Here are the '08 posts:Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The Disney/ASCAP Workshop
Okay, so for those of you who don't know, my partners and I have been writing a musical called "How the Nurse Feels" and it was accepted into the Disney/ASCAP workshop at the Disney Studios in Burbank. Out of a zillion entries (just a mere exaggeration) our show was one of four shows selected.
On April 7th we presented the first 25 minutes of the show and then we were critiqued by a panel of musical theatre experts including Stephen (Wicked)Schwartz. Then, we had three weeks to work on the piece (implementing the notes we received if we so desired), and we came back on April 30th to present 55 consecutive minutes of our show. As participants, we were also required to attend the presentations for the other 3 shows in the workshop. That's the back-story.So here's how it went: First of all, just attending was a master class in writing. Watching other people's work and then hearing the critiques from the highly esteemed panel was amazing. I learned so much. But being a participant...well, it was very cool, kind of surreal and a tad bit overwhelming.
After the first presentation on April 7th, John Glaudini (composer) and David Green(lyricist, co-bookwriter) feverishly started writing new songs. Those two guys were like machines...I was in awe. Consequently, new songs meant new scenes and new dialogue and that's where I came in. Thank God for Starbucks, cause that's where David and I do our best writing. DG and I were writing right up until we presented our piece. I'm not kidding you. They were about to open the door to let the audience in and we're still writing dialogue to help bridge a scene. Oy vey! Very exhilarating to say the least.
The cast was terrific...they did a wonderful job and it was so much fun seeing our characters come to life, hearing the audience laugh in all the right places...that was the cool part. Here comes the nerve-wracking part...Well, our panel was incredible. In addition to Stephen Schwartz, we had Winnie (Wicked) Holzman, Dean (Footloose) Pitchford, and Jeff (Avenue Q) Marx. They gave us some amazing feedback and spoke to us for over an hour. I took notes, but mainly just listened to what they had to say. Mostly, their comments were right on target, but sometimes what they had to say was a bit contradictory and in the end they all said, "take what we say with a grain of salt, you have a great show."
The audience loved it, which of course is very encouraging. But the bottom line is we still have a lot of work to do. I, personally, love our characters and feel that with a little more work on storytelling, we might just have ourselves a fine piece of theatre. For now it's back to the drawing board. Stay tuned for more updates! Until the next time...
Monday, October 6, 2008
How The Nurse Feels in NYC
Well, we're going back to NYC with the show. This time we're crashing the NAMT Festival. That's National Alliance of Musical Theatre for all you civilians out there. We submitted our show for their yearly festival and two of our songs will be put on their annual CD, "The Other Shows You Need to Know About." However, they only choose 8 shows to do readings for the festival and we, unfortunately were not selected. But my fearless partners decided to venture forth and we are putting up a reading with a star-studded cast and slipping it in, in between the NAMT readings. Such a clever idea!Anyway, please check out the link for the full story on BroadwayWorld.com.
http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=33778
It tells of our illustrious cast and a little bit about the story of the show. It's a very exciting time to be sure! Stay tuned...I'll let you know how it all goes down when I return from the Big Apple. Until then... P.S. Another press release on "Nurse" is up on the Playbill website. Check it out at:http://www.playbill.com/news/article/122133.html
