MAKING A MUSICAL FROM THE GROUND UP

Let's make a musical. First we're going to need... well... songs. A story that connects the songs would be nice, and musicians, and actors who can sing, dance, act and perform, and great sets and costumes, direction, choreography, lights, a theatre would be great, so would an audience, oh, and someone to pay for everything and do the advertising...

I'm not being a smart ass. Any time you stop and think of all the things you need to do a show – a new show – you're doomed. It's impossible for all the elements to come together to make it happen. Impossible for all the individual artists involved to come together in agreement. Impossible! You can't do it. No one can. So how is it that shows are being written, cast, produced? The answer is: everybody is in love. And when you're in love, you have poor judgment and faulty long term planning.

Manny Azenberg, long time Broadway producer once commented to a reporter on why a critic's pan was so hurtful. He said that to do a show you had to fall in love with it and commit wholly to it. Flippant criticism was like saying, “Your wife is ugly.” Being in love with her, you don't see it and you don't want to hear it even if it's true.

So, people who do new plays are madly, blindly, stupidly in love. That's how shows happen. They are each an impossibility. And sometimes they're even beautiful.

So kids, let's write a show.

HOW IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN

Improv. That's right. We're going to improv a whole script in bits and pieces and cobbled together dorm room performances. I want to make this fun and interesting and not teachy (even though you're going to learn something).

If you have a composer with you, then you're ahead of the game. If you don't have a composer on hand, you'll have to scrounge one up eventually, and it's better to involve them earlier than later. If you are a composer, then I hope you know:

1. how to write music (on paper)

2. how to arrange music, even if it's just minimal for presentation sake

3. how to accompany a performer

4. how to teach a song to a performer

For the first four or five sessions we won't need a composer. After that, it gets harder and harder to proceed. But we'll cross that coda when we come to it.

Here's how each session will proceed:

• Sessions. Here's a partial list:

• The Participation Song

• Verse, Chorus

• AABA

• Scansion

• Ballad

• Character number

• Novelty number

• Patter

• Duets

• Counterpoint

• Chorus

• Openings

Each of these is a full session with explanations, pontifications, theoretical stuff to forget and whatever. At the end, I'll give an assignment. The first two will be very easy, for my sake as well as yours. When you've done the assignment, you can email it to me. You can post questions in the blog itself.

As always, if you choose to accept this assignment, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

JIM