The Libretto

Addendum

2008-04-20T14:15:00.002Z

Question: Is the initial producer part of the creation or the reaction?

I said 'Creation', but I want to be clear because I feel like a lot of people misunderstand this in our world. From the point of view of a show, a new musical, the actual show itself, the writer creates and everything that comes after that is a reaction to that creation.

But if a new show is lucky enough to start its life with a production already written into its future, then everyone on that production is... I guess co-creating is a good way to put it.

The whole team is creating this specific production, each person playing their individual role. But the show itself, the actual storytelling part: that was created by the writer/s, and everything else is interpretation of that initial creation.

Complex, isn't it?

The Producer and The Writer

2008-04-18T00:09:00.003Z

My lovely friend and fellow writer Paul Alexander Boyd asked some questions that I’ve only just had time to respond to. So here are my answers, Paul – I’ve chopped your questions into segments.

Question: What is the writer's responsibility to the commissioning producer?

First and foremost, to do what they’re commissioned to do, which is write a show on an agreed subject, according to various agreed specifications that probably include the size and style of the intended final production.

This usually involves providing a series of completed drafts of script and score by certain dates that have been previously agreed by the producer and writer based upon the producer’s reasonable window of opportunity and the writer’s reasonable writing-time requirement, which drafts are then developed in previously agreed ways until the intended final stage is reached, whatever that may be.

And that’s it.

Question: How does the producer's expectation hamper the writer's freedom to tell a story using the writer's own sources, experiences, and encounters?

It doesn’t.

Presumably, a producer has hired a writer whose work they admire, to write about a subject they both like. Thereafter, if the producer has any expectations other than the fact that this good writer will tell this good story in a good way, then the producer needs to hire another writer or get this one to tell another story. Or the writer needs to tell the producer that they can’t find their way into the story after all, and all parties should amicably part ways.

More than that, it’s actually impossible for one person’s expectations to hamper another person’s freedom to tell a story in their own voice. I mean, short of dictating the actual dialogue to a writer, no matter how oppressively you try to influence their writing, what comes out of their pen will always be in their voice. It may be in their voice-which-is-reacting-to-oppression, but it’s still their voice because they never stop being a person.

That’s the glorious thing about being a writer. This thing we call ‘voice’ enables the process of research, because the writer will always make their own personal selection from those libraries full of books, those endless websites, those rooms full of improvising actors. No-one else will ever make the same exact selections because everyone’s life experiences are different, and that’s where our ‘voice’ comes from.

The ‘voice’ enables collaboration, because every writer has a unique contribution to make to the work, and no two collaborations are ever the same, either between collaborators, or between the team and the specific project. Or even the same project, years later.

The ‘voice’ enables critique, because the writer is able to choose what feedback to use, and what to disregard.

This thing called ‘voice’ is what makes us who we are as artists. People can try to influence it, yes, but only if we let that influence in. Hamper? No. Not without holding a gun to your head and telling you to take dictation.

But if you’d asked me whether a producer’s expectations can affect a writer’s storytelling freedom… yes, and that can be a great thing.

My producer for Mort expects that I will write him a show that caters for 35 – 40 young people, which can be produced on a minimal budget with very little set, and allows for student musicians to play in the band. All of these things affect my storytelling freedom. Why, this very evening I had to forget about the idea of beheading a General onstage and then giving his headless ghost a small song. (I have, however, kept in the scene that takes place on the flying horse.)

If a producer wants to be involved in the actual process of writing, then they want to be a writer/producer, and that is a different collaborative relationship. One to which I would not agree, since it’s my personal desire to work with producers who can view the show with the objective distance and producer’s-eye experience that I find almost impossible to have while I’m subjectively focused on writing something.

Question: Does a commissioning producer have any more influence because they are involved from the outset of a piece than the dramaturgs or directors who may come on board later in the process?

More influence, in what sense? The longer someone works on a project, the more influence they have on it, by simple deed of there being time to do more. So yes, if a producer is involved from the outset, it is possible for them to have more influence if that particular collaborative relationship works in that way.

The producer for Legacy was involved from the very start, and had very little involvement in the writing process. YMT also has very little involvement, and I very much appreciate that kind of trust.

On the other hand, I know that YMT will come along to interim readings we do with friends, and are interested in what’s going on. I also very much appreciate that kind of support.

Dramaturgs, and directors-who-are-doing-dramaturgy, can be involved right from the start too, as with Clive Paget on Mort, and with David Gilmore on Legacy, and also with all of my kids’ shows. Dramaturgy is an invaluable resource for a writer, but again, it’s a resource from which the writer can choose which advice to consider, and which to disregard.

It is rumoured that Mr Mackintosh likes to get his hands a bit dirty in the writing room. I’m quite sure I’d be intimidated into taking on board some of his suggestions – and possibly all of them, whether I agreed with them or not – but if I did, that would still be my choice. I’d be an idiot to have made changes I didn’t agree with, but it would have been my choice. I could have said no, at which point he would probably break the contract and tell me to fuck off, but it would still have been my choice. I’m the writer, and Mr M is a resource of options for me, like any other.

It’s a really important thing for writers to know: the writer chooses what goes into a piece, and what stays out. Those choices are made by who we are as people – this writer’s ‘voice’ is nothing more ethereal or mystical than just who we are as individual people.

For example:

I wrote a song for Death today. At the top of act two, he’s sitting in a bar getting drunk – well, trying out the experience of technically drinking alcohol and slurring your words. He sings a barbershop blues (with a few wizards who really are drunk).

Obviously, there’s comedy in that scenario, and it’s a light-hearted lyric about being sad because he has no friends, and no woman, and no skin. But it is based on truth, and somewhere beneath that light-hearted song lies my terrific fear of dying, the fact that I’m a control freak who doesn’t drink because it means being out of control, and my desperate loneliness as a writer who must take sole responsibility for every word she places in the mouth of a character.

I told my composer this the other day, when we were talking about what the song should be about. I don’t often talk him that far into my process, but this time I was feeling sorry for myself so I did. He went very quiet for a while, then said, “I thought this was going to be a comedy song?”

It’s in the novel that Death gets drunk in this bar. There’s even a reference to the blues. Many other writers doing a musical adaptation of this novel would probably choose to have Death sing the blues at this point in the show. But they wouldn’t write the exact lyric I have written based on those things I now wish I hadn’t written about here, and am studiously trying to not to go back and delete.

You know, I think actors are the most amazing people. I mean, they’re incredibly brave to play out in public the dark and awful secrets that I can barely write in my blog without twitching; the things I always slide in under my writing for them to use as subtext. Actors will stand up in front of me with material that is absolutely unknown to them, and bare their souls over and over again as I say, “Try it another way? Another?” without so much as a “Why didn’t you like the first one I did?” I love actors. I love them. Love, admire, and love.

But at the end of the day, even with a room full of Judi Denches and Laurence Oliviers, I still make my choices based on what I think is right, not on what they think is right, because the work is still mine until it finishes development. Once it’s in print, then anyone can pretty much play, direct or produce it any way they like. Just don’t tell me about it.

Question: Is the initial producer part of the creation or the reaction?

Creation. They collaborate as producer, and that’s good. (Someone sensible needs to sort out the money.) Writers collaborate as writers. Directors as directors, and so on. That’s not to say one person can never do two jobs. I just don’t think they can ever be actively doing both jobs at the same exact time. Plus, I find perfecting the writing so fucking challenging that I wouldn’t want to take on another job, thanks very much.

Can't write.

2008-04-11T08:31:00.002Z

I literally can't write. I'm so stuck. It's like banging my head against a brick wall, except I don't bang for long. I just walk away from it. I don't even check to see if the wall has a door.

I can't find the I Want song. I can't find the top of act two. I can't find my way into any of it. I don't know how I ever did this, and I don't know why I ever thought I could do it.

I don't know why I blog about writing, since I can't. And I can't reach my composer on the phone. Because he's writing, probably. Which just makes me feel worse.

Gah.

Match It For Pratchett

2008-04-04T09:35:00.001Z

Please go and Match It For Pratchett, even if you only donate £1.

Thanks.

Writing a Song Music First

2008-03-24T23:24:00.003Z

I’m in the middle of writing a song. Okay, so I’m procrastinating because I’ve reached a difficult bit, but the difficulty is an interesting one that I wanted to post about.

The lovely Dom has given me a section of music for the middle of a song, for a new character, and to serve a more defined purpose for Mort than previously at this point in this song.

So I’m “dropping a lyric onto the music” here. I put this in quotes because Dom doesn’t much like it when I say that. “It sounds like the music is beneath the lyrics or something.” he says, just before he goes through a tunnel and I lose him.[1]

It’s not that at all, but I don’t remember where I got that expression from in the first place, and I should try to find another way to say it if he doesn’t like it. So here I am, sliding a lyric into the music (Hm. Not quite right.) and it feels a little like reverse-engineering Dom’s creative mind.

See, here’s what’s so brilliant about having a genius composer: he writes music that speaks (where, hopefully, I write words that sing). What I mean is, he writes music that is heightens the emotions in speech, rather than music that flies along a pure emotion. All musical theatre song music should speak like that, and Dom is a genius at it.

So I am stitching – yes, that’s much better – I am stitching a lyric into the new music, and it feels like reverse-engineering Dom’s creative mind. For example, the final musical phrase of this bit I’m working on has three sections to it. The first section is sort of repeated in the second, and the final section is like a full stop. Two halves with a natural end.

In terms of lyric, that implies an internal rhyme for the two halves, and a full sentence overall because the third section is like a full stop.

So I know that, in order to live up to the music, the lyric should go:

Ba-da ba da RHYME
Ba da da RHYME
... responsibility

The last word is the hook. It’s the word I gave him before my first cup of coffee the other day when he called at 8:30 in the morning and said “What’s his hook, this guy? What’s he trying to say?” And I mumbled something about responsibility. So Dom had that word already stitched into the music.

This is where lyric writing becomes like a mathematical puzzle. No wonder Sondheim likes inventing puzzles and games. Here, look:

1. My lyric must make sense for an Army General. (That’s the character.)

2. A General who has just died in battle.

3. And almost had his big moment spoiled by a stupid boy who was late.

4. At whom he is now barking as if Mort were cannon-fodder.

5. And he probably knows in the back of his mind somewhere that this is the last time he gets to bark at someone, so he’d better make it count and try to summon up everything a General should pass onto a cannon-fodder boy in just a few profound words.

6. But he should make it quick because he doesn’t know how long he’s got left in this state of being.

7. I’ve got 9 syllables with which to form a sentence in which the emphasis matches what would have been his spoken vocal intonation had he said the line, and which must lead very naturally into the word ‘responsibility’.

The reverse-engineering process goes thus:

What might come naturally before the word ‘responsibility’? Since the General is talking at Mort, and making this all about teaching him a lesson, the most likely option is “your responsibility”.

Ba-da ba da RHYME
Ba da da YOUR
... responsibility

What does he want him to do with his responsibility? ‘Honour it’ seemed about right, which gives me:

Ba-da ba da RHYME
Ba honour YOUR
responsibility

That pretty much takes care of that line, because the first BA will be ‘to’ or ‘and’, depending on the previous line. But what rhymes with YOUR? Most obvious choice for the General was WAR.

Ba-da ba da WAR
Ba honour YOUR
responsibility

In that first line, the syllable most highly emphasised by the music is this one:

Ba-da BA da WAR
Ba honour YOUR
responsibility

So I know that word has to be just as important in the sentence as WAR is. At which point, I found the whole thing:

Be a man of war
and honour your
responsibility.

Seems so easy, right? Took me a big chunk of today to get there.

Here’s a little reverse-engineering test. Say a sentence out loud. Any sentence. Something about what you did today, maybe. Now say it again, but without using words. Just use a non-word, like da-da-da, but keep your spoken vocal inflections the same, with natural rises and falls as you emphasise different words.

Now imagine Dom calling me and saying, “I’ve figured out what the General says! Ready? Here goes… da-da-da-dum, de dum dum, do-be-do blah blah blah…”

[1] When Dom and I speak on the phone, he’s always on a train. I say always because it happens to the extent that we suspect there’s something magical involved: even if he’s not on the train when I dial his number, once we’re talking, he is suddenly on a train. Most annoying for him, especially if he was, say, in the shower when I called.

Stage Directions

2008-03-20T18:33:00.003Z

As usual, my life is full of black and white, with no shades of grey. So it is with stage directions: I write short plays with hardly any at all, and long musicals with many. I think my purpose for each individual stage direction is probably the same, though – to explain.

I just tried to write a list of things I like to avoid doing with stage directions, but I can't list them. It's just a feeling. I have stage direction feelings. No, maybe instincts.

Anyway, because I pay them so very much attention, it annoys the fuck out of me if directors blatantly ignore them. To begin with, I just thought this was funny and cute. I even said that I had put jokes into my stage directions to see if the director was paying attention (but that's not actually true. I just thought the jokes while I was writing, so in they went. That's what happens when you get on the Train of Thought).

The thing is, a good stage direction will be stitched so firmly into the fabric of the scene that to remove it would unravel the lines near it, and possibly the whole damn thing.

I’m not writing an ordinance survey map for the director. I’m explaining why the spoken words follow on in the sequence and the way they do. Actually, the whole process is fascinating.

On its own –

Man Hello.
Woman You complete bastard.

And now with samples of stage direction –

1. The MAN reaches out and pulls the cigarettes away from her. She moans.

Man Hello.
Woman You complete bastard.

2. The MAN reaches out and pulls the boy away from her. She moans.

Man Hello.
Woman You complete bastard.

3. The MAN reaches out and pulls her left nipple. She moans.

Man Hello.
Woman You complete bastard.

The director can’t ignore that stage direction. Well, not in this specific context, anyway. We only have two lines of dialogue. What about this one to follow on:

The BOY struggles.

Boy Let me go!

Interesting, isn’t it, how a scene develops with the stage directions being stitched in just as the dialogue is stitched in? So far, there’s no reason why the Boy has to struggle in order for that line to work. He might be talking to the Woman. We don’t know yet.

On the other hand, they’re clearly arguing over who will have the Boy. In three lines, there’s a drama. (Of course there is. Rule of three. Gods, I love doing this for a living sometimes.)

[And here’s an afterthought I added in when I’d finished this post: as writers, I think we must remember that, just as an audience sees a show for the first time and interacts with it based on that first viewing, so a director interacts with a script based on that first reading. What we put on the page is so crucial to the start of the process. Crucial. It’s so amazingly power-filled.]

The other fascinating thing about this is the revelation of information. In three lines, we assume that the Man and Woman know each other, they don’t like each other, the boy is their son, or at least theirs to argue over, and the Man is taking him away from the Woman. She’s powerless to do anything about it, and the Boy doesn’t want to go with him.

The last stage direction is crucial for that last bit of information. If there was no stage direction, it would be ambiguous:

The MAN reaches out and pulls the boy away from her. She moans.

Man Hello.
Woman You complete bastard.
Boy Let me go!

Now the Boy is potentially talking to the Woman, a decision that must be made in the staging of the scene. But if the dialogue makes it clear, no stage direction is required –

The MAN reaches out and pulls the boy away from her. She moans.

Man Hello.
Woman You complete bastard.
Boy Let me go!
Woman Never!

She answers. No stage direction required because it’s now clear who he’s talking to, so he wouldn’t struggle. Unless she kept hold of him. It doesn’t say she let him go when the Man pulled the Boy away, does it? Do we care? Would it change things if she held on?

The MAN reaches out and pulls the boy away from her, but she won’t let go.

Man Hello.

[ – which changes an actor’s options for ‘hello’, doesn’t it? Fascinating.]

Woman You complete bastard.

The BOY struggles.

Boy Let me go!
Woman Never!

The WOMAN tightens her grip.

Suddenly, the Woman has the potential to be the Bad Guy in this, whereas before I saw her only as the tragic mother. Interesting. (That may say more about me than about stage directions.)

But wait! What if there’s something else going on with the Boy?

The MAN reaches out and pulls the boy away from her, but she won’t let go.

Man Hello.
Woman You complete bastard.

The BOY struggles.

Boy Let me go!
Woman Never!

The WOMAN tightens her grip and eyes the rollercoaster.

Boy Mum, I just want one more go!
Woman Why can’t I go with you, then?
Man It’s my turn, Gladys! I’ve only just got here and they close in half an hour!

… and so on. (Gladys?)

Way back when I first started writing the opening number for Mort, I had this chimneysweep as one of the tradesmen who’s looking for an apprentice at the annual hiring fair. Perfect choice, I thought. Proper medieval trade for a bloke who might want a boy apprentice. I had the Butcher’s first line all written:

Have you got the stomach, boy, to cut a cow in half?

I liked this line. It spoke well for the Butcher: a man who can pick up a whole cow carcass with his big, strong, bloodied hands and slam it onto a meat hook, then swing a shiny cleaver at it and thunk through the bones until it’s cut in half. Good image, I thought.

But then I wanted a rhyme for ‘half’.

I had to rule out ‘barf’ straight away as being too modern for this pseudo-medieval piece, although puking is a good subject to explore when you’re writing boys aged 8-12. But you do have to think of the American market and the way an American actor would butcher (no pun intended) the rhyme by pronouncing the bloody R.

Also, I had to fit the rhyme to my other tradesmen. I chose the chimneysweep, for various reasons, and found the line:

I need someone smaller than the height of my staff.

Because I wanted small, see. Georgie Grubb, one of the boys, is very small – he’s a sidekick, and a sidekick’s size is of great comic importance – and he needed a good trade.

So I was very pleased with the staff line, but being a pedantic sort of person, I then had to know why the chimneysweep had a staff. It’s not a chimneysweep’s tool of the trade, is it? At the suggestion of a friend, I decided that he had a limp and then added this stage direction with accompanying footnote.

Meanwhile, the CHIMNEYSWEEP limps* over to the crowd.

* The Chimney Sweep hadn’t wanted to play the Hogfather for the orphans in the first place. He kept telling them that a man that fat is gonna get stuck up there and have to be pushed out, but would they listen?

It later occurred to me that the best way to identify a chimneysweep would be to give him a chimney-sweeping brush to carry. This, and a staff too. I was proven right when he was only given a brush in the workshop production, which he referred to as his ‘staff’. It made no sense at all. And the kid playing Georgie Grubb wasn’t smaller than the brush because brushes come in short lengths that slot together.

It was, in fact, rubbish.

I know it’s only a tiny moment, but it is an example of what happens when (for whatever reason) a stage direction is ignored. The chimneysweep had no staff because we were pushing it for time to find props as it was. Plus we didn’t have time to work out that he could carry a staff and a brush, and then gratefully hand the brush to his apprentice once he’d hired one, which would tell us in a brief moment that the chimneysweep’s life will be so much better now that he has a young boy to shove up chimneys.

A lot of drama would have happened in a few short moments, but the stage direction was ignored, so it never came about. And, crucially, the hole that was left in the scene never got stitched back together, so it was glaringly obvious.

Well… it was to me.

Random thoughts about stage directions. Very hard to remember everything I think about stage directions when I’m not in the middle of writing one.

Craft Bites #1

2007-07-02T20:24:00.000Z

There are a couple of things about what I do that I want to put here while I remember to blog them. I might expand on them another time, but for now...

Writing vs Dramaturgy (or any other non-writer input) is Creation vs Reaction.

I gather source material for my writing from all sorts of places: reference books, fiction, newspapers, my life experiences, traits of people I encounter, and so on. These are all sources of suggestions; I cherry-pick the things that suit the story I want to tell, filtered through who I am as a person and therefore as a writer.

It follows that an actor, a dramaturg or a director are also sources of suggestions, and I cherry-pick from them, too. No book can force me to say yes to including something, and therefore no person can either. They may presume they can, because they have the ability to speak and reason where a book does not, but that changes nothing.

For the audience, good writing is all about three things: confession, connection, catharsis.

Emotions are 'confessed' into the space by the characters. If they recognise 'confession', the audience connects with that emotion. By joining the character's journey through that emotion, the audience finds some catharsis for that emotion within themselves.

Might keep blogging these little craft bites if any others occur to me.

The Show vs. The Production

2007-06-02T10:18:00.000Z

I had an interesting conversation with my director recently. He has the first draft of act one, and we're meeting to talk dramaturgically next week. Just to give you some background: the show was commissioned by a national youth theatre company. The cast will consist of 36 young people from age 14 to about 19, I think. We'll all be in residence to rehearse it for two solid weeks, culminating in three performances at a regional theatre.

It's very difficult to do an existing full-length show from scratch in two weeks with a cast of 36, but it's almost impossible to do a full, brand new show in that time. It's a funny old mix, putting young amateurs and raw material together. I'm still not sure if it quite works. The last show I had published that was written for young people had actually received a final rewrite after a production with adult professionals, which I swear is the reason that the quality of the published version makes me happier than the quality of shows published after just one production with kids.

But that's about my oft-repeated belief that writing for young people should still be about the writing, not about the kids. There are no 'allowances' to be made in the writing just because kids will perform it. So naturally, I'm going to be in rehearsals with them, working the writing as we go along, just like I would with any show. (And the kids actually love working with me on that.)

Because of all this, we've decided just to do act one for this workshop. The plan is to get it to as high a performance standard as possible, then invite potential investors and see if we can raise the money to do a big production next year, possibly at Edinburgh Festival. Fun, fun, fun!

So he has act one, and he commented that his first and most obvious concern is the part the chorus play in the show. I should explain that my aim for this show was to give as many kids as possible a named part with a line of dialogue, or a little bit of solo singing. The thing most directors ask me about my shows is, "Can we have some extra dialogue? I've got a cast of 184 kids and their parents all want to see their kid feature!" (We do have a way to do that in the published shows, actually. For any cast size. I'm quite proud of figuring out how to make that work!)

I'm also quite proud of the fact that, as it stands, act one has 95 named characters. And not one of them was forced into the story. A lot of them are part of a crowd, and it was an interesting challenge to see if I could make a chorus be individuals-in-one-place rather than a Crowd. In some places, we've absolutely achieved that (and in song, too!). But it's always the case with me that the journey of the main characters makes up the skeleton of the show in the first draft. The second draft then consists of me fleshing out the world, the community, and so on. So I wasn't surprised that my director mentioned that problem.

However, amongst other things, he's focusing on having to keep 36 kids busy all day, every day, for two whole weeks. Which is a very valid problem - and more his problem than mine. I asked if we could focus dramaturgically on the show itself first, and then address that problem. He replied that although he understood what I was asking, we should bear in mind that the show was commissioned for this company, and this is how they work.

It's a good point, and we should absolutely keep that in mind. But the show must have a future beyond this company. No show exists just to serve the first production (even though it must totally serve the first production). Even the huge Miss Saigon was re-worked to fit in smaller, touring venues.

This company is pretty unusual in its method of having a two-week solid rehearsal/show period. Most youth companies will rehearse in evenings, and don't have to call the entire company to every rehearsal. Even if we did a professional, adult production of it, it would still not be necessary to keep the entire cast entertained throughout rehearsals.

I can't imagine how difficult it must be for a director to separate themselves between dramaturgical work and actual directing. Usually, I suppose they don't have to as much as I'm asking mine to do now. But it is very important to me that we don't force the show to be something so inflexible that it can only be done by this company in the future.

Luckily, my director is one of the good guys. It's great to be able to have this conversation with him, and for him to understand it. Hardly surprising, actually, since he spends a lot of time reading and advising on new musicals. We're also very lucky that the company only works with new writing, so they understand the nature of the process and are very happy to allow things like an act-one-only workshop.

We will address the issue of how a large-cast, big-chorus show can make the best use of its large cast and big chorus. We completely need to address that, and it will be very insightful for me since I've never actually sat down and thought about it. Big shows are rare these days. Youth theatre is about the only place you get to do them... well, you have to, for them. So I'll post more about that as I learn more about it.

But I wanted to post about this because, for me, it's a really important distinction to make: the show vs the production. I would imagine it's also true of things like the first cast. I'm sure there are many shows that have had songs added because the Big Star wanted another solo - and I'm sure that the character often benefitted from that, since a part that is worthy of a big star is surely important enough to warrant another big emotional moment. But there is the danger that one might rewrite a character for an actor who is, say, particularly good with physical comedy... thereafter demanding that only good physical comedy actors can play that part.

The same for venue restrictions, and other such things that are unique to a first production. I just think it's worth bearing those things in mind.

Reality TV and Musical Theatre

2007-05-07T18:07:00.000Z

Peter Lathan has a blog on his excellent website The British Theatre Guide. I responded to this post, and am cross-posting my response here.

I agree with View From The Stalls that this kind of 'reality' TV is good for encouraging those who may not go and see such a musical to buy tickets and tell their friends, because they feel they have some vested interest in the creation of the production. I also agree that audiences are influenced by the choices the TV producer makes in terms of editing and such.

However, I also agree with Peter that I would rather a panel of experts chose my brain surgeon than choose him/her myself based on my serious lack of knowledge about brain surgery (and, presumably, at a time when my brain isn't working all that well).

But I do have faith that the spread of the public's ability to choose that has been generated by the current incarnation of the internet (about which music, videos, news articles, and so on are worthwhile and which are not) will also result in the public being able to make more and more informed choices due to the similarly wide-ranging amount of information made available by the very experts who have been making the choices up to now.

More than that, the experts are not always purely interested in the enjoyment-value of a song, or the informative content of a news article. In many cases, online, for the public, that's exactly how we make our decisions.

I'm not advocating a lessening of the value placed on an expert's opinion. But we must remember that the audience of a musical are an expert at being an audience. Any theatrical presentation would not be a theatrical presentation without the presence and collaboration of an audience. (There is no sound when no hands clap.)

This is the same for me as librettist having an opinion about casting, even though I am not the director, whose job it is to ultimately make a call about casting. I would be outraged if the director of a first production of a brand new show completely ignored my opinion on the characters and cast totally against what I thought I'd written. It is, in fact, fairly standard with many theatre companies producing a new show to allow me a clause in my contract that gives me right of approval over director, and I wouldn't work with anyone who had radically different ideas to mine. However, if they collaborate with me and take my intentions into consideration, I will always fight for their right to make that final call. It's a collaboration.

Andrew Lloyd Webber presumably has the ability to tell the TV producers that the way the public is voting will result in something that would actually be harmful for the production, at which point something would be done. We may not find out about it, but I guarantee you he's not investing that much money in a production and then letting the public have absolute say. Long-runners are where recoupment happens. Reality shows won't guarantee an audience indefinitely. As was pointed out, after a few months they can fire the person hired and re-cast anyway.

I was just discussing these TV shows with a friend of mine who is studying to be a musical theatre performer. He's writing a paper on the 'triple-threat' actor (one who can dance, sing and act) and I suggested that the state of arts funding is directly responsible for the kind of skills a performer requires to work in musical theatre.

When companies choose to do musical revivals to guarantee them an audience through affection and product-recognition, they produce shows that were written in an era when being a triple-threat was the norm: Carousel, The Sound of Music, West Side Story. Thus they require a cast with those abilities.

When companies choose to do small-scale productions for budgetry reasons, and have a cast of actor-musicians, they require a triple-threat of a different kind - and perhaps even a quadruple threat, unless we wish to lose dancing from musicals entirely. They cast those shows accordingly.

When companies choose to do cross-genre productions that include another performance skill (eg: the puppetry in Avenue Q or the roller-skating in Starlight Express, or even the drumming in Stomp) because the novelty of it will attract more bums on seats, they require perfomers with even more skills. Admittedly, they have production 'schools' for these during rehearsals... but if you already have some knowledge of that skill as a performer, plus you're as good at everything else as other people auditioning, who gets the part?

So, effectively, as in the old days when you learnt to sing, dance and act equally well, and to the best of your ability, the state of funding in the arts is having a direct effect on the amount and variety of work available to performers, the amount of training they have to do and skills they have to perfect, and therefore the pressure on drama schools to include as much as possible into the curriculum and hire more members of staff who are experts in more disciplines.

That money has to come from somewhere, and as per tradition in the arts because of lack of funding, the people who are the most vulnerable are hit the hardest. As Peter so rightly said: the foundation of the pyramid is the one that gets chipped away. More productions start to require actor-musicians, so actors pay money to learn an instrument that they can add to their resume. Drama schools have to charge more, so they put the fees up. Producers have to recoup their investors' money, so they ask the writers to waive their royalties. Record companies are stung by online file-sharing, so they put outrageous clauses into artists' contracts.

I don't think triple-threaters are a bad thing. I love being able to include dance in my musicals. I didn't hesitate to write puppetry into my current show, and wouldn't hesitate to write in any other skill I thought necessary to enhance the storytelling. But there are consequences of my doing that: people have to spend more money learning skills, or I immediately disbar some actors from ever being in that show, or I create a situation in which my producer asks me to waive my royalties. The consequence of my writing choices is not, and has never been, that the government offers me and my team financial support and encouragement to expand and experiment with the artform.

So what is Reality TV doing for my artform? It's expanding the popularity of it - which is fantastic. It's enabling the public to have more choice, and to potentially make an informed choice by learning what the experts on the panel say - also good, in many ways. But the fact that these shows are revivals draws in a big TV audience - and yet also forces us to produce shows that require triple-threaters, which puts pressure on the industry in many ways. Not a bad thing, except for the fact that the industry cannot, or does not, entirely support itself.

In their defence, I note that the money from phone calls into Any Dream Will Do will be used to fund a musical theatre bursery "with the intention of helping aspiring young performers to further their career ambitions in the area of musical theatre". I would imagine it's quite a lot of money.

I can't imagine it's enough to completely redress the balance.

The Art of Being a Postman

2007-05-04T11:52:00.000Z

Just got a draft of an agreement in email - the legal equivalent of a handshake between writers and producer. So I did what all sensible writers should do: read it in great detail, and wrote some detailed comments which I ran by the composer and then sent to my lawyer.

Why do I know all these things? Why do I have to understand the legal terms, know the latest law that covers all this shit, and be practically fluent in legalese when I respond?

And by sending such a detailed response to him, why am I teaching my lawyer to suck eggs? (Metaphorically speaking.) He's one of the best lawyers in the business! He's also a very lovely person, in whom I have great trust.

Yet I have to understand what I'm signing. I have to understand what I'm agreeing to, else how can I agree to it?

The first world is generally very confused about artists. We don't quite understand the way in which any art is created, and in that I include the art of doing a job - any job. Take postmen, for example. Every individual postman delivers the mail in his own, unique way. The differences may be tiny, but they're there.

Mine just delivered something that wouldn't fit through my mailbox, so he left it on the steps (since it's a nice day) and lightly knocked on the door to let me know it was there.

Now, we have a door knocker. It's a big, black iron thing that makes a very loud noise. I'm sitting in my kitchen, working, and the door knocker scares the crap out of me. But my postman doesn't use the door knocker. He knocks lightly on the door, and then goes to the next house to deliver. I know it's him that knocked. I know there's something I need to pick up from the steps.

He also knows that sometimes I sleep late, and the bloody door knocker wakes me up. When he first started delivering mail and used to use the door knocker (because it's there), I would lean out of my bedroom window above the front door looking tousled and not very up yet. His light knock on the door doesn't wake me now.

I like that. It's thoughtful. My postman, as the person he as become through his life experiences to date, has decided on a light knock rather than a big, heavy, iron one. Maybe his mother taught him to be respectful of how he enters other people's spaces. Maybe someone used to bang on his door, and he hated it. Maybe he's made the decision that a postman should facilitate the delivery of mail in a subtle but active way.

Whatever the reason, that is the art with which he does his job. The fact that there is a reason makes it an art.

In EIRE, they understand this. No artist there has to pay any tax. They are allowed to live tax-free, since it is known that everything they do in life makes them who they are as an artist. In England, I'm allowed to claim all manner of things on my tax return: movies, books, magazines, but also theatrical props of any kind (a telescope was the last one of note) and lunches with producers. I can even claim some of my household bills, since I work from home.

But I can't claim everything, and I should be able to because everything in my life (most of which costs me money) continuously informs who I am, and who I am makes me what I am: an artist.

So why am I not advocating my postman being exempt from tax payments? Much as I love him, there are other people who deliver my mail sometimes. They do use the door knocker, but they still get my post to me efficiently. They do the same job as my regular guy, even if not in exactly the same way.

But give two writers the same exact subject for a musical, and they will write two completely different shows. Completely different. You could even give them a basic plot outline of the events that must take place in the show, and the shows will still be totally different.

They're totally different people. With different life experiences. They will feel emotionally drawn to different characters, or to the same character but for different reasons. This is what makes it so important to me that I treat the novel I'm adapting as basic source material like any other. I cherry-pick the bits I want to use because I'm not trying to write the musical Terry Pratchett or Geraldine McCaughrean would write. Or even the one my sister would write. I could never do that because I'm not them. So I just do what I can do and write my own musical.

This is one of the most useful tools I have as a writer in a very small and therefore competitive genre: I'm not actually in competition with any other writer of musicals. I can't be, because no-one else can write what I write. I am unique because that's just the way it is. It makes rejection so much easier to handle: no producer has ever chosen someone else's show over mine. They've just chosen the only show that they could choose. At that point, mine was never even in the running, because what I write was not what they were looking for.

It's like someone choosing an apple over an orange. If you went shopping for an apple in the first place, as long as there were apples for sale, it's inconceivable that you would buy an orange. Unless you changed your mind and decided you'd rather have an orange. At which point, it's inconceivable that you would buy an apple.

So why do I need to know all the legalese? It's not just about making an informed choice. It's also about the fact that no matter how amazing my lawyer is (and he is amazing) and no matter how experienced a producer is, the product I have for sale and the service I offer is totally, completely unique. The person best-placed to make decisions about the immediate future of that product is me, because I'm the only one who fully understands it right now.

Of course, once I actually hand the child over to someone else, I actively seek their input. That's why I'm handing it over. I just want to be absolutely sure I know what I'm doing when I choose to whom, and how, to hand it.

Waiting for me...

2007-04-28T10:55:00.000Z

Sometimes I despair. It hits me, washes over me, drowns me. Sometimes I don't write because I can't. I don't have the skill. It all vanishes. I lose my tenuous grip on it and it flies away from me. Or flies around me, mocking me that I never had it in the first place.

I have an idea. It's an enormous idea, and it's terrifying. It's separate to me, a thing so huge that as soon as I thought it into existence, it became something of its own. Already, instantly too big and strong for me to hold. So there it stands, a giant, waiting for me to create it yet already existing alone.

I suspect that I don't know what I'm doing, and I can't prove that I do. I can listen to moments, and find myself in them, but I can't prove it to someone else. But I will have to prove this. I'll have to prove that I can do it, and I have nothing to show. I have nothing to show.

So I'll start small. Take it down to the tiniest thing, a thing that looks like it might fit in the palm of my hand. A thing so small that if I mess it up, I will only be killing a very small thing. A little death. A spider. An ant.

Start small, and ignore the giant. He doesn't know what shape he is, anyway. Look at him, morphing, like a big lump of clay. Waiting. If he's so strong and clever, why is he waiting? Why is he watching me? He's unsure, that's why. He's waiting because he has to wait. And now he's sad, scared, lonely too.

Oh. I see. He's waiting for me.

And so am I.

Note to self

2007-04-19T00:48:00.000Z

Write less. Say more.

Voice

2007-03-24T12:58:00.000Z

I've been trying to figure out who I am. I mean, that's what therapy is all about, isn't it? Shedding all the Stuff that sticks to you as you go through life. De-magnetising yourself until you're left with yourself.

I used to think I had nothing to say as a writer. How can I ever be a writer? I have no opinion about anything. I can always see all sides of an argument. Nothing is ever decided in my mind. Everything can be re-thought. Isn't a writer supposed to have a Voice? I have no voice. I can't be a writer. I've got nothing to say.

When I wrote my first show for kids, I determined that it would have no moral to teach. I was sick of doing bible-story shows: Joseph, Jonah, Noah. Moral, moral, moral. I set out to write shows that were just fun, that had nothing to teach. Looking back on those first four shows, I discover that they have things to say after all, although no-one seems to have noticed. Even I didn't notice at the time.

That's the thing about Voice: it happens when you're not looking. In fact, it only happens if you're not looking. Try to put words into a character's mouth and you end up with blatant exposition: it becomes entirely your voice, which is not the same thing. Let the character speak, and you probably won't know what the hell is being said until it's written. Until you see it on stage. You can only hear your Voice in playback, and then only if you know how to listen for it.

I can only see myself if I step away to look. I use my therapist as a mirror: I express myself, he reflects an image back to me and then I see myself. It's the same with my writing: I express myself to the characters, they reflect a story back to me and then I see myself.

But I can't stop and look when I prepare to write, or while I'm writing. I have to trust, and damn, I find that hard. I'm an appalling dance partner: a good dancer, but terrible at letting someone else lead in improvisation. I cannot be waltzed. I cannot let go.

During the writing process, I find it very hard let go of my insecurities as a writer. That's the strongest part of me as Writer, of course, so it's the most prominent. My poor characters have to shout to get through. So I interview them. I make it their problem. I pretend they have a problem talking, and I try to engage them as my therapist engages me when I'm finding it hard to talk: I ask them questions about themselves.

Doing that puts me in the role of therapist, which means I have to make it all about them and nothing personal about me. I have to show real interest in what they have to say, and give them the freedom to say whatever they want - even if it's not the direction I wanted the conversation to go in. I have to trust them to speak, and trust myself to believe them.

Sometimes we talk about things they don't want to talk about, or can't articulate. I push them gently, pry answers from them, keep asking.

Step away from the work, and that's all me. Step into the work and it's not about me. I give myself the freedom to speak, and I make discoveries. Real, honest discoveries. Things I didn't know about the characters - about myself.

And then the truth comes out in the writing, and truthfulness allows the audience to connect with the characters. People can sense a lie, even if they don't know it, and lies create emotional alienation. We don't always seek the truth, but we have to react to it when we encounter it.

I've been trying to figure out who I am. Shedding all the Stuff that has stuck to me as I go through life. De-magnetising myself until I'm left with myself. I am daunted by that task: how far back do I have to go before I found the me who doesn't consist of reactions to the world? Coping mechanisms, defense devices, bandages, band-aids and butterflies. How can I know what still needs healing if I don't look beneath them?

And what if I strip them all away and find that beneath them, I don't actually exist?

I used to think I had nothing to say. That I had no Voice. But when I step away from my writing, I can see myself in it. I can sense a lie, and when I encounter the truth, it hits me like a ten-ton truck. There I am, bare-boned, de-fleshed, truth-full.

Beautiful.

Podcast

2007-03-22T09:48:00.000Z

MusicalTalk is a website featuring a great podcast all about musical theatre. For some reason, they decided I had something interesting to say, so they interviewed me. You can hear me waffle on about writing, Tisch and eggs in episodes 23 and 24.

Check out their other casts, because they've had some great people on.

Adaptation

2007-03-19T11:55:00.000Z

I'm currently on my second adaptation of a novel, and the whole process is fascinating for me.

I saw Wicked recently, and had read the book beforehand. I've also read all the Harry Potters, and subsequently saw the movies. The act of adapting from one genre to another seems to swing from something quite different to the source (Wicked) to something very faithful to the source (Harry Potter). Right now, this act of adapting has settled with me thus -

I treat the novel as source material, in the same way I treated historic documents about Horatio Nelson for my musical about him. In the same way I treated research about clockwork automata for a show about a clockwork woman. (Ref 'Men vs Women': when I do write women, I make them not be human!)

In other words, I take what I want from it and ignore the rest. I have a very short attention span, so if something from the source instantly grabs me, I keep it. Anything I can't instantly recall, I disregard. Well, at least in terms of the global structure of a show. I sometimes go back if I want a specific tiny detail, but for the most part, once I'm away from the source, I'm away from it. Beyond it.

For me, the intention is not to faithfully recreate someone else's work in a different genre. I want to create something entirely new. I'll cherry-pick at the source, but only to serve my intention for this new work I'm creating. If it doesn't serve my story, out it goes.

Frankly, I don't see how an adaptation can, or should even attempt to be totally faithful to the source. There are writers involved in an adaptation, and as soon as you get creative people involved, they can't help but filter the story through themselves. It should be new, and true to its creators.

After all, even Shakespeare had source material.

Men vs. Women

2007-03-19T11:43:00.000Z

I'm much more comfortable writing men than women. In fact, I hate writing women. I've pondered this for many years. I guess you'd have to ask my therapist for the real reason, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that women are just out there anyway. They're all about emotion. The display of emotion is a fairly natural thing for them because it's part of their direct process of change. Not that men don't do emotions, but logic is a more natural tool for them to use in the process of change. And change, as we all know, maketh drama.

I suspect I prefer writing men because their emotions have to overcome their logic to get noticed in the first place. The emotions have to creep, steal or filter out, so lyrics can creep, steal or filter out of dialogue. Sometimes there's a brief burst but it can only last for a maximum of three minutes, often including rise and sometimes fall too.

Maybe I find that more naturalistic. It's quite hard for me to make women sing. They don't really need the facility of song to display an emotion. When they do use music, it feels in some way manipulative. No, go with me on this one for a minute. A man is less likely than a woman to discuss his emotions with his workmates over lunch.

I mean, he might talk about her, but it would be in a more logical, active way: she hasn't called - what should I do? It's less likely to be the more female, emotional approach: he hasn't called - what does that mean?

It takes a little more intimacy - a few pints, or a very close friend - for a man to be given facility to get to 'what does that mean'. It's the same with song: like a few pints, music gives him facility to emote.

But a woman can more easily express an emotion in dialogue. She can already do 'what does that mean'. It's still true that the more intimacy she has, the more she can open up - a few pints, a close friend do make a difference for her - but in more complex ways. Not only can she do 'what does that mean' for him, but also 'what does that mean for me'.

So when a woman uses the facility of song, it doesn't just open her up, it adds another layer to that emotion. Since the way we choose to express anything (eg: gesture, vocal inflection, facial expression) says as much about what we're communicating as the actual words we use, I'm suggesting that a female character chooses to use song (just as we choose the way in which, and the extent to which we communicate about something) to add something else to the listener's experience of our story. To make ourselves seem more sympathetic, more jolly... to draw the listener in with a bit more definition. It's calculated.

When a man sings, there's just one floodgate to open - a little or a lot - and out come the emotions. When a woman sings, there are a series of smaller floodgates to control and direct the flow. Hence, she has more tools to use, and hence - she can manipulate the expression of the emotion to a greater degree.

At this point, I should admit to being a very bad writer. No, seriously. If I'm honest, I see all men as hunter/protectors and all women as bearer/nurturers. Plus I really see only the two emotions: being afraid and being hungry. Not even feeling those things, actually. Just being them. Being afraid of, and being hungry for. I'm probably the most guilty of discrimination against either gender, depending on which one you are. I'm all about sweeping generalisations.

And can I just add that I've never written a gay man... or any man who identifies heavily with a female approach, gay or straight. I suspect that you should include men-who-identify-more-with-women in my definition of 'female' in this. I'm aware the division I've made is not gender-accurate, but I'm also aware that there are yin people and yang people and I have to describe them somehow!

I don't quite know how I manage to write men, not being one. Maybe the distance I have helps me observe them, where writing women is too close for comfort. Maybe I take my experience of female emotions and plop them into men so I can study them without getting involved. Maybe I just want to explore the first emotional flow and avoid going too much deeper, so I choose men in order to have a more simple floodgate system.

Ask my therapist. He'll nod and ask you what it is about you that makes you want to ask that question...

What are lyrics?

2007-02-22T13:05:00.000Z

What are lyrics? Are they sung dialogue? Are they poetry? Are they some other kind of unique expressive language?

They clearly don't need rhymes in order to tell a story or express an emotion. See Ben Folds' song The Luckiest for evidence of this. (Read the lyrics here.) I'm guessing it gets played at a lot of weddings, and you don't need much more proof than that of its success as a love song.

The Luckiest is a perfect crossover between pop and musical theatre: that song would work just as well in the middle of act two as it does standing alone on YouTube. Whilst some pop songs simply inflate the emotion of the hook (for example: How Do I Live (Without You) ?) others illustrate that emotion with a story. You can often tell by the hook: the hook 'The Luckiest' requires a story as explanation. The hook 'How Do I Live (Without You) ?' contains the entire contents of the song. The rest of the lyric simply puts that sentiment in other ways.

If you put How Do I Live (Without You) ? into the second act of a musical, what would happen? The character would hover in a single emotional moment. No-one moves on anywhere in that song, but then no-one moves on anywhere in The Luckiest either. However, The Luckiest does have a story for the audience to follow, and I think that as an audience, we expect to be moved by show. Not just emotionally moved, but also moved on.

After all, it's a storytelling genre, and being told a story is all about being taken on a journey. One of the most successful love songs in musical theatre is If I Loved You from Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Although the lyrics do not describe an actual change of sentiment, there is the possibility that either Julie or Billy will actually say how they feel about each other. In fact, they do say it, and then they take it back. They come so damn close to just being honest with each other (and with themselves) that they must surely both be aware of what the other is saying.

That's the beauty of the lyric: it's multi-layered, even without the dialogue in between the sections of the song. They tell each other a story, but then they claim the story is just imagination. They inflate an emotion, but then claim not to be feeling that emotion. On the surface, they almost go on a journey. Emotionally, they clearly do go on a journey, but deny it. The song teases us with a journey, and takes us somewhere too.

How Do I live (Without You) ? wouldn't work in the same way. We'd have to stop journeying. The Luckiest might work in the same way, since it has a story... but is that enough? I say the context might make it enough.

If the character singing it were responding to someone who is doubting the good fortune in loving them, then the story within the song becomes an offering of proof: this is why I'm lucky - because loving you gives me a reason to live.

The answer is not about how much they love, but why they are lucky to love so much. Because there is an answer to be found in the lyric, there is a question implied: what makes you think you're lucky to love me? (Implying: you idiot!)

With How Do I Live (Without You) ? there is no answer to be found, and therefore no implied question. In fact, the lyric is a question. And this is where the subject of catharsis is raised.

An audience must be able to collaborate with the show; to access it emotionally in some way. A story demands an audience in order to exist. In fact, our lives are made up of stories, from "Guess what happened to me today?" to "What are you implying?" - we try to fit every little detail of our lives into the subjective story of how we perceive our experiences.

When we collaborate with a show, we identify with the characters' emotional journeys. Thus we can encounter emotions without actually experiencing them: love, fear and so on. We gain catharsis - a sort of purging, or perhaps a reaffirmation - of that emotion.

To obtain catharsis, we must go on a journey. Emotions travel, they don't just appear and vanish. No matter how quickly an emotion rises, it still rises and falls rather than just being and not being. Therefore we need a characters' journey to lead us through that rise and fall. Drama consists of journeys. In its most simple form, there are three 'beats' in a dramatic journey: first, a situation; second, a conflict; third, a resolution. The conflict can be seen as a question about the situation to which the resolution provides an answer.

To return to How Do I Live (Without You) ? : if there's no specifically-implied situation-question-answer, there's no specifcally-implied journey. In that lyric, there is only a question. Why couldn't it exist in a show as the question part? Because there's no specific situation to which the question can refer. The 'I' in the song must be everyman, since no details are provided in the lyric as to whom the singer specifically is as a person, or where they're at (in this relationship) other than some implication that they're missing the person they love. But that loved one could be anything from dead to gone to out shopping.

That's the beauty of the lyric as a pop lyric. It must exist as a stand-alone song, played on the radio, on TV, on a stereo. Therefore, it must be able to exist within anyone's day, in any location, in any situation. And it can, because it's generic enough to make no specific situational implications. It would work at a wedding and in the office. Anyone, anywhere, can connect with it on their own emotional level in their choice of emotional situations, and thereby gain some personal catharsis for whatever matters most to them.

The lyric says: "Here's a question. Pick your own situation and resolution."

However, when we go to see a musical, we expect to be led with a little more structure than that. We're expecting a whole story, not something generic for which we have to do our own work. We want to be given a situation, a question and a resolution. We want to be told a whole story.

The Luckiest implies a situation simply because the focus of the hook is not on the love, but on the luck of experiencing such love. Luck is not an emotion, in and of itself, but it is a situation. One exists in a state of luck. Ask any gambler about this. The emotions they experience during that state of being lucky - that's another thing entirely.

So there's a situation, which implies a question: what emotion are you experiencing in your state of luck? A profound sense of love. All we have to do to dramatise that is set the situation and the question in an appropriate context for a resolution to be possible.

For example: Jane's life is a nightmare - everything seems to be going wrong for her. One of the things that makes all this worse is the guilt she feels for putting her partner John through watching her struggle with things that are beyond their control. Because she feels guilty about this, she fights any support he offers her. He desperately wants to help her in any way he can, but his hands are mostly tied. However, he can try to resolve this guilt she feels, thereby allowing them to at least have each other to fall back on.

He doesn't just tell her how much he loves her, because that would imply that she is a Good Thing, and she knows loving her is currently not all good. What he tells her is how lucky he feels to be able to love her. She already knows he loves her, but by pointing out that he's lucky to love her, his love for her is suddenly able to incorporate everything in her life, both good and bad. The value is not placed on the love itself, but on the luck of loving; on the state of loving, which clearly includes all the not-so-good stuff.

Therefore, there is a situation which begs a question, and an answer to the question: a journey.

To return to the question of whether lyrics are sung dialogue or poetry: in some ways, they are both. Poetry tends to view a subject through a linguistically-creative lens: the structure, or the rhyming scheme, or the condensed language, or the subjectively-perceived description of the subject are some of the tools that shape words as poetry.

Dialogue is more linguistically free in that respect. The emotional slant is provided by vocal intonation and physical gesture, by context and situation.

With lyrics, music provides a lot of the emotional slant. The music sets the emotional tone. The Luckiest is a ballad - the slow tempo somewhat implies a sense of thoughtfulness, or of longing, or even of sorrow. I would have added things like 'peacefulness' to that list, but the fact that the word 'lucky' is used in a comparitive sense - luckiest - gives it additional weight that implies (at least to me) that it's attempting to win a 'lucky' competition of some kind. That fact (at least, for me) takes away some of the peacefulness of it.

(Interestingly, the music - or at least, the orchestration - of How Do I Live (Without You) ? has a sense of urgent passion behind it that implies the same sense of competition, to me. Which gives a little hope for it being able to exist in a dramatic context, but not as successfully as The Luckiest would.)

As I've said, I don't think rhymes are necessary. In fact, I think they often get in the way of musical theatre songs. They can help in a more generically-accessible pop song because they allow the listener to 'fall home' frequently: the rhyming word is a satisfying end to the opening left by the word with which it rhymes. This works in a similar way to a familiarity with song structure.

Although many people wouldn't know what AABA song structure is if you asked them, most of us are familiar with the Beatles' song Yesterday which is a perfect example of the structure. (You can see the lyrics here.) Two A sections, followed by a B in which the melody changes, and then a return to the A section.

We may not realise that this is AABA, but in our hearts/psyche/subconscious the musical structure is familiar to us. This musical structure is fantastic for supporting a dramatic journey:

First A: the situation is set up. (As opposed to today: yesterday, everything was good.)

Second A: the conflict or question is introduced. (Today, there's a shadow over me. Something has changed.)

These are both fairly factual: here's what it was like yesterday, and here's what it's like today.

The B: some kind of exploration or consideration of the conflict. (I think I did something wrong to make the situation change.)

This tends to be more emotional, more personal, less factual. Hence, because there's a different approach to the subject in question, the music changes to give support to the more subjective slant.

The final A: draws a conclusion - which can again be more factual. (This is how today is for me, as a result of the change.) The music helps us return to that more objective point of view by repeating the original melody.

Yesterday was written as a pop song, so in order to be more generically-accessible, the singer doesn't actually learn anything from their process within the B section. In musical theatre, the possibility of learning something about the situation or themselves within the B (in which the music changes to support some introversion and subjective consideration) allows for a conclusion or decision to be reached with regard to the situation in the final A: back to a more factual aproach, yet the character has gone on a journey, literally, from A to B.

When we encounter the AABA format, even though we may not know it, we're encountering something we inherently recognise from years of exposure to it. Thus we might not know that we're expecting a B after two A sections, but we would feel that something was slightly wrong if it didn't happen that way.

There are, of course, ways to take the AABA format and break the structure for a specific dramatic reason. By using the audience's expectations of the song structure as a tool, we can shape the story for them in a different way.

The same thing applies to rhyme. By setting up a word-structure in which rhymes are expected, we can deliberately forego the rhyme where it should happen, thus prompting a specific emotional response from the audience: a laugh, for example, if the most obvious rhyme in the situation would be an anglo-saxon oath but we break that expectation and use an innocent rhyming word instead.

Musical theatre lyrics have the responsibility of continuing the dramatic journey of the character, so how does rhyme fit into that? Considering The Luckiest again, even though it's not a musical theatre song, it's clear that rhyme is not necessary for a song to imply a dramatic journey. But with regard to If I Loved You, a very musical theatre song, the rhyming scheme is quite tight. Look:

If I loved you, time and again I would try to say
all I'd want you to know.
If I loved you, words wouldn't come in an easy way.
Round in circles I'd go.
Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy,
I'd let my golden chances pass me by.
Soon you'd leave me.
Off you would go in the mist of day,
never, never to know
how I loved you.
If I loved you.

(Lyrics copyright Oscar Hammerstein II etc etc, fair use only here)

The rhyming scheme is ABABCCAB - incredibly tight. The audience is allowed to fall into a comfortable place at the end of every line! But the character is being very cautious - the lyric says as much: "I wouldn't know what to say to you". So the character never strays far from home, unwilling to make a break from her comfort zone of lying to Billy about how she really feels.

So the choice of rhyming scheme is a dramatic one: it's another songwriting tool, used carefully and deliberately to encourage the audience on the intended emotional journey of the character, thereby more effectively facilitating the audience's own emotional catharsis.

The Luckiest feels very honest, to me. It believe that the person singing the song is being utterly truthful about his feelings. One of the reasons for this must surely be the lack of rhyming scheme. There is a linguistic structure to the lyric, since it floats atop a musical line that has structure: a verse/chorus structure, in fact the chorus being nothing much more than the hook.

The person singing steps right out of their home - in fact, there is no home in this song. No rhyme for the next line to fall back on. It's linguistically free, which implies an emotional freedom in that person's expression of the sentiment.

Actually, it's not true that there are no rhymes in that song. There is one direct rhyme:

And in a wide sea of eyes,
I see one pair that I recognize.

(Lyrics copyright Ben Folds etc etc, fair use only here)

Although this rhyme has the suggestion of being accidental, existing alone a sea of no-rhymes as it does, there is a good reason for its presence in this line: the fact that the second one falls home on a rhyme supports the idea of one's gaze roaming through a crowd and falling home on the one pair of familiar eyes there.

To return to my original questions: just as poetry makes use of such tools as rhyme to facilitate the writer's intent for the audience's experience, so lyrics use rhymes. However, since a lyric does not exist without the music - even in reading lyrics, if we know the song it's very hard to 'hear' the lyrics in our head without hearing the corresponding melody - all of the tools a lyricist can use must also allow for the music to do its own work.

Are lyrics dialogue? If dialogue is person-honest (and what we say always comes from something in us) then a lyric must be person-honest. A song is surely inherently honest, since music is emotional-honesty brought to life. If a song is heavier with an unnecessary rhyming scheme than it is with emotional honesty, then the usefulness of the song in facilitating an audience's emotional connection with it is weakened: they have to look past the rhyming scheme to get to the emotion. You can't access an emotion on command. They rise and fall when triggered by something, so the trigger must be as accessible as possible.

Imagine Julie speaking to Billy instead of singing. She might say:

"You know, if I did love you, I'd probably keep trying to tell you... but I'd have trouble finding the right words, and I'd just go round in circles all the time without ever actually saying it. I'd really want to tell you, see, but I'd probably be so shy about it that I'd never actually get the words out... even when the perfect moment came, I'd mess it up and not say. Eventually, you'd just go off somewhere and I'd never see you again, and I'd never have told you I love you. I mean, if I loved you. That's what would happen if I loved you."

Add to that a lyrical structure, a rhyming scheme and some music and you've got yourself a more efficient and accessible way for an audience to instantly connect with her emotions. It works the same way with The Luckiest, but a rhyming scheme would actually detract from the sense of openness achieved by having none. Ben Folds knows how rhyming works as a tool, so he deliberately chooses not to use it in order to add to the overall effect he wants to create with the song.

Now look at the sentiment expressed in How Do I Live (Without You) ? - as dialogue, it might read thus:

"I can't live without you. Hell, I can't even breathe without you. If you ever leave me, I'll die!"

If someone said that to you, how would you view them? Personally, I'd say: Drama Queen. If someone said that to me, my only reaction would be a desire to run as far away from them as possible. So the song's sentiment expressed as flat dialogue doesn't exactly inspire me to feel an emotional connection with the person speaking.

But the song was written to be a generically-accessible pop song. It has to work just as well heard on the radio in the office as it does at a wedding. For something to trigger an emotion without being situation-specific, it must work harder. It must hit with more impact. Therefore the heightened language, in the context of a pop song, does the job perfectly.

But with regard to musical theatre, where there is a specific situation, a lyric is certainly dialogue in that we believe those words honestly came from the mouth of that character. And yes, lyrics are poetry in that they make use of the same kind of linguistic tools. Since a lyric cannot exist with its music, a musical theatre song is a collaborative animal, using tools from all of these genres to create a new, unique language of expression.

What that means for me as a writer of musical theatre is this: there are many linguistic tools I can use to make a song trigger the intended response from an audience. They key is that it's a choice, and I can also choose not to use them, or to use them in an unexpected way, to achieve my desired effect.

A sculptor uses tools to create a sculpture, but they don't put those tools on display with the sculpture (unless the intention is for the audience to connect with sculpture-and-process rather than sculpture). In the same way, I don't want to put my rhyming scheme or song structure on display. They're an intergral part of the song but, as with the AABA format of Yesterday, no-one needs to know that in order to make an emotional connection with the song.

Most importantly, ultimately, musical theatre songwriting is not about the tools. It's about the story, the character and their emotional journey. Being true to those things is really all that matters in the end.

A Show is a Child

2007-02-22T12:52:00.000Z

One of my directors wants more female parts. "There are never enough guys - can you change some of these to be female characters?"

Quite right, too: there are always more women than men. And, yes, I could. But not yet. I have to write the show in the way the show wants to be written. ("Don't you understand that it's not about me?") Once I've written the show, then we can make it work for the production... but a show is not about the production.

A show is a child. The first production is its coming-of-age journey. You don't tailor a child to fit the education system; you tailor the education system to suit the child. (Although try telling that to some boards of education.) Alright, the child has to make some adjustments. We can do that together, me and the director. Once the child has actually been born.

Don't get me wrong: I don't want to genetically-modify my children. The process of giving birth isn't just one push and out it pops. Changes are made slowly during gestation: it gradually becomes male or female. It gradually forms blonde or black hair. Sometimes it looks like one thing is going to happen, but in fact you get a different, unexpected result. It's not about crafting perfect children, it's about letting the child grow.

And then letting go.

Producers

2007-02-22T12:30:00.000Z

So one of my current producers decided, with infinite wisdom, to delete the show website without so much as notifying me, let alone asking me if I'd like to take over the payments, or even asking if there was any content I wanted to retrieve before it all got zapped.

I just hope to gods they haven't deleted the domain names too, since they're due to be returned to me with the rights.

Lovely to have support, isn't it? Oh for the day when the show is mine again.

Another producer (whom I do adore, it has to be said) has yet to pay the first part of the commission fee. Since it's so unusual to actually be paid to write musicals, I'm torn between being endlessly grateful and downright insulted. Normally, I do this shit for nothing. If you're going to offer to pay me, at least see it through in time for me to make the rent.

Yet another producer - well, the director - is supposed to be reading the book I want to adapt for that venue. No word yet, but then she is a bit busy. And a bit crap.

And finally, there's a show for which there is no producer yet. Not sure where to take that show. I think it's going to be small, intimate... but then, who has the funding to produce a new musical these days?

Where have all the reps gone? How am I supposed to develop my craft without them?