Musical Chair

 

I talk a lot about stories and books in this blog--and much less about writing plays. Yet, if you asked me to describe myself, my first word would be "playwright."

Would I also say "musical playwright?" Likely not, but maybe I should.

The first play I wrote (ever) was a musical, and before that, I wrote songs with a composer/partner for a variety of rock bands. Like all bands, we had our problems, and when it seemed we were very close to breaking up, we did break up. The composer went on tour in a children's musical and I started auditioning for acting roles.

We decided to keep in touch by writing a musical--which was a little like  jumping on the back of a very slippery dinosaur and trying to ride. Fortunately, the composer and I had help from a musical theater company in New York. The play wasn't produced, but the workshop helped me figure out what you needed to write a musical. That included the same sense of character and dialogue you use for writing unmusical plays, a rhyming dictionary and complete and utter fearlessness.

I didn't think much about musical theater for many years after that, concentrating instead on writing plays. During the 2008 recession, I had the great good luck to work with Theater Latte Da as a grant writer. That brought me to an amazing theater group called Prosody.

Prosody was created by Composer and Music Director Denise Prosek, and though it's not active right now I can tell you it had a profound effect on me. The first time I saw the group's performance  was at a cabaret, where the authors and composers gathered to share their work. It was the first time I was actually present at the dawning of so many songs, on so many different subjects. It was also the first time I realized what songwriting could be.

That night, I decided I had to be a member of the group (or die). Luckily I didn't die, and even more luckily they let me in. Prosody taught me far more about writing musicals than I had time to learn when writing my first one-- so in that respect, I was lucky, once again.

I'm not going to say much more at this point, except to say I'm writing a musical with a composer these days. It's taking a while to get where we want to be, but that's okay. I have a feeling it will be worth it when we get there.