Forgive me, Father; it’s been roughly 544 days since my last post.
I’ve been a guest, lurking ever since the good news about The Brain because I’m fascinated by how different Bruce’s NYMF experience is from mine.
In early May, I got word that a panel of seven Tony-honorees (performers Victoria Clark & B.D.Wong, librettist Rachel Sheinkin, producers Margo Lion & Adam Epstein, and director/choreographer Casey) had chosen my musical, Such Good Friends, from roughly 400 submissions, for its World Premiere, as a “Next Link”. My moving, tuneful, hysterical, historical show plays Friday, September 28, 2007 @ 8pm; Saturday, September 29, 2007 @ 1pm; Sunday, September 30, 2007 @ 4:30pm; Wednesday, October 3, 2007 @ 4:30pm; and @ 8pm; and Saturday, October 6, 2007 @ 1pm at The Julia Miles Theatre, 424 W. 55th, the 199-seat house operated by The Women’s Project. It’s an original musical comedy with some serious overtones for which I wrote book, music, and lyrics, showing what it was like to put on a Milton Berle-like television show in the early days of live broadcasting.
It’s such an honor, but I’d very little opportunity to be elated. In May, two weeks in a row, I had shows to play: the first was a comedy, Thieves’ Carnival, involving a live musician on stage, and that would be me. I grew a beard. I wore make-up. I had lines. The only thing I was proud of was composing the twenty-five little pieces of incidental music, motifs for every character, underscoring the other characters interacted with. The following week, I m.d.’d a production of Tenderloin; you may have read Peter Filichia raving about it.
In between these time-consuming coups-de-theatre came NYMF’s Launch Weekend, in which they sat down and explained to us what NYMF would involve. They went over that 22-page contract Bruce is reading now, for instance. The upshot: NYMF is hell-bent on turning writers into entrepreneurs. All of a sudden, it was my responsibility to raise roughly $27,000. Hard to feel very elated about that.
The past nine weeks has involved a frantic search for backing (I’ve found none), a director (I found one) and a producer (I found two). The producers will handle the tons of management chores – NYMF sets a harrowing number of deadlines – but not raise dough. More happily, more comfortably, the past nine days or so have involved rewriting my show from top to bottom. Despite what NYMF thinks, writers aren’t natural entrepreneurs; we’re at our best effectively entertaining an audience with our storytelling.
It’s great to know another NYMF composer/lyricist/librettist. In a way, it’s alienating to know so few of the other writers involved. I’ve sent a few suggestions BK’s way, and may pop in every now and then with more progress reports.
