part of the NAMT Festival in 2011 with their show Pregnancy Pact.
Like in any good sequel, Gordon and my return to NAMT promises the return of some starring players (welcome back awesome music director Rich Silverstein and sage consultant Steve Stettler!), some new blood to freshen up the franchise (welcome awesome director Michael Berresse!) and a tagline that we really like but in the end doesn’t quite represent the material (“Life’s a bitch and then you’re pied.”) And now you can experience the whole thing in crystal clear 3D at New World Stages!

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: Choosing Your Creative Team & Cast

October 10, 2016

A guest blog post by Kait Kerrigan, one of the writers of this year’s Festival show The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown, written with Brian Lowdermilk.
Choosing your collaborators is always a challenge. As writers in a long-term collaboration, it’s also an opportunity to inject life and breath into a project. When we applied to NAMT, it was with the intent of stripping down our piece to its strongest elements and making it feel fresh and relevant. We’re writing about a teenage girl who is dealing with her first brush with grief. There is a large canon of literature that plunges into those depths but we have approached it with a heightened theatricality that we think makes it feel fresh and newly emotional. We were looking for collaborators who could help us look at the piece from an entirely new angle. This meant that we were looking for people who had never worked on the project before.

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: Returning to the Festival

October 4, 2016

A guest post from Anthony Drewe, lyricist and librettist for this year’s show Soho Cinders, written with George Stiles and Elliot Davis. This is Anthony and George’s third time returning to the Festival, previously being featured with their shows Honk! (Fest ’99) and The Three Little Pigs (Fest ’13). George also had a second show featured in the 1999 Festival, The Three Musketeers.
My first experience of NAMT was in 1993 when I attended the Festival of New Musicals as a delegate. I was impressed that such an organization existed for new writers and that so many regional theatres shared such a strong interest in new musical theatre. At the time, I wished that such an organisation existed in the UK and, as a Brit, never dreamt that we would one day have a show of our own in the NAMT Festival.

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: Finding the Right 45 Minutes

October 3, 2016

A guest post from Gordon Leary, lyricist and librettist of this year’s show The Loneliest Girl in the World, written with Julia Meinwald. Leary and Meinwald have previously been a part of the NAMT Festival in 2011 with their show Pregnancy Pact.
There are so many things to be excited about when your show is accepted into the NAMT Festival of New Musicals. You look forward to getting to know seven other writing teams and their work, working with wonderful actors and directors, and having the opportunity to share your writing with NAMT members from across the country… Then you remember that you need to do it all in 45 minutes.

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: Finding Our Voice

September 28, 2016

A guest post from Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould, the writers of this year’s show Lempicka.

Before passing roles and songs along to singer/actors, we need to find the character’s true voice. Tamara de Lempicka, painter, Polish refugee, woman who will fall in love with her model, Rafaela… the first voice she sings in is always Matt’s. This is one of the first songs we wrote for the show, and the place where we truly found out who she is. Here, after they make love for the first time, Tamara observes and paints the sleeping Rafaela, wondering how, how in this world can she truly capture this. This woman.

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: Why I Applied to the Festival

September 21, 2016

A guest post from Brett Ryback, writer of this year’s show Joe Schmoe Saves the World.
The question of why apply for the NAMT Festival is wrapped up in the larger question of why apply for any festival, or grant or award, etc. It’s certainly no small feat to fill out the application, record the necessary demos, pony up the entry fee, and get it all in the mail on time. Sometimes, even despite the potential production or reading or financial gain, applying for things feels like a burden that gets in the way of the thing you’d rather be doing – writing (or eating, it’s often a toss-up for me). But the actual act of applying comes with its own worthwhile lessons, and I recommend every writer give it a shot once or five times.

Failure Makes You Stronger

Rejection is part of the business, and learning to handle rejection is one of the best skills an artist can develop. Handling rejection in a healthy way will give you the stamina to keep going through even the toughest slog, AND get better while you do it.
The trick is that you can’t simply disregard rejection, you have to learn from it. Find out why you got rejected, decide whether you agree with that reason, and then adjust your work accordingly. You might learn that your piece is not for every audience, or you might come to understand that a certain quality you thought you were communicating is actually not being received by the reader. Or you might learn that the only way to get ahead is to live in New York City and have famous people sing your songs at 54 Below (Joking!) (Sort of.). Either way – you’re learning how to rebound and move forward. And eventually, that rejection will turn into acceptance.

NAMT News

INSIDE THE 2016 FESTIVAL: The Road to the Festival

September 15, 2016

I first had the germ of an idea to write a modern Cinderella story in the early 90’s. At the time the story was to be set in a launderette in the East End of London, run by a young single mother who falls in love with a married politician. The pumpkin carriage was to be a London taxi, the fairy godmother a customer who brings a ball-gown to be dry-cleaned. It was to be called Launderella and pretty much all that remains of that treatment is the song “They Don’t Make Glass Slippers.”
It was a few years later, sitting in Hyde Park with George, and basking in the recent success of Honk!, that we revisited the idea. We wanted to write a modern musical fable, loosely based on the fairytale but very London-centric. We decided to make our Cinderella character a young gay guy, Robbie, who works in the city’s most cosmopolitan district, Soho. As Robbie sings, in one of the lyrics:
ALL CITIES HAVE THE SAME
ONE STREET THAT KNOWS NO SHAME
In London, that is Old Compton Street – a glorious melting pot where gay bars, straight bars, theatres, coffee shops and strip clubs sit seemingly happy, side by side. One afternoon we sat in Old Compton Street just watching the tide of interesting characters walking by, and wondering what their stories were.