 Hi, welcome everyone to our first seminar of 2014. We're very happy that you're all here for this DG Conservatory seminar. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Terri Stratton. I'm the Director of Education and Outreach here at the Guild and I plan the seminar series, one of which is tonight. If you have any special requests for seminars that you'd like to see, people you'd like to hear from, things you'd like to learn about, please feel free to let me know. I can be reached at tstratton at dramatiskild.com or take a look at the dramatiskild website and you can find my email address and everyone else at the Guild. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask you to please silence your phones. I'm not going to ask you to turn them off because you might want to tweet a question while we're here. But if you could check in on Twitter or Facebook, let everyone know you're here. Let all your friends know that they can ask questions during the event. That would be fantastic. Hello to our online audience. If you have questions, hashtag New Play. Don't forget. And I'd like to personally thank the lovely Georgia Stitt who is taking time out of her busy schedule tonight. Hi, everyone. So without further ado, I will hand it over to our behind the music guys and Georgia Stitt and we'll get started. Thanks so much. I'm clapping for myself. Hi, thank you all for being here. I'm really excited at the turnout. Yeah, come on up. This is Michael and Kyle. Michael Walker and Kyle Ewalt. And they are a writing team. And they're our first group. I want to start by setting up what the theme of today is. We have three teams that are all working on musicals. They have musicals in development. And all of them, what links them tonight is all covered territory that we would say is a little bit off the mainstream. They are about communities that you probably have not encountered in your daily experience. And so they have had to research and understand and get into the brains and the experiences of these people whose lives are very different from ours. And so what we're going to talk about today is their processes. Processes. About how they do that, how they uncover these worlds and gain access to them and share them with us. So this is our first team. Hi, you guys. So tell us, just give me just a little bit. Give everybody a little bit of introduction. Who are you? Who's the writer? Who's the composer? How does it work? And then we'll jump right into a song and do a little bit more after. We have a musical language for you. Sure. So I'm Michael. I write the book and we share their credit. Kyle is the composer. And we curate this show behind the musical. So thank you for coming. And we worked on a bunch of different shows. We'll tell you more about what we're sharing tonight. The show that people mostly know from us is called Bromance the Dude's the Goal. It's a very serious piece. Hard to dig. Which is not a hidden world, maybe. That's probably the opposite of what we're doing tonight. Interfacable. What are some of the other topics that you guys have covered in this series, just before we get too deep into tonight's topic? So this is our second one with the Dramatist Guild and Livestream. And the one before this was about, it was called MewTube, musical theater and YouTube and how sort of social media and live things are influencing writers and people writing specifically for things that can be shared online or how are people using social networking? Even how composers and lyricists are being forced to have a social media presence and what that does to inform the writing process. Oh, I'm going to go back and watch that one. That's interesting. And we've done shows about the influence of rock music and contemporary musicals. Mythology, we did a mythology show, which is cool. It's a whole evening of Trump songs and what happens to those Trump songs after they go into the drum. It must be great because you guys get to learn so much from other people as well as having your own sharing experience. Oh, it's wonderful. The number one thing we get out of this is community, which is for us. So what we're all looking for. It's rare to get to share the stage with other writers who are developing shows. It's such a nice thing to be doing a show together as opposed to sort of, is it my show, is it yours? You know what I mean? And the writers experience so often is, I'm alone in my computer or my piano, I'm doing this and I'm sitting here trying to stay focused because I don't want to be a woman to, you have your collaborator, but to be able to open it up to other like-minded people who are dealing with the same problems is great. All right, so back on task. Set up the first song that you're going to do and a little bit about your show. Just give us a kickoff into what we're going to do and then we'll come back and talk about a little more. So we're going to share songs tonight from our newest show called The Lucky Ones, which is all about lottery winners. And we can get more into it. How many people here have won the lottery? So it's a hidden world. It's a hidden world. It's a funny world in that it's obviously everyone knows the lottery and everyone knows of winning what winning the lottery theoretically means, but the specifics of what it does to your life is sort of a little less known and we did a lot of research into real people and their stories and that's sort of what we can talk about. But the first song we're going to do is, we're going to have Rob Maynard come up here and Philippine Ben-Raha is going to play for us. And I don't even want to tell you the name of the song because I feel like it will spoil things, but you should know that he is a Wiccan priest who has won the lottery. There you go. Like you do. Like actually there, yes. Like someone did. That's a Wiccan priest actually. Wiccan, Wiccan. Yes. The mystical Chateau. The owners, Bill and Jeanie, are the sweetest folks I know. So when I won, I got the thought to help the Chateau grow from one to seven stores nationwide. Bill and Jeanie, they were thrilled by my expansion plan. I said, I'm hanging back the gods, I'm just a simple man. But she, for me, will not a thing would be more awesome than to teach a class about Wiccan pride. Well, of course, they said you could give a lecture next week. Use the reading room inside our shop at Spacious & Sleek and they invited all their friends to attend. They were paying in school. This was my chance to show them what I'm about. I filled the room with incense and put candles out. But I should have known that tapestry would catch on fire and burn down half of the store. A mess of it all, I turned to my Wiccan gods who tell me that charity is my call. And though I try to carry the torch, seems like everything I touch, I scorch. So blisteringly lousy. And piquing it forward. My cousin Lewis heard the news, I'd won the lottery. He begged me for some cash to build himself a model tee. He's got a thing for cars and always had the dream that he could get a vintage piece of his own. And when Aunt Mary saw the car and heard the thing I did, she asked for help to fund a trip to London and Madrid. And Sue and Morty asked to pay off both their mortgages. I didn't have the money to loan. They all laughed and said, you're lucky that you're old and then dope. Don't be selfish, help us out. Like the gods told you so. And so I gave it to my credit cards, backstabbed Aunt Mary. She got stranded out in the airport in Spain. So you ask me, why aren't I shocked by the news? When you tell that's left, it'll take seconds to lose. It's my burden. No, no, it's much worse. Because I am certain my win only made my propensity worse. My gods said to sign, what should I do? My gods, how can I stop disappointing you? Should I stay on my path and watch havoc ensue? Or accept the damn deal and admit that I'm through? Only to make a mess of it all, I turn to my awakened gods who tell me that charity is my call. And though I try to follow the rule, I'm sure I'll sing like a titanic fool. The fact is I'm lousy. Thank you. Situations. So, you in the stages of development, do you have a complete first draft? Do you have a first act? Where are you? So, this was actually awesomely a commission for Broadway Guys America. And so we just about a week ago presented it to them in its completed, I guess it's really a first draft. I mean, a far along first draft with wonderful people, including Rob and Sandy, you'll see. So, yeah, so it's sort of in a state of completion, but, you know... But nothing's ever done. Oh, no, no, no. Nothing's ever done. Like waiting for the next step, which will probably be, you know, a word from them and then a million rewrites. Notes from them and questions and adjustments and that sort of thing, right? Yeah. And how are you feeling about it at this point? I'm a soft... I'm like, I'll just write that to him. Yeah, I love it. I think what's been really fun to see is how people go in and they know it'll be fun and goofy because it's just kind of that type of thing. We're talking about lots and lots of money and changing lives. But kind of as with Ducky as a character, like Giggles, Wiccan Priest, he's gonna be funny, but also he has some serious things he needs to work through. So it's really great to humanize, see the human side of so many different types of people from different walks of life. So they're not just archetypes, they're actual characters. I mean, obviously, that's the goal, right? Yeah, that's everyone's goal. Okay, so how much... So we all have a context for like seeing a TV commercial of someone who won Publishers Clearing House, I won the lottery, or making the story that we follow instead of just snapshots of people who were instantly rich. Yeah, I mean, I think early on it was the... We had the debate of like, do we want this to just be vignette? So do we want this to be, you know, a narrative? And for us, we really wanted it to be a through narrative. So we had to find the... the spine that links them together, right? I mean, in real life, all these lottery winners didn't interact on a daily basis, right? There's not like a convention. I want to go to that convention. I mean, there probably should be... Though we kind of made one. Well, so what we... In our research, I mean, we're researching all these people, then we started watching like some little documentaries we could find and TV specials, and we sort of saw a couple of news specials and realized, oh, what are these news specials? But we're, you know, an event where they bring together like seven or eight different lottery winners. Sometimes they're like the cautionary tales. Sometimes they're the... these guys are doing awesome. So we sort of set up the convention that they're all being invited. All the people we meet are being invited to this news special. Sorry, TV special. And so like act two, everyone arrives at the special and starts to interact. So the first act is challengingly sort of disparate stories that then start to intertwine. And we actually used love, actually, as a model for how to structure it because we were surprised, and if people have knowledge of this, throw it out there, we were surprised how few musicals we could find as guides for, like, we initially started, I think, with like ten separate stories. Now we're down to like seven because we've got some people. But, like, how few musicals are structured in a way that is this sort of love, actually, like interwoven, separate stories. I have a musical that similarly is about a lot of different characters and at every developmental stage, someone has said to me, but who's the main character? Oh, yes. But who are we supposed to... where do we hang our hat? Who's the main character? And I remember being extremely frustrated by that. Yeah. And then, ultimately, trying to pick one and trying to focus it towards one and learning about how that changes the nature of the way you're telling the story if you're saying one person's story is more important than everyone else's. Yeah. So are you finding that to be a similar... We did get that. We really got that. And are struggling with it in some ways? Yeah. I mean, we added a frame with one character sort of commenting on the journey and we thought that that would help teach the audience how to watch the show because I feel like that's the challenge, right? If it's not a traditional narrative and it's not like I walk in and I know who my love interest is and I know who my, you know, comic relief is, I feel like the audience sort of almost needs to learn... That's what we felt like, need to learn how am I supposed to watch the show? Who am I supposed to... Which is, I think, what you're saying. And so we added a frame in which one of the characters, who Kyle's going to sing his song later, sort of sets up his journey and I think makes him basically the main character and then we tried to also have a scene in which he interacts with every single person to act too individually in a way that sort of changes his trajectory. So that his journey is sort of the one that's... Yeah, you could argue, I mean, everyone will have an opinion about this. You could argue that the person who's the most changed is the one that we pay the most attention to or that we relate the most to, the one that's going on the biggest journey. But ideally, you want everyone to go on a big journey. Right. Yeah, challenging. It is very challenging. Another thing to think about, I'm going to be the horrible person who talks about money, but another thing to think about is, like, if you're casting this, is it a commercial... If you're doing it for Broadway Across America, it's going to be commercial. So are you going to have a big star in one part and smaller people in the other parts? Are you going to try to have 15 stars? Yeah. And so when you think about, like, all right, if I have one star contract, who gets that one? Who does it go to? I mean, another thing, I can talk too much, but is that one of the other things that really excited us about the lottery is that who wins is completely arbitrary, right? There are no qualifications. There's no rules, anything. So the people in the cast are incredibly diverse, both age range, geographically background, which for us was really exciting. And it doesn't totally answer your question, but I think that there's something nice about the fact that if you're talking about casting, there's only two... There's a man and a woman who are sort of... And there are 20s leading men, leading women types, and then there's a woman in her 50s, a woman in her 60s, a man in his 70s, so that I think would make it easier to be like, well, if you have the celeb, it's like... And we'd like to think we wrote the song. Well, because I can see that you're saying it's the woman of stature, it's the 50-year-old woman who has arrived, or you say it's the hot 30-year-old man who's the hottest thing running Broadway right now, or it's the up-and-coming 20-year-old kid. Right, there we go. Any star who says yes, you can... That's fine. Good, good. All right, so I have one more question, then we'll hear some more music. But my next question is, what challenges have you found or what have you been doing to find the vocabulary of the show, the way that you're telling the story? As we were talking about hidden worlds and access, what are you doing to make this show sound, both in terms of the text and the music, sound different or sound unique to this world? Well, so this is an answer, and feel free to ask more. I feel like because these are so many different types of people with different walks of life, we needed to treat each one of them with respect and individuality when we approached their character, the character arc, the orchestrations, the composition, everything. And then there are moments where they come together and those moments kind of tend to be Americana in their style. So I think that's... What Michael and I have tried to do with the past couple of shows we worked on is embrace what musical theater has been and what has brought us to where we are and engage with where we want musical theater to go or where we think pop culture is. So there are flecks of all that within the score. And then when everybody comes together, we feel like there's kind of a bit of a shimmer of America on top of it. Are all of your characters American? They are. It's all... Well, I mean, some of them are immigrants, I guess is what you were going to say, they're a Haitian immigrant. But they're all... American by immigration. Exactly. Living in America. We do acknowledge the fact that lotteries have been around for centuries. The Great Wall of China was built with lottery money. Really? Yeah. Yeah, the history... I mean, the history of lottery is insane. Well, you'll have to see the opening of Act 2 to learn more about it. I'm trying to get my kids into school so I know all about the lottery. Yeah. It's a really good... It's a really good retirement plan. It's a really good education plan. Let's hear your next song. I have more questions and I'm sure people here do too, but let's do another one so we have a little bit more context. So we're going to have Sandy Rosenberg sing our refrigerator. And her character Patricia has recently won the lottery and her husband Frank is really excited about all of the fabulous things he wants to buy and he asks her, what do you want? What do you really want? And this is her response, not to him, but when he leaves the room. It's just pipped from my garden. What else? Well, it's hard to predict Maybellum's with crushed ice right there. It was constant or something. It was like somewhere very remote and she... Don't be offended if you're always constant. No, no, no, no. But this was a remote part of a remote of this day as opposed to like... But she... They interviewed her and they were sort of like, how has life changed? They kept their jobs. They all stayed working together. And she said, well, I didn't even know what to do with money. I have no idea. The only thing I've ever dreamed of was having an ice maker on my fridge because I like to take a big mug... A big gulp. A big gulp every day and if I could just have ice in it and it would stay cold, that would mean so much to me. And so then they film her getting a refrigerator, not even staying in the steel, like just an old refrigerator. Like, I mean, I guess it was a new refrigerator. But like, playing a refrigerator that had an ice maker and she started crying. She started like, started crying. She was like, I never thought I'd have anything so beautiful in my life. And she said, watch, because like, I mean, you think when you win the lottery, you just assume everyone wants a Jaguar. I don't know. And we just thought that's so beautiful. Like, there's something so beautiful about it. We just sort of have to make that into a song. And, you know, I think that's probably the only thing that Sandy's character sort of has in common with that character. Her story is then with her husband from another couple that we sort of never inspired by. But it just sort of struck us that like, talking about what perspective simple, simple joys are and that where the battle between a desire to go from zero to 60 in a second and desire to keep things the same post-win. Great. You have a third song? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So we change of plans is that Kyle's going to sing this one because one of our singers couldn't make it because Kyle's amazing. Also because Kyle, you will see, can sing. I guess. So, we were talking about our lead character, if you will, to take us through this journey. His name is Nate. Nate wins with a group of women who all work together at the Mayo Clinic. And it's Nate's job to deny people medical coverage. So, every day he has the meetings with people to say, your treatment's experimental or you don't have enough or you don't qualify because you make too much, whatever it is, he just ruins people's lives on a daily basis. And also has a special place in his heart for superheroes and feels like he's trapped and can achieve his superhero potential. And this is the only song you'll see from before someone wins. So this is the day of the big draw, but he hasn't won yet. We're taking it back. So how, is this early in the show? This one is, this is the second or third song in the show? Yeah. Okay. And so just before you start, Cal, so what is the, just so we have a contact, what is the opening number and this is the second song? So what do we already know? The opening number is the reporter who will eventually be the reporter of the new special at a bodega interviewing people in line waiting to buy tickets. So it's the eve of, it's basically the eve of the largest lottery draw in history. We had to bump it up because draws are getting so insane that when we first started writing this a year ago, we made a 600 million and then there was like a $600 million jackpot. So it's 1, 1 billion 25 million. Wow. Which will happen in the next year. Wow. Yeah. Which is a hundred per billion years within the next year. But the reason that it'll happen is because they made the odds so much worse. They don't pay attention to this, but they made the odds for a power bulb to get used to be one in 175 million. It's now one in 295 million as of like a month ago. And it's so that they can. But you could be the one. But you could be the one. I mean, I guess at that point, like what's the difference, right? Right. Okay. So we've seen them in line waiting in the bodega and then we zoom in on him and we see him and then at some point falling, we find out who's one and he's among them. Right. We see, yeah, we see everybody, probably in or lose at the same time. And then we sort of follow our winners from there. It's like on a reality show when you see the auditions and you don't know who's going to win and then you follow them. And we're trying to, yeah, we're trying to do things in the first like 20 pages to like deflect so you're not quite sure who to follow a little bit. I mean, you're playing with that. Yeah. Because he does the frame so you know he's a winner. But yeah, trying to play with the audience a little bit so that they're like, wait, who am I? Who's going to win? Okay. Good. Black and Decker proves up my calf. Add to sugars and some coffee mate. Eat raisin bran and dress by eight. The morning show is going on the screen. It's predictable and simple, my play plays. I am out the driveway at 8.30. Art and in the hospital. Get another coffee, tell the girls hello. Put today's appointments in a row. Stick to my script, I'm set to go. Cause this life is my comfortable existence. Where risk is in the distance. Guilty for the news I have to give, but scared of change. I know it's how I've got to live. And each night on TV on my couch and watch the Fearless. Those DC comic heroes seem unreal. But they know exactly how I feel. How secretly and long of dreaming to take flight. If I won the lot of God, I'd make things right. Cause when the flash was hit by lightning that'd be the chance for me to do it there. Home in time for to wait around to watch others fly. Yes I do. Do you guys first of all I just want to give a second if anybody in the room has a question for them. Yeah. Okay. And also if we had anything on social media. He's supposed to be wicked before lottery. He was Wicked before the lottery and he's Wicked after the lottery. He's Wicked? Oh absolutely. Wait are you saying Wicked or Wicked? What did they say? Like the believes in pain in God. Mysticism and How do you CCAN? CCAN. Yeah. So that was a question I was saving that I you know but I wonder how much do you feel like you have to educate the audience about things like that. Do you know or about like what is it to be a Wicked priest? What is it? I mean there you know she thought you were saying Wicked I think right? Yeah. And he was Wicked he was Wicked and so is that Yeah Wicked somebody's already done that. Someone's already taken. It's a good question. Yeah. Is that cultural is that a is that a thing that's safe to assume that everybody knows or is it you set it up at some point? Do you explain it at some point? Well we explain it a bit maybe not enough. I mean that it's a good question. Well if she watches the whole musical you might see if that was a question in the future. Yeah. I mean certainly the first time we meet him is in interview with the news reporter and so she asks some questions and she's like can you touch my ticket? He's like yes and he starts talking to the gods and she's like are you talking to Jesus? And he's like not exactly. And then where's your ticket? And then somebody else says he's a witch. Right. So like Oh so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is so it is And then you start to cut away partially for time and partially because it's sort of like, the reality is a good influence, but it doesn't quite matter if it doesn't make sense to the audience, right? Like it's sort of like, I'm like, no, no, but it's so true. Right. It's sort of dead. Only, it's all about communicating. We have to communicate, right? Exactly. All right, thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Thank you. All right, so our next team is Tim Rosser and Charlie Stone. Come on up. Hi, you guys. Hi, how's it going? How are you? I'm well. How are you? I'm very happy to be here. You are not writing about lottery winners. No. Decidedly not. We started out that way. I am. Sorry to return. So first of all, introduce yourselves to our group and to our people watching. Who does what and who are you and how did you meet and all that? I'm Charlie. I write the lyrics and book. I'm Tim Rosser and I write the music. And we went to the same college, but we didn't know each other in college. And it wasn't actually until afterwards where we both went through the BMI workshop. And so we sort of got to know each other better there and then started writing shows together. Great. And tell us a little bit about this piece. OK. Set it up so that we have context for the first song and what you're writing about and what you've just like we did before. We'll talk more about it after we've heard the first song. But start by just setting it up a little bit. Yeah, so this is from a show we wrote called The Boy Who Danced on Air, which focuses on a practice in Afghanistan called Bacha Bazi, where wealthy men take in younger boys from poorer families and they train them to dance and they parade them around at parties and they very often sexually abuse the boys. So and our show is sort of set against that backdrop and it's really a love story between two of the boys. And the first song that we're going to be presenting is towards the beginning of the show, Payman, who's sort of our main character, has just been told by his master, Jahandar, that he is too old to dance. So this is, and dancing is really the only thing that's ever brought Payman joy. And so it's the only thing he's really educated to do. To do, he's spent his whole childhood doing it. And so the only life he's known is now sort of, the rug is sort of pulled out from under him. And this is his first song. And we have the lovely Giuseppe Belcilio here to sing it. Dance away each bruise, you can never lose sight of that real team's stuff. Let's start, Tim, about creating the, what I asked him before about creating the world of the sound of this score. And how is it different from other things you've written? Well, I think we're faced with a pretty obvious struggle right off the top, which is sort of why I was reluctant to do a project like this. Were you? You were reluctant? Yeah, I realized that I would be writing for a musical theater audience, so I want to write music that feels like it opens up for such an audience. And it's familiar to them in some ways. But I also wanted to make sure that I didn't ignore the fact that we were writing musicals that takes place in Afghanistan. And I started using a term a lot right off at the beginning, which is like racist music. My fear was of writing racist music. I didn't want to write, you know, have like a little lick here or a little harmony there that made everybody go, oh, right, we're in Afghanistan now. I remember that because you did that, you know? I wanted it to feel flavored, you know, throughout, but also to have Western musical theater things as well, because that's what I love. That's why I write musicals. Do you have models in like pieces that you looked to that have done that successfully? Yeah, it's funny, is actually I started out being really judgmental of all other musicals that did this sort of thing. And I developed models along the way. I have never loved The King and I as much as I do now. I think I thought what he was doing was so, like he didn't try or something. Like he was... He being Richard Rogers? Yes, yeah, Richard Rogers, this is his name. I'm sorry, Richard. Blazy, blazy. Yeah, Richard Rogers. And but I always liked the show but being faced with the problem was like, I'm going to try really hard to come up with a really good solution to this problem, the very best that I can. And as I went along, I started realizing the real trick is to make the, or what I think the trick is, is to find your own language, like your own language that doesn't sound like either thing really. And therefore you don't have to be so afraid of writing racist music because you're actually writing your music, okay? Like that tune, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Like I think about it all the time because it doesn't sound like anything to me. In particular, it doesn't sound like he listed that. That's something wonderful. Something wonderful, exactly. King James. You're nailing it. There's more on the way, Richard, just wait. Yeah, and maybe that's one of my favorite ones to point to at this point because it's so special and it's so memorable. And when you say you used to think that it was, he had copped out as a writer, and now you love it so much, what is it that you feel like you discovered? I think I discovered what I think the solution is, is coming up with your own language and it might look a little lazy. It might be like this person didn't study up hard enough or they're not giving the music of that region it's due, but it's a tricky thing to do. But I would imagine, I'm gonna be presumptuous here and say I would imagine that when you're pitching this musical to people, it's already a difficult sell. It's already, I mean, it's already, if you said, and the music is way out there, but when people hear how accessible the score is, there's something that allows you to participate in it. It invites you in, I think. I mean, I've now heard one song, but you know. Charlie, what do you have to add to this? I don't mean for Tim to monopolize it. No, no, no. He's doing so well. He's doing so well. No, and I think that that was sort of our hope that what initially struck us about the subject matter was partially that the practice existed and that it was, of course, shocking to us in many ways but I think the real thing that made us eventually come back to it and go, okay, we have to write the show, is the questions that it sort of made us ask about our society and ourselves and sort of questions of morality, like the idea that all of these men are religious fundamentalists. They're all very, and that's sort of what the show puts in stark relief is that people compartmentalize. And you know, I mean, it sounds silly compared to fundamentalism in this country where we choose, you know, people are very, we choose what to be ideological about. Like we choose this, you know, last year it was gay riots or the morality of, you know, two men being together. Next year it'll be something else. And I think at the same time, it's like no one's actually a biblical literalist, right? Like, you know, we've all had these discussions. If you read the Bible, like... We're not sacrificing sheep. Yeah, we're not sacrificing sheep. We're not stoning people. Even people who I very strongly disagree with aren't doing those things. So this sort of brought up a lot of questions of like these very religious, very fundamentalist guys came up with these amazing justifications as to why the Quran endorses Bacha Bazi, which it doesn't. It's very clear, like, to most people who are sort of scholars and study the Quran. But if you, and also it's related to these men are the ones who have the power, so they sort of get to say what the Quran says and what the Quran doesn't say. And it felt very similar to the political discussion in this country in some way. So I think that's all to say that for us it was very important to translate the material and make it not a show where you go and you go, oh, isn't that so terrible? Like, what happens over there? Like, thank God we didn't want that because that's not, we were introduced to the practice through a frontline documentary. And it's amazing. It's a really great documentary. And that doesn't leave you with the impression of like, oh, this is like some weird isolated foreign thing. It leaves you with the impression of like, wow, humanity's kind of strange sometimes. And like we, you know, the way that we create rules for ourselves and organize ourselves is very interesting. And exploring that at the margins has something. So when Tim first started talking about coming up with a score that definitely, I mean, you did your research, you know, like you listened to a bunch of, and the band set up actually, I mean, it's one thing on a piano. The band is a mix of Afghan instruments and Western instruments. What are some of the Afghan instruments? Well, the national instrument of Afghanistan is the robab. And lutes are actually really big, so in general. And it's just- Are there robab players at local 802? There actually are. There actually are. Of course there are. We found one. Yeah, and it's kind of an exciting sound too because the lute slash guitar is a very contemporary sound. Like when you hear something being plucked, I think it takes your ear to, or can take your ear to a contemporary place. A pop sound. That's been so fun to experiment with because we can try to overlap Western sounds, you know, on these instruments. I bet you learned a lot when you made your demos. Just having, is that when you hired your musicians and- Yeah, actually, we did, I thought I was gonna be forced to do everything on a keyboard because another instrument called the Dombra, I'm probably mispronouncing that word. One day I'll find out- Somebody will tweet it. Yeah, does anyone out there know? Tweet it. Tweet it. Tweet it. It's going very well. Okay. But it's a two string lute and it's really cool sounding and there are people playing pop tunes on YouTube. You can look up Dombra in all of the various spellings that we have of that word. And it's a really cool sound. Usually the lower string is a drone and then the other string they play the tune on. So it's very particular sounding. I really wanted to use that sound in this show and I thought it would be impossible on guitar but it turns out it is not impossible. So away with the keyboard and in with the guitar players. And then we found a guy who actually plays the Robob and I'm hoping more and more and more we can work in actual Middle Eastern instruments. And we have a percussionist who is going to play both Western and Middle Eastern percussion and piano. So yeah, so those are the sounds we're dealing with. Great. I forget what question I was answering. Was I- That was about, I mean we got off on, yeah, about the creating the world of the music and about the instruments and that sort of thing. I want to hear in the next song, please. Since so much of the musical would obviously be about dance, how did you investigate the vocabulary of dance and how that influenced your- Yeah. I'm going to repeat the question. I'm just going to repeat the question because I have a microphone on for people who are watching and he was asking about since there's obviously so much dance, did you research the dance and the movement and how does that influence what you're doing? Yeah, absolutely. The piece was written, you know, obviously I have a very, I've watched videos of the dancing. I have a very rudimentary knowledge of dance. So the way it's written I did sort of leave space for a choreographer to come in and we had a very sort of fortunate opportunity recently where a small theater company actually did a dance workshop with us where they brought in this amazing choreographer who we had been following for a while. We sort of ran, we were on the lookout for choreographers with, we sort of wanted it to be similar to the score in that it would just feel of a piece with everything else, so its own sort of voice. So we were looking at modern dance choreographers but also choreographers who did have some familiarity with at least dance in the Middle East. So we went to see this show called Oasis, everything you wanted to know about the Middle East but were afraid to dance. Yeah, it was Nezla Yakkin's choreography. And she was, I mean, it was just, we were like totally blown away by it for the entire piece and then smack in the middle of the show, there was a dancing boy routine. And it was one of the coolest pieces that either, it was, I should probably just say, cause it was just so cool. It was basically this boy who, this man comes in and just puts these bells on the boy's hands, which are, you know, sort of traditional to the bachal bazi dancing. And at first, and it's like the boy alone on stage and at first he's sort of like jerking around trying to get the bells off of his hands. And then over the course of the dance piece he becomes more and more comfortable with them. And what used to be him of trying to get these bells off becomes him learning how to use the bells. And it sort of grew into a translation of a bachal bazi routine. Because the thing is actually the routines which they're meant to be sexual in Afghanistan but to a Western eye, like if you watch them you wouldn't necessarily pick up on that because I think sexuality is a very different thing in Afghanistan. So there was once again some necessary translation that Nezla needed to do to use some of the vocabulary that we identify as provocative dancing. But by the end of it he was so comfortable in his own skin and he had become, you basically saw the entire evolution of the dancing boy in like three or four minutes. And I think by the time that piece ended we were like, we made this theater company fly her. She was choreographing in Chicago and we were like, no, it needs to be her. Like you need to buy her a plane ticket, like I'm sorry. But she was very kind and responded to the material which was very lucky and so it was. And that was New York theater. Oh yes. And they are amazing and we're grateful to them. Yeah, we were very happy with that. Shout out. Awesome. All right guys, come on up. Okay, so this is at the end of Act One. So Payman, if you remember, had his sort of, his entire life, the only life he's ever known was taken away from him and he was told by his master that he's to be married off. And shortly after that he meets Feta. And Feta is a dancing boy who's new to the area one of Payman's master's friends actually just bought him. And Feta is much brasher than Payman and the two of them sort of form a friendship that borders on something neither of which, neither of them really know what that is. And what's happened right before this song is Payman's master who sort of views Feta as lower than Payman because he's not going to be married off. He's from a very different background. Payman's master doesn't want Payman hanging out with Feta and Payman's master beats him pretty severely for hanging out with Feta. And then Feta comes and finds Payman and the song begins. Wait, introduce Jayman. Oh sorry, this is Jayman Nantikumar, right? Yes. Okay, awesome. Who's also amazing and fabulous and we're so happy that he's singing. He's horrible. He's like everyone. You're a famous musician and when I have a wife, we'll forget about this. We'll have dancing boys everyone and we'll be the same. No, not us. I don't care how old I get. I would never treat my dancing boy this way. I have a boy of my own. I won't scare him or beat him or treat him unfair from the day that I find him. I'll hold him and remind him how deeply I care. I'll be fair. How sometimes, yes. Anyone have questions? Yeah. What is it? Baccia? Oh sorry, Baccia Basi. I should, I should, so done. It's, so basically it is, it's literally translated to mean boy play and it is just the practice of men, wealthy men, old owning younger boys and they get them a music and dance instructor when they buy these boys essentially away from their family and their poor families that really need the money. So they sort of sell their children and the boys are given lessons from a very young age and they're then sort of a status symbol almost sort of, there are echoes of this in other cultures, Baccia is an example. And they're paraded around at these parties which tend to happen after weddings or sometimes happen after weddings where the men sort of retire to an after party I guess is sort of the best way to describe it and the boys sort of come out and they dance and it's sort of like these men showing off their boys but very often the men sexually abuse the boys is basically the darker underside to that culture is, I think. It's actually an ancient tradition. Yeah, so it's been around for a really long time. So it's one of those things that there's, I mean the dance is, there's like a lot of art and a lot of poetry that's been inspired by it. And it's also not, it's not obviously across the culture. It's a practice by a small group of people. So it, and actually while one of the sort of stories about the rise of the Taliban, which is not 100% proven but the Taliban really because there was a band on music and dance in general, the Taliban in particular, officially went after Bacha Bazi and there is a sort of story that some of the power that the Taliban got was that they sort of promised to keep these boys safe, these families boys safe and so that was sort of, doesn't have much to do with our show but that's a small sort of side story. So I have a lot of questions. I'm gonna just take over for a minute. The more you talk about it, I'm responding to Tim saying in the beginning that he was resistant to writing a show about this but he found his way in through the score and as you've presented it, I absolutely see the musicality in it, the dance, sort of how it is theatrical, I see all of that. I imagine that it is a hard sell, which I said before and that when you, even as you're describing it to people, I can feel it being like sheepishly and then it's also about this. It's tricky, it's tricky. So how are you finding your way, finding the people who want to see it, the people who want to program it, the people who are brave enough to deal with what is really scary subject matter and especially when you say the Taliban and Afghani and people immediately react and all of our own personal fears and histories and what we hear on the news and so we all have very distant context for it that is probably a lot of misinformation. So how are you dealing with finding your way to the people who can help you? Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. I mean, first of all, it is just about having allies like who read the piece and really like the piece. We were in this, there's this lovely festival called NAMT where they present 45 minutes of your show in front. They have a bunch of member theaters who all fly. It's the National Alliance of Musical Theater. It goes by NAMT, yeah. And it's a new work, they are, they're a big organization. They do a lot of wonderful things. One thing that they do is that they have a festival every year of new works and they have a very diverse group of theaters that come to see NAMT. So it's always, I do, you know, I really appreciate the risks they took on this show because there are huge theaters that are two or 3,000 seats that are never gonna program the boy who danced on air and so that was a discussion. But I think the good thing about having a show like this is I will say, we were hesitant at the beginning and it was exactly that. It was so theatrical, the material spoke to us in so many ways and yet we're gonna end up with this show and really is anyone going to wanna touch it with a 10-foot pole and ultimately our goal is to have people see what we do. But the funny thing about it is I think it works both ways a little bit. I think there are people who have a particular desire to see musical theater tackle big ideas or new terror. I mean like, you know, this series is a perfect example. We were lucky enough to get programmed in a night called Behind Closed Doors because it's on its third territory and I think that there are, it's the good thing is that there have been people who we definitely needed to do our research and we were helped out by certain people in that. But once you get past that step, I think you immediately have people's attention when you go, oh yeah, I wrote this musical about Bacci Bazzi and we've written other shows or another show or two that wasn't off the bat. I feel like off the bat people have a strong reaction one way or another to this show, which can be a good thing. I think people make themselves known when they're really interested in a strange topic. That's been our experience. I think that also helps us decide how hard to push and how much money to put into the demos and how far to follow it through is when people are interested, we're like, oh great, do whatever you want. Can we do the last song? Yes, absolutely. So this is actually I think the most recent song that we wrote for the show. And this is, so basically the dynamic that you've been watching in Act One is that Payman, who just happy is playing, is sort of the slightly younger, the more relatively sheltered of the two compared to Feta. And then part of what you're watching actually is it's a growing up story for Payman. He sort of learns to stand on his own two feet. And so this happens in Act Two and what's happened is after Boy of My Own, the song that you just saw, Payman and Feta start planning on running away together. They want to run away to Shag-Sharon, which is a nearby city. And they have this idea that they'll be able to get lost in the crowds there, which is naive, but Jahandar Payman's master finds out and actually shoots Payman in the foot, which sort of is a huge blood of Payman who dances his refuge. And so at this moment Feta comes to see Payman, sees that his foot has been injured and basically is ready to call the whole plan off. And this is the moment where Payman sort of has to get into the driver's seat and say, no, this, we absolutely should continue with our plan to run away. So, just have Payman and Jayman. I'm sorry, Jayman, I'm good. Okay, awesome. You know you're nervous, but now it's time to follow through. Payman, your foot, I did that to you. You think a busted foot's the worst of it. I got hurt and I got burned, but those are scars that I have burned. And next to what I've learned, those wounds are strong. That's when my life, the steps were all your choice. Others had hurt you, still you kept your foot. Those you know to shape their fate. Feta walks him through the ceremony and in modern Afghan or current Afghan henna is placed on the palms of both the bride and groom. Traditionally, or hundreds, years and years ago, that was you would cut your palms. So, the whole reference to Touch Your Hand we did, the boys cut their palms as sort of a symbolic wedding. And so that was that reference. Should have said that before. Yeah, well done. Yeah, fantastic. No, you know what? I got it. I mean, I didn't know, right? We got it. Yeah, they're nodding, they got it. Leslie has a question. I don't have a question, I just want to say I really applaud you for taking on this musical. And I find it so interesting that you talked about Richard Rogers and the King and I because Roger and Hammerstein were the first people to take subject matter that was very difficult and turn it into a very accessible musical theater. Over and over and over again, yeah. We think of those shows now as things that, now that they're elements that we just think, oh, what's the big deal? But back then they were. And so I think it's extraordinary that you're taking it on. And the three songs you played to me are so universal. Like, I'm starting to tear up talking about it, because it makes me want to see the piece because it did take the subject matter away and made it very universal of how human beings help other human beings. So it's extraordinary. Thank you. It's incredible. Thank you. I would say that it strikes me that a goal might be for your audience to feel they're just like me and then realize how different they are. But that's, you know, isn't that what we all try to do in musical theater? Is to, like, present a story that has nothing to do with our audience and have them relate to it and feel like you've tapped into something universal. Right. And I mean, that's the awesome thing about, like, having the tool of having someone say, like, no one else has that, that, like, it's very rare that I hear a character saying and I don't connect with them, because, like, music does that. So it's, so it's easy. Congratulations, you guys. Thank you. We have one more team to present tonight. Come on up. This is Stephanie Salzman and her partner Deborah Brevort is not here tonight. No, she's in Mexico, poor thing. Oh, it's hard. But I'm, so I'm gonna do my best to represent the book writer side of the project. Fantastic. Hi. Hi. So introduce yourself and the piece as we've been doing and tell me, and let's pretend your imaginary friend is here. She's always there. As always, I'm always here. How did you guys meet? How do you work? What's your, how did your collaboration work? What made you take on this piece? All of those questions. All of those questions. Dev and I, I was in the writing in the recording world for quite a while. And I had written theater before that, but I hadn't taken it to quite that level. Decided my career went into the recording world and then I really missed the theater. So I was meeting them. Meaning pop music, recording. Yeah. I was writing pop and R&B. And so I came back with a project in mind and that took a while for me to kind of evolve it and search around. And ultimately, I was introduced to a lot of writers and ultimately Deborah threw the NYU Musical Theater Program where we both went. And she's actually teaching there now. Many of us. Many of us. All of us. Yes. And we hit it off and we talked about the project and interestingly enough during the meeting she mentioned that she was researching, she's always researching something, Amish culture. And my project was involved with pop stuff and melding my two worlds in a personal way, but also dealing with a young, a female protagonist, a young teenager growing up in America. And suddenly when she said Amish, I was like, wow. What about, and we just went from there. And there was some kind of flyer on my table about an itinerant hip hop minister and Deb picked it up. And I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden it became an Amish hip hop musical. An Amish hip hop musical. It's your subtitle. It probably is. It is. Exactly what it is. And it's very funny because it's dealing with some of the same themes that I was interested originally in doing with the other project, which is not, doesn't exist anymore, but it really has satisfied my needs. And we've evolved from there. We weren't always in the same place at the same time over the years. Long story. That's too boring for here. So there was a slow start, but steady. And we're on fast track now. We did try to think of the evolution. We're probably in like a two and a half third draft at this point. We got invited out to Nebraska, which seemed like the most unlikely place in the world to go. And now it seems like it's all over the place. Is it Alisa Belka? Alisa Belka. I mean, you guys. It was the ASCAP musical theater workshop who had said to them, oh, you guys should do something there. And they did. And boy, did they ever. They came. Michael Kerper was like, whoa. They put together. University of Nebraska. Alisa Belflowers, the head of the musical theater program there in Lincoln. And she's brought me out to do my musical. She's brought you out. Anyone else here been to Nebraska to do their musical? The lead center is connected with the UNL. And there happened to be also two. There's a trifecta of powerful women there. Alisa is one of them. And the other two are Peter Walcoist and Rebecca Bosen, who ended up directing our piece. It was supposed to be Alisa's complicated story. But three pieces were invited out there. We did 25 and 50 minutes. We had already done some rewrites. Then we did more rewrites. Deborah always says we're on the first draft when we're really on a second because she's already rewriting while we're in a maze before ahead of the curve. So we went out there. We did those short sections. And they basically called us after and said, what can we do for you? That's great. And we said, bring us back out. We want to do exactly, it was like a residency. We were staying in a home and it was like a residency along with a, it was perfect. And we said two more weeks and we would have had the next draft. So they said, well, come on out. And that's where we're going on March 5th. We're heading out there and we're going to do the whole piece. And we have the same cast with a few exceptions and people mostly writer characters that we needed to redo, unbelievable. You know, the people out there, you get out there and we walk in and there's this playlist of Midwest and I'm like, whoa. And then I'm like, well, this is perfect because we know what New York urban is. So what we needed to do was put in the other half of the piece, Amish hip-hop. The Amish part. And they actually do have an Amish community not quite around that place. So that's what we did. We did a crazy kind of way of writing the piece. We wrote, Deborah says, we did the songs first. It's not exactly true. We had more book than she will let on. But we decided to go into the studio and write a lot of stuff in the studio because a lot of the piece takes place in New York and has what I wanted it to be an authentic sound, not just piano translated into, but done in the studio. So there is very traditional musical theater songs infused also alongside the more hip-hop, pop tracks, some combination of the two. And then there is the Amish sound. The Amish sound being very, very traditionally would be what I equate to Thomas Gregorian chant. It's sung one line, everybody sings together. Singing alone is Hockman, proud and that's part of the theme of our main character who obviously wants to sing and she doesn't want to sing with everybody else. And, but then I also went to kind of the more Mennonite hands and so I wanted to open it up. We didn't want to be boxed into stuff too intensely. But so we have that. How many of you are dying to hear what this sounds like? Right, totally. Can you, let's start with something. Present the first piece and then we'll have a context for it. We can keep talking. This is a very opening. So I thought that would be a good way to start and it kind of speaks for itself in terms of setting up the worlds. So we are playing partially because that's the way the piece is presented. We're playing, I'm playing tracks and we'll do one live song with actually maybe just a snippet of another live song to tell you something after. But this is the opening. But as you said, a lot of it was built in the studio and so the tracks are the accompaniment. Yes, they're very, and they're skeletal right now but what I decided to do was create them in a way that I knew I could build them later. So they're not like just the sound substitute garage band. I mean, we're really hopefully having tracks that we can build later. There will be some live instrument too but it will be done to... And will it ultimately be something that you can rehearse with a piano in a rehearsal room or you would always rehearse with track? We need to mostly do tracks if we can but you can rehearse with piano. Yes, we do rehearse with piano. We're doing tracks and piano, only piano out in Nebraska. So yeah, you can do it with piano. It just depends on, for the reading itself, we really need to use... But in the same way that Tim was talking about the Afghani instruments, like we didn't hear them tonight but it's part of your conceit of the whole show. And Michael Perker made this first exception ever and we were able to use the tracks in Nebraska because he knew, when he looked at it, he realized that we really had to do it. So the only thing you should know about the opening is called Gelassenheit and Gelassenheit is the philosophy of the Amish people and it means there's another song called Give Up, Give In but that implies that and you give yourself over to God and to the community and there's no self, there's no ego. It's just all for God. You're only on your way to the next life. This is just a transition to heaven. Great. So Gelassenheit. I'm sharing God The earth will yield its gift Earth submits to the plight Earth's to the last and high We will start to grow We will burst from its shell Like the ring from a bell Trust in God You're this gift Earth submits to the plight Look the sky cloud passing by I'd like to know where it's gonna go Darkness turns to light I can hear the clouds sigh It's a glide to the sky Glide in two hours will be feminine much thought Gratian Finish up. It's time to go to church. Decide what you're gonna do. It's got the opening number. That's the first thing we hear. Right, so I love, she described that when the beat, the hip hop music starts coming in, that's a car passing by, that that's where the source of that sound that she responds to. But what I, my first impression is I love that in the, you know the traditional rules in musical theater that at the end of the opening number you're supposed to know who you're supposed to pay attention to and what the conflict is and like what the world of the show is. And I feel like you did all of that in that number. Like we understand the two worlds. We have a sense of the conflict that's imminent. We know who we're paying attention to. So that's all very successfully done. Yeah, great. What else? What do you have to say about it or what? Well, they, we, they talk about Rumspring and that this has been in the news a lot actually and it wasn't when we first started writing this piece but we didn't really concentrate on the Rumspring and we were going to do that and we shifted. Did you explain what that is? Do we know what it is? Rumspring is when the teenagers, when Amish teenagers are allowed to go into the devil's playground. We do have a song called the devil's playground. It's a great title. And they can do whatever they want. And when I say whatever, I mean whatever. And they do, they drink, they have sex, they do whatever. And the idea is that when and if they come back and they don't have to, but when they're ready they come back and they take the vow and that can never be broken. If they take the vow and they break it, they are shunned and they can't ever go home. So there are a lot of stakes. But we decided to only concentrate on Rebecca with that rather than the other teenagers but that is a backstory. She has a sister named Gretchen and the other teenagers are around there so. And do you have to define that just the same way we're talking about Wiccan and like is that, and you know, in all the pieces today, there are vocabulary things that the audience won't know. Do you define that, what that period runs, bring out what that is in the course of the show? Or do you assume that the audience knows it? No, we're gonna have to define it. And we had more information on it than we do now in the beginning. So we might need to put in a little more. We do have some dialogue in there that says what are you gonna do for it. But we don't have that issue in terms of the stakes at this point. But we do have it in. But as it comes further in, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not arguing that you need to have it all in the opening number. But you know. Yeah, no, absolutely, we have to have it. No question about it. And I imagine especially on the theme tonight that that becomes a question of, if you're introducing people to worlds that they don't know, there are going to be elements of that world that you then have to explain. It becomes more exposition necessary than maybe in a show about 20-somethings in New York or rock and roll music or things that we all have a little more context for. Exactly. But I think one of the things that we're interested in is delving into that world as it reflects the modern world, the rest of our world that we know very well. And that's one of the things that we're integrating in the show and the values and the idea of family and community. So we're very interested in those layers and are working on those layers in the show. They're coming pretty naturally as we explore the characters. And where are you in the process? We now have a, you mean in terms of the drafts? Yeah. Yeah, we have it drafted through to the end. We're right now working on, we're reworking End of First Act and we have just really finished the end of the second act. So our intention in Nebraska is to really see what we haven't seen, which is the last two thirds of the second act and see whether the new material is working there. We saw the first 25 minutes as very solid. We were happy about that. I'm sure there'll be more changes. And then after that, we kind of patched, there were things we had to patch together, but we knew already what we were gonna rewrite and for certain things, and then with other things that we did too. So that's where we're at. I think most of the meat of the work we're gonna end up doing is gonna be that second part of Act II or the two thirds of it. And the hearing material we haven't heard before because there's new songs since then. So right after that, the reverend and his girlfriend, Blue Jay, make their entrance and he's the other main character. So it's the reverend is the itinerant hip hop minister and Rebecca who are the main characters and then we have Blue Jay who's his girlfriend at the time who's looking for the nice life. And then we have also Milton who is her Amish boyfriend. So there is a pull there of a few different. There's a little bit of a triangle. And your next piece is performed at the piano, right? Yes, this is Rebecca's song. After we meet the minister and we hear he, he performs a song called Lost because they literally their car breaks down and they get lost. That's the car we've really seen in the beginning. So it does solidify and we see he and Blue Jay talking about how they're lost, but it has another meaning lost in terms of what the two of them are intending. So we can already see there's conflict or that the two of them are going in different directions. And then after that, we go back to seeing Milton and Rebecca and they've planted the salary which means they gotta get married but she doesn't wanna go through that. And she's trying to explain to Milton why something's bothering her and she might not be able to do that. So this is the song I'm gonna bring up Juliette Carpignier and where's Willem to play, so I don't have to. Oh yeah. I know you love to play too. Any chance I get? This is Willem, who's Tyson, who's a wonderful composer in his own right. And Juliette, I'm sorry about the touches. She just came from doing something with the French Institute of Performance of Le Bar and Zombie Prom at Hunter. So we're talking about an intense way. Performing, this is called In the Mirror. So she's singing this to Milton, the Amish boyfriend. He interested in doing the clothes and this is what they do when they're in Rumspring. Oh, I want the clothes, I wanna do this. So she's set apart a little bit and they're trying to get her to put on the makeup her sister is and she does finally look in the mirror and that's when she sings this song. So she's not really interested in what they're interested in but there's something else that she's looking for. That's great, I mean, so many of the great musicals I think are about a character who's not like everyone else, right? It's just such a great way in for you and the audience to be like, that's me, right? Whatever, however you identify, you're not like everybody else. Absolutely. Yeah, which is the way, the universality that we're all looking for that we've been talking about over and over again tonight, that's great. I'm gonna jump right into your next song because it's a track and I'm really interested in how the track and the live music mix and sort of how you're making that all work. That's very interesting. Absolutely. The next song, by the way, and I should mention I think I already did that Dabra does the book and I do the music and similar to some of the other teams tonight, we co-write lyrics together which is a fabulous thing, I love that. Makes it very interesting. And how does that, do you sit in the same room and bounce them off each other or do you do draft and email it and she responds to it or? All of the above. All of the above. All of the above, it depends on where we are. You guys too, I'm just gonna open up. Do you guys share lyrics? Or you do lyrics alone? No, I don't share it then. Yeah, I share it then. Selfish. And do you guys share lyrics? I do, we do share lyrics. And do you? It varies, I mean, there are, I think our most common is like I'll write a draft that's more prosy in order to get the story down and then he'll take a pass, but yeah, if we can sit in the same room and do it, it's awesome. I mean, I think as a songwriter, I often need lyrics, I need to write the music along with the lyrics. So there will be a lot of times when I'll come with that first, but then she will come in and edit and everything. But there are also times where she leaves and she knows not to do it exactly, but she writes some half-versified thing and then I can pick out of it and then we'll go back and edit together. So it works always. So the answer, everyone who is music lyrics first, everyone always asks that question, it's different for everybody, it's different for every team, and it's really different with every song. And every day, and every song, exactly. So this song is what happens is that the broken-down car with the Rev. and Blue Jay, so as you might imagine, they show up and there's a wonderful moment of them all looking at each other, the apartment minister and all that stuff. And they're looking to get to the mall, which is where they're preaching, they're doing, they do what's called the ham hops at the mall. So they've gotten lost, they need to find the mall, and they've come across Rebecca and every, and she hears, suddenly there's this idea of music as a celebration rather than as sort of a more kind of sobering way to celebrate God and so on. And come on to the mall, they say, and so she decides to go, of course Milton's not very happy about that, but off she goes, and this is the ham hop, and you hear Blue Jay testifying, so we get to hear her character. Well, we've actually heard her character and lost her and the Rev. But we get to hear a little more of her and this too. So this is the ham hop. This is a dance number in the mall with the shopping carts. I can't wait. I can't wait. Come to the ham hop, get it where you shop hop. We got it at the ham hop, fill you to the brim hop. We got a message to impart. So go get yourself a shopping cart, give us an hour or a minute. We got something to put in it. You can save your soul for free guaranteed. There's an open line of credit. Come on, come on and get it. God is waiting at the mall. It's time for you to come to the ham hop. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. It's time to heed the call. You want the holdings on sale at the ham hop. I spent my life being good, doing everything I should, spending Sunday in church, doing the spiritual search. So I said no more and I went to the mall. I'm going shopping, I said to the preacher, give myself a lift. If Jesus can't raise me up, then a new pair of shoes will. I'll get three inches off the ground and a little closer to heaven. So I headed to Payless and there sitting on a shelf was a pair of blue high heels. The color of sky, the way you should. And I said, saying yes, feeling good is how God bless. He's in your shoes, he's in the heels walking. He's in everything you like, he's in everything you wear. He's a zipper, he's a highlight in your head. He's in your camera. She'll make the headlines, she'll make a splash. Hardcore shopper, just a born again. Him hopper, going on a singing spree and doing what comes natural to me. I'm gonna talk straight to God without a preacher in between. Gonna kick the Amish or Dung Squads, give up, give in routine. I don't have any choice, I've been denying for too long cause I found God in my voice. Gotta praise him with my song. Gonna walk the street called straight. Gonna sing the hymn called hip. Cause praise and the Lord feels great in a singing fellowship. Gonna walk the street called straight. Gonna sing the hymn called hip. Better he is in my petition at the shop at hymn, hop mission, have it up. And it did, I was like, please don't put a button on it. Perfect, really good. We did a little rewrite in there actually, so Rebecca's gonna be much more like, oh my God, this feels great, and it's gonna be more in that kind of realm. So by the end of the song she's sold on this reverend and this mission and all that. So meanwhile she's been noticed by the press. So that's the important information in there. There was a camera gonna go, oh my God, look at this Amish girl doing this stuff. So that's the story starting to roll into what happens and to act too when they go to New York. Great. With a record producer and all that. Wow. Do you guys have questions? Are there any questions here? Yes, I love you. Yes, go ahead. It's great. Hi, you know, I'm the Jell-A-Lah-Sinai, Jell-A-Lah-Sinai. That you were doing the consistency of the Am, just as the Eastern, you know, spirituality people were doing. Like the chant. The chant, yeah. The chant led the whole thing as an introduction. Yeah, which I find very interesting because it comes from a whole lot of worlds. Yeah. Well, as I said, it sort of reminded me of, I just love them always being in the background and that's another way the joy of recording, you know, so we can kind of keep that all through the first scene. And then that song gets transformed to hip-hop Vellasinai later, but we do go back to it later at the end of the piece. Just that one note, which I love. Yeah. Which is unity, which is, you know, so great. Yeah, and it's old. Obviously there's no harmony stuff. And that idea that it's universal, that like at our core, we all are home. We all are. One note. Yeah, we all are. We're at time, but I want, but do you want to do this last number? How's that for an introduction? No pressure. I know you were on the fence about it, but do you want, I'm okay for you to do it if you want to do it. What I think we should do is just play saved. Okay. Yeah, because we're at time, so I have to choose one or the other. And I think we're not going to do the whole song. Gretchen has a song that we were just working on writing and we haven't, we're under arrest all the time, but. But the reason I want to play this other song instead is because it's actually the sketch for what will be the end of the second act. So it's called saved. And the reason also I'm going to play is because in your mind I mentioned a song called Lost earlier and that will work in about the characters by the end of the show who are saved and the characters who are lost. And it has to do with their choices. And in terms of their community, and there is one thing I should mention, the last thing which is kind of interesting is that there's a lot in common between the world of the gang world and the Amish world, which are also community. And the Reverend is looking for a community. So those things kind of do come together. Which I would say all three of the pieces have tapped into that idea of community and about finding your soul mates, to like people or people you have something in common with. Yes, yes, definitely. Such an idea of our time I think. Yeah, absolutely. So you're hearing on this, Rebecca, on the Reverend, but it's going to be the end of the second act. It's the beginning of the finale sequence. And I think the other thing to remember is it's saved, but it's also, it's a love song and it's about the people, but it's also a love song to the music. Great. I could kiss those bent notes, those exactly what I meant notes. Those haven't to hold, cause they're pure and heaven sent notes. The music I'm singing makes everything real. One word describes how I have found my lost notes. Those keep my fingers cross notes. Those daring to do it, no matter what the cost notes. Good, actually, cause you heard the lost theme in there, which I'm starting to work in, so I haven't kind of figured out all the parts yet, but everybody's in there, mom and dad and, you know, so. It does feel like finale, like everything coming together and counterpoint, and you can hear that that's in process. Yeah, and it is very much in process. We were actually thinking of it in the first act, and that's what we did in the reading, and we're like, this is the end of the piece. It's like the love song to music, and it should be the end. So I have a lot of reworking to do, you know. But that's exciting, and you have, now you, I think, when you know that you're doing it for Nebraska, like you're doing it for, I always say that, you know, when you know you have a reading coming up, it's not even about the reading. It's about knowing that on a certain date, you have to put a score in the hand of an actor, and that's what makes you finish it. Everything. I'm like, then I don't care, just rehearse, and that's fine. Absolutely, everything. I mean, those rehearsals and those rewriting, for me, are just the lifeblood. I mean, the reading itself, I know the actors are going toward that, and they're, you know, whatever. But for me, it's about the process. That's the dessert. It's the dessert. Whatever happens, happens, and I, you know. Yeah, and they're great performers. I mean, we're able to throw a lot at them. So as you know, if you've been there, I mean, there are really some great people there, and you can do that out there. So anyone who has the option to give writers a chance to hear their work, whether you're at a university, or a theater company, or something, it's just the most valuable thing for writers. If you can say, hey, I've got some actors in a piano, and if you want to hear your piece out loud, I can do that for you. It's just the greatest gift for people who are in development, because we so often hear pieces in our head, and you know, we read them with our collaborators, and we're like, I think this will be funny, I don't know. And I think they're gonna, you know, I don't think it's gonna stop there. I mean, we're talking about other things past that, so I think it's gonna be a question of where we're at, to when we're ready, you know, when we're ready, and where we'll be at that point. But that is absolutely true, and we know exactly who we're writing with before. And we were able to deal, and we have new characters we're dealing with, there's a record producer character who's been someone we're exploring. We're deepening the reverend, there's the gang members that we're working on too, and Debra, I wish you were here. She's phenomenal, she's a fantastic structuralist, and as a co-writer, I am so lucky to have someone who's a great structuralist, and as well as a great co-writer and co-spiritsist, so, you know. Well, applause to Debra and to you. Thank you Debra. And I want to thank all the performers and the pianists who are here tonight, everyone who... Thank you, Debra. Thank you. And thanks to our writers, and especially for you guys for bringing us together for this great occasion. Thank you. Thank you to Georgia. Thank you to Georgia. Welcome to Georgia. Thank you. Thank you for coming.