 Lauren, what are we going to talk about? I think it should be like a very, um, are we start, we're streaming right now, right? Sorry. I think we are. This is how we do things now. Hi. Hello, everybody. I was waiting for somebody else to intro. I'm going to do that. Hi. Thanks for watching on whatever device you're watching from. Hopefully, you're all safe and staying inside. I heard a ton of response from folks out there that want to know more about musical theater writing, how you begin, how you collaborate, what is the balance of song and dialogue and all the things. And so the first, I immediately thought of the people that you are seeing today, Kate Carrick and Brian Loudermill. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Kate and Brian and I have worked on a couple of projects together, musicals together, and they are the greatest, the smartest, encyclopedic knowledge of every musical ever. And they're just so smart and such great collaborators, and it felt like the right group to get together to talk about how you make a musical, how you make a song. I think people would love to know, y'all, how you two work together. Kate and Brian have a long history of writing, way before me, incredible musicals, like the Mad Ones, they're working on one, like a Henry Five one I want you guys to talk about. And yeah, and just tell us how you work together. Kate's also an amazing playwright and book writer herself, so I think she can tell us about that. So I think let's just dive in. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the, like, training that y'all have in terms of where you come from, what you've studied in school, how you realized, oh my God, I'm a composer and I'm a lyric writer, playwright, book writer. How did you come to that? Brian, you want to start? Sure. I started a little earlier than Kate because I just loved musicals. Very young. I was in, like, fourth grade and I played, like, Michael in Peter Pan and I was flying around and that felt really cool. I was playing Seymour across from Kate's Audrey when we were in middle school, singing all of Kate's high notes, which was possibly a harbinger of what was to come and, yeah, I just loved musicals. I think looking back, I loved how emotionally present you could be. I think I loved how vulnerable you could effortlessly be. And also part of it was there was just something in the water where Kate and I were growing up and there were some really talented singers around. I was not one of them. I sort of was trying to give myself an excuse to get to be in the room with these incredibly talented people and by process of elimination, I found myself drifting over to the piano. Great. And you studied, what did you study in various schools? Oh, I was really bad at learning things when people wanted me to. I respect that. So if you're right now, maybe learning some things on your own, take heart. I went to Harvard for ostensibly math and left after one semester, then I went to Berkeley School of Music and I was not doing the right kinds of drugs to make any friends there. And so I left Berkeley and then I went to NYU where I mostly just started, like, typing classes and immediately interning on Broadway for free when I was, like, 1920. And by the time, by the time I was, like, 21, Kate and I had our first commission for our first show. Yeah. That's not a bad rule. I love it. I love it. Kate, tell us about you. Yeah. Brian's kind of, like, underplaying a couple things about Brian. Like, yes, Brian gravitated over to the piano, but, like, you don't just gravitate over to the piano if you're, like, a normal human being in the way that Brian gravitated over to the piano. Like, Brian discovered the circle of fifths without ever knowing what it was. Like, just, so there's this, there is, like, a little bit of wonderkin to Brian's discovery of the piano and suddenly being able to, like, jump in and change keys on command and cause a lot of problems and a lot of classes for, for a bunch of, like, 10-year-olds who, like, suddenly were seeing five steps above what they were supposed to be seeing because Brian got bored. So it's, like, funny, there's a lot of funny stories written in all of that. I grew up, my dad lived in the area where Brian's family lives and still does. And they both were doing theater at the same place in the Swarthmore, Delaware County area outside of Philadelphia. And I spent one summer, I knew Brian growing up, but we didn't really get to know each other until there was a summer that I spent in Philadelphia with my, living with my dad. And I did all of the summer theater camps, which we didn't have in Northeastern Pennsylvania where I normally lived. So that was, like, I mean, I feel like I, I bit, the theater bug bit really hard in that community because a community was pretty amazing. When I wasn't doing that, I was playing the violin for, from the time I was four until the time I was 18. And that ended up being, like, a surprising, helpful thing that I could never have imagined being connected to theater. But that turns out music, the way that you play the violin and the way you bow, it's actually very similar to the way you breathe. And it meant that when Brian decided to teach me how to write lyrics, the idea of phrasing and the idea of the way that a song, a lyric fits onto music came to me sort of naturally. I went through the, when Brian and I started writing together, I was writing plays in college and Brian was, Brian came to me and we reconnected, we were both in New York City, I was a partner, and Brian said, do you want to write a musical? And in the way that, like, when you're 20, 21 years old, someone says, do you want to write a musical? And he said, yeah, sure, of course. Why wouldn't I do that? I don't know. Why would you write a musical? And so our first musical was, like, my exploration about why someone would sing instead of speak. And it was, like, a very heady little piece, but it's really cool. And there's, there's, like, one, there was one theater critic who, like, thought it was the best thing ever. And, like, talk to me about it, like, a couple days ago again. So it's, like, this is a little cult piece called The Woman Upstairs. And I wrote the book for it and I did not really write too many lyrics for it, but Brian just kept pushing me to learn how to write lyrics and had this sense that I had the right tools. I had been studying poetry, I had been studying fiction and writing. And I had this music background. And so, and Brian really encouraged me and I ended up going to BMI. Brian also went, but I'm a very good student. So I brought Brian back with me and he promised that Brian would not go on with her phone. And I promised that she would not fall asleep. And we, like, finished off the MI together, which is an incredible program in that it is, it's very rule-oriented, which isn't necessarily Brian's favorite place to be. But for me, it was really great because I felt like I got all the basics, like all the very simple song structures. And they were really cool about how it's like, if you really broke the rule well, they let you go. And if you didn't, they really, really laid into you. And so I learned how to break rules really well if I was going to do it. And we weren't, we weren't perfect students there. They didn't love us, but it was, it's a free program and it's a very, very useful program. And you learned a ton about collaboration. And it's so key. I think that's so key. Oh, their periphery is unbelievable. Yeah. I didn't know that. That's great. So we cut up film. I mean, and part of what we're really doing here today is talking about collaboration, how you collaborate, how you listen to somebody. I have never learned that quicker than writing musicals. And I will say the, the like two or three things that I know for sure about musicals. One was taught to me by John Rando with a very early project that I worked on with him that he was directing. Harry Connick Jr. did the music too. Emily. I remember that time of your life. Right. You remember that. This little Christmas play. It's called The Happy Health. It is adorable. They needed a rewrite of the book and brought me in. And I had never done a musical before. I was kind of like, blink, blink, what? And John Rando was like, your job is to get to the songs. Your job as a book writer, earn those songs, get to them, transition organically out. This is what you do. So learning that very clearly was like, oh, I see how much storytelling goes on in the songs. And I think that's important for those writers out there, which both of you can speak to, how much story and action and character is in the songs. It's not a stop and let's sing about love. That's of course not how musicals go. There are decisions actively being made, discoveries being made within the song. So that is certainly different than say pop writing, which has a journey to it, certainly. But I would love for y'all to speak about that. And then maybe we can talk about how do you start a musical if you're like, I would love to write one. I have an idea. How do you begin? Maybe first start talking about what is a musical? Why do we do it this way? What does a song do in a musical? All that. One of the things that I think has been really interesting about my collaborations with Lauren, who I think I've worked on like four pieces, depending on how you're counting with, is, okay. So Lauren just alluded to a difference between musical theater songwriting and musical theater pop and pop writing. The main element of any pop song is repetition. It hardly matters what that first idea is. It can be we're stuck at home. And like the most important thing is, okay, so then we say something else and then we repeat we're stuck at home. And like the most important thing is that you're coming back to the same ideas recursively. There was a math part of my brain that always really appreciated that, that it's just layers of repetition inside of other layers of repetition. And especially today, listening to pop music, everything is designed to repeat. Even like a verse is supposed to be catchy enough that you hear it again later. A good play is not recursive. And that's what's extraordinary about Lauren's work is it's like we're gonna start here, we're gonna end somewhere all the way there and you will not believe how we're gonna get from point A to point B. I will never, I will never bore you by telling you the same thing again and again. And I will always look for these exciting shortcuts to jump you along in the story. Trying to find a healthy relationship between those two desires is the entire trick of musical theater songwriting. Bookwriting, yes, it's this other kind of math, but I can say from a songwriting perspective, it's saying for Kate, can talk to you about second verses. Tell you what, the goal is how much farther can I take you towards this emotional idea? With choruses, how much can I repeat about like an ongoing emotional journey while allowing that to always be evolving so that the same idea we are stuck at home. The first verse is maybe about a grocery store. The second verse is about your relationship with your sister. And by the end, the last verse, the last chorus, we're stuck at home and what does that mean emotionally for us as a society? There's this growing based on emotional ideas that stay recurrent. The thing that I think is interesting about plays and musicals that is, I actually think the same is that there's this old adage that a song, it's about scenes too. There's this old adage that a scene has to be about one thing. It can't be about two things. And the same thing is true for a song. It's just a smaller thing and the thing has to be emotional. And I believe that the thing has to evolve and change over the course of it. And that the goal of a song is to use the feelings that you're having, this character is having, to push you towards action, which then takes you back into scene. Because without that, I think you end up in these moments that leads you to ballads. And ballads are beautiful, but they're kind of deadly. You can get away with a couple of them, but any time you have a song that is just- Alex, the slow songs, they're the ones where you're like, maybe you cry or maybe you're like checking your watch to see how far away intermission is. Yeah. And they're beautiful sometimes, but they tend to not take you anywhere. And I kind of don't see the point of them. I think part of it is also that Brian and I, we cut our teeth on writing children's musicals. And I think that changed the DNA of who we were as writers. And I think it, I feel like it was in a really good way. It created a situation where we weren't allowed to have ballads. And we had to have a ballad, we had to earn it. And we had to create a situation where this was gonna, this really was the most important moment and the whole point of it. Maybe you can get over the ballad there. But the rest of the time, you always have to be thinking about where are you going? How does this get you there? That leads you to things that are more like production numbers or a character thinking through an idea. And those kinds of things, for me, are so much more exciting to watch on stage. I would love to define a production number. So in there, let's just like say a couple kinds of songs you could have in the musicals that you can write during this beautiful period of rest or creativity that we all have. So as Kate said, there are ballads. Ballads are generally like solo numbers that are deeply introspective. Avoid that shit if you possibly can in your first draft. Someone will let you know if it's time to have a ballad. If you're going to do something that is activating an ensemble, where you want to have a sense of size and scope, like maybe an opening number, thinking about what gift you're going to give your choreographer is the entire game. So in the same way that when Lauren is crafting that point B of her story, where we're going, you'd better believe that that chick is thinking about where, about what that's going to look like. Like what the physical world of the piece is at the beginning and what the physical landing point is and how things have changed. We have to do the same thing for a choreographer. We have to give them a game to play. So one of Kate and my favorite examples is the opening of Annie, where they're cleaning the orphanage and the amount of joy. Kate, they end up with a clean orphanage. Done. In between, there's an enormous amount of character development to get out. There's an enormous amount of stakes to realize, but like the director and choreographer aren't standing there after you give them the song being like, well, so while the orphans are standing there, singing about how they're sad about being orphans, like what am I watching? In this instance, they have this action to do. And if you look at like... And the thing is, is that there are plenty of songs, and that might be one of them actually, where the writer did not think about how it was going to be staged. But we have learned over time that having an idea of how something gets staged, having an idea, it's not to say it's the best way to stage it. It's not to say it's the only way to stage it, but having some sense of what's happening at all times on the stage changes things. We had a song when we were writing, all the three of us worked on a musical about space travel, and a show called Earthrise. And we had this song that we wanted called Earthrise. And I really liked the idea. I love the idea of having a hook like that. And the entire... I mean, I think I spent like an entire week, Lauren, just like railing. I was like, what are they doing? What's happening? And finally, we landed on the idea of this being the song that allows them to travel from space back to the Earth. And once we figured that out, we could write the song and we could get us, we could use the song that was more thematic and more than this like emotional idea, but then like tracks and getting back to Earth. And it's okay that you're talking about this big thematic idea because it's really grounded and really fucking fun. I will say that is my son's favorite song in the whole show, Earthrise. It's about... The Kennedy Center commissioned it last year. This is just last year, y'all. It feels like a decade and a half ago, but... And it was about... Brian can play some... But it's about the Apollo 11 mission, the children of the astronauts and mathematicians and engineers that took them to the moon and back. So, but it was from the kids' eyes. This was for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, which was super cool. Y'all know I'm like, science out. Yeah, you have to sing it. It was so good. But the reason why that's my son's favorite song is because while we're singing about... The reason why it's called Earthrise is because that's the view when the Earth rises in the way that from Earth the moon rises and we can see it and be like, oh, look at that celestial body. But if you're on the moon, looking at the Earth is like looking at the moon here. Anyway, it's supposed to be this metaphysical wow of it. And the reason why my sons love it so much is because we are singing big feelings, like brain-breaking feelings of how small, how beautiful our planet is, how it's all of us there. There's no borders from space. We're all just little creatures on the same rock. Oh my God, all this great stuff. But we are watching Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin get back in that spaceship. Head home and pray to God that they make it and land safely in the Pacific Ocean. And that is riveting. It is riveting. So we get the big ideas and the big heart swell of a number. But also the activity of going, please be okay. They can do it. Did they did it? They landed. Woo-hoo! You know, it's so awesome. And that's what musicals are good at. Like right there, that is, I think, why that's the point of writing musicals because it allows you to take something that is really kind of impossible to put on stage. And it creates enough emotional through-line that you believe that that happened. And it has this sense of size and scope that is much bigger than what's literally happening in front of you. And it sort of gives you the extra feelings that you need to push your imagination a little bit past where it can go naturally so that then you have this ability to play and imagine with the audience and take it just a bit further than you normally can go. And musicals are so good at that. And that's why you can do something epic with them, which is otherwise very hard to do on stage. It's like it's the closest thing to cinema that we have on stage. Are those big production numbers and musicals because the feel, the song, everything is big. And it can travel. You could do a lot. I mean, we went from the moon to Earth in that one number. That's a lot. I've been watching a lot of Disney movies recently because we're in quarantine with a four-year-old. I just watched Aladdin with my daughter. And we were watching Prince Ali, especially. It's so interesting because you take a song like that and it's an extraordinary song. It's an extraordinary production number. And then putting it on stage is such a challenge because they did exactly what you do really well in a musical at a production number, except that they then up it with animation, which also has this ability to push so much farther than reality. And so then coming back to Earth in a theatrical setting and trying to do that on stage becomes so challenging. It's really fascinating. I've been thinking about that a lot. Brian, can you take us into a couple other songs? We did ballads, production numbers. What are a couple of the other core kinds of songs that musicals offer us? I want to talk about duets, but in a way that's really broad because you can have a big ensemble around. One of my favorite examples that I use about as often as the orphanage one is Beauty and the Beast is Be Our Guest, which you can kind of think of in some ways as a duet between the candlestick and the clock. Any time you can have two characters on stage who believe really fiercely in the opposite outcome happening in a song, that is gold in our musical Rosie Revere Engineer and Friends. That is the title. There just aren't supposed to be quite so many ellipses. We have a song called Field Trip where all of the kids are just freaking screaming that they're on a field trip. They're so happy. We've got a teacher who we have a chaperone essentially who is really off the rails excited about pushing into the great unknown and the potential of the field trip. And then we've got a teacher who is trying to stop it. And what you do is you create a situation where the lyricist has so many games to play in terms of like how these two people are fighting back and forth. I get to have these two people sing slightly differently and the choreographer and director get to have them constantly budding up against each other. So like the fact that that clock is running around and be our guest trying to shut the operation down is enormously helpful. It is key to that whole endeavor is that you've got someone who wants to stop it. And that can be true when there's only two people on stage too. Any time you can get two people to have an idea that is deep within the fabric of your piece that two people feel really differently about your golden. Yeah, there's something that I think is lost a lot of times when people are talking about songs which is that just like in plays songs are best in musicals they are best when they have conflict when they're built out of conflict whether it's internal conflict and you're like oh my god am I going to am I going to do this am I not going to do this I have to figure it out and by the end I know whether or not I'm going to do it or it's external conflict between more than one character which is gold but like there has to be some kind of tension and without it you end up with you end up with songs that don't move the story forward and they are therefore cuttable. It doesn't matter how beautiful it is someone has to make there be conflict that justifies us going into the song and hanging out. Yeah and change right conflict is change we have to the song has to have changed the world the character the motivation the situation and you can go back when you get to the point where you're allowed to write your ballad because someone has told you that it's time now you will be so good at conflict in your songs that you'll be set all of the songs that like have always mattered the most to me in terms of ballads are like have deep conflict I dim the lights to think about you spend sleepless nights to think about you you said you love me or you were were you just being kind or was I losing my mind for so much conflict in in that song there's so much conflict in I won't send roses to show I care I won't send roses or flatter your hair or whatever I won't send roses and roses suit you so like any time you can get to this place where it's like I want this thing and I can't have it conflict conflict conflict another song type that is very useful to you in telling your big Lauren Gunderson stories that go from here to there are sequences which if you picture like you know those like cheesy like like action movie sequences or like where like someone emerges like with their hair done at the end like our version of that on stage is we just like you do an awesome song and you just start moving through plot at light speed and Lauren gives you 20 pages of plot and dialogue and things and we eat them and it comes out as four minutes of musical theater number and I think it's interesting because I I think that something that is really important too is that there are a lot of the things that we're talking about but that the conflict in the clock and Lumiere and also this kind of song a sequence is actually a production number like the truth is is that if you can be in a production number you should be in a production number like it's always better to be in a production number than to be in something that's more static it's much better to know what that there's movement that you're going somewhere in a song than to know that these two people are going to stand there and sing at each other that's a that's a heart that's always harder to stage it's always more likely to cause problems once you actually get into production it's better to have gamblers gambling on stage and rolling the dice and having that raise the stakes it's better to have the monkeys singing at the end of act one of wicked I look out I she's she's flying it's better to know well how they feel about it and them singing get her they're the clock you want to have the clock okay gotta have a clock I mean I will just say practically for the advice in terms of how we actually collaborate and work together we're always having these conversations and there is no judgment if somebody's like I think there's no conflict in this and I'm like oh my god you're totally right fabulous let's get a clock and and even in terms of tone like sometimes I or Kate can tell Brian it just feels too too sexy too happy too sad we we need something that's more this or more that and Brian being the genius that she is can just be like give me two minutes it's all changes it's like a brilliant a brilliant new world a whole new world if you if you will and you know so similarly and sometimes there's a lyric question where one of us could be like this lyric makes me think of something weird can we is there another word and Kate will similarly in two minutes come back with a whole new lyric so we kind of we like to work fast we like to talk all the time there's no wrong thing to say there's no offense taken if somebody's like meh this is not going to work we're always making each other at least from my perspective I feel like I'm being made a better writer a more thoughtful writer and every single thing like a play every single thing in the show has to have a reason to be there we know we need to know all of us know what it's doing can it be done better etc etc and the other answer to collaboration is google docs where all three of us can be in the same document online watching each other type and move and note so that that is the great equalizer of collaboration these days is is google docs what you think that there are things that you can't do in musicals that you can do in plays and vice versa at this point in your headspace that's such a good question I don't know I mean I think there are there are kind of simulacra both I mean you can kind of do a thing that you can kind of do it's a different thing in musicals but they accomplish the same thing like just a great juicy monologue is the same thing about ballads where it's like monologues really easy to write very hard to justify you think it's your greatest writing and then you know five minutes into the monologue the audience is ruffling their programs and being like get me out of here similar can can be very similar with the ballad I kind of equate those two I think you can do musicals because you mentioned these production numbers and these sequences montageiness kind of that would be the cinematic term I think it allows you to go further quicker you have to it doesn't feel unnatural to have you know 20 years past in one song in a musical but it feels a little odd in a play to do that even in one scene even in one even one play feels like a lot so I think there's more movement and I often say I'm so jealous of music because it can drop you into an emotional space in seconds and a play has to do a lot of work to get you to the place of going oh my heart is just oh wow I feel so bad for him you know but a musical can be like oh god I feel so bad for him like instantly so you can I think do that's part of why we think of musicals I think of as being so emotional is because you can do so many emotions so quickly back to back do them all I think Brian one of the things that you said not terribly long ago that like really really hit me was the idea that musical musicals aren't great at nuance and I think that's really true like when I think when you first said it like I wanted to I wanted to fight it I don't want that true I want it to be true but I actually think it is very true um and it's it's definitely what I use place for I use space to talk about really really nuanced ideas and things that like I definitely can't write a song about in like it won't be as effective if I write a song about it um because it's a weird idea that's like like literally if it's an idea that I've never heard someone say before that's when I want to write a play about it and I want to spend the entire time getting to the place where I can make people feel the thing that I definitely like know is a feeling that I've never heard said out loud and like with a musical I don't want to do that I think I'm looking for more universal truths and like big ideas that everybody feels but putting the circumstances giving them circumstances that might be very far away from um an audience members circumstances so that they then feel that connection to um to a character that they wouldn't necessarily realize that they're similar to yeah it's kind of it's it's stunning the extent to which musicals can traffic in melodrama without you realizing it's even melodrama um and it's and and how like like the titans of theater over the past century have created like a lot of their best work arguably are these really nuanced pieces like caroliner change like passion like and and they they really struggle to fill like large theaters and to really go on a communal journey i think that's well so yeah so let's maybe one of you will write a deeply nuanced blockbuster musical I don't know I think fun home was probably the closest I've seen to doing something very specific and um unexpected um the way the music is written this I mean all of it kind of felt like oh I don't I know what this is amazing I've never been here before yeah and that's the character that I but but on some level it was also that what it the the thing that I think it's most it's I think it's successful on so many levels but I one of the things that I think it's it's most successful at is is actually that sense of having the moment where you are like oh I've never been asked to identify with this character before but I'm completely capable of identifying with this character and I think that actually is that something musicals are is really really good at um and so that's where I think it that's that feels like the reason it it worked to me and I think it's like universally even though we are talking to some extent about artistic versus financial success and you can say like that that's even sometimes passion is an artistic success you can't say it's a financial success and when you put dear Evan Hansen and fun home side by side you can say that fun home is an artistic triumph but you can't say it's a financial success in terms of like longevity and and in terms of the sheer number of people that will see that and so there is something kind of confusing sometimes in musical theater about like what our biggest tent like like millions and millions of billions of people will see this property like whether or not you can take something that is as phenomenal as what fun home is and have that translate to really large audiences I don't know oh because I feel like that's also true like I mean we could we could say the same thing about fiction about literature like there's like there's the James Patterson books that I mean so many more people read James Patterson books than read like Rebecca Mackay's book The Great Believers and I think Rebecca Mackay's book The Great Believers is one of the most extraordinary books I've read in the last five years and I don't know that it can be about that and I think it's oh I guess like hey here's what I think it is it can be about that I think it's unfair to say that it has to be about that because there's so many other I mean like there's also people don't know not that many people read poetry it doesn't mean that that they're like the greatest poets that are writing right now aren't doing extraordinary work that's important you know I feel like equating it as financial I know that we're we're an artistic medium but we're in this very commercial setting but that's that's true of fiction too let's back up for a second um to kind of go like if you were talking to people just starting a musical theater career or just starting like can I write musicals should I write musicals how do you do it um how do you start how do you do the normal questions do you outline do you talk about character first do you just start writing a song and have that be the seed how have the different projects that you've started come about kind of when do you know oh I can definitely write this all of those kind of beginning questions which even for those of us who've written lots of play their musicals they I still feel like a beginner at the beginning of every idea I think like what do I do again two really good ways to start and one of them feels like starting with an idea and the other feels like starting with a partner and like both of those feel like really fertile ways to launch something either by thinking about a book that you want to adapt or like a story something that happened to you that you feel like there's an emotional undercurrent to that feels deeply musical or a human who you just feel like the two of you might be able to make something together certainly that was how Kate and I started is like we'd no idea what you're going to make together only that it seemed like the two of us should make something together yeah I think now if this phase in my life I think I I like to start from I like to start from an idea um and I really like to start from some kind of outline um it can be really rough um but and and and before the outline actually a conversation like the ones that we have um where you're just hanging out and talking about an idea and seeing how you can have like if you're with smart people that you believe in who you think are great writers um and that doesn't mean they have to be fancy writers um they just have to like they have to get you and you have to get them and if you're in those kinds of conversations I think if you pause an idea and then somebody else can lob back another idea and you can start to build off what feels concrete and what everybody gets excited about then like from there you can end up with an outline or you can end up with a really rough draft Lauren tends to write from like a really rough draft for us and that's really fun because Lauren always knows where she's going she like kind of won't um commit until she knows what the end is and then when she knows what the end is she kind of writes this like really really rough almost not draft but that has a beginning and has an ending and like the middle is a big old question mark and it's so useful because if you know where you're starting and you know where you're landing you have your it doesn't matter if you don't know the rest you can start to you can start to build it and you can start to dream about what you can do you can start to say oh I think there has to be a song about this thematic idea and then she's great I'll write a scene about that um but like that I think that ability to like sort of put pen to paper sort of have like a little something that feels concrete enough that then you start getting ideas for songs then I think you can start just writing songs you can start moving forward yeah that sounds right to me I mean I think so much of what why an outline is honestly even more important for musicals is because we're looking for balance too and I'd love for y'all to talk about stuff that you you both taught me of going wow we've had a lot of solos we've had a lot of duets gosh we'd have nothing but production number after production number how do we balance that how do you have intro number it's big we get the world we are singing about a lot of people are singing and then we have a duet and then we have a solo because now we really know who our main character is and now we have a trio and then another production number and then the act what's the act break number which for those of you who've been watching other classes that midpoint something's got to change it's our defying gravity it's our she's flying it's you know I feel like this is a a world in which a conversation in which like musicals the construction of musicals and plays um feels the most different because like the building block of a play are these scenes that need to make linear sense and that like in a lot of instances exist in naturalism and where you need everything to be believable and you're constantly just trying to like in some ways coax yourself along in a way that like doesn't break the tendrils of story you're stretching in a musical you're sort of trying to move at such a hyper speed even in something like fun home like the sheer distance you you travel is enormous you move at a really fast velocity through emotional territory um and so for me I feel like having a bird's eye view of the of the score um can also give you a bird's eye view of the story at all points I try and kind of have if there's like 15 songs in a 90 minute musical or 18 in a two hour musical I kind of have placeholder titles for all of them as I'm going and I kind of fill in songs even though they don't exist yet like I know there's going to be a moment of catharsis for my main character I don't know where that's going to go I have hunches that it's probably going to go somewhere in the middle of the second act I have a hunch that that's probably going to happen there I don't know exactly when in the first 15 minutes I'm going to have a moment where I get deeply on board with my protagonist or what that will look like but I know that moment's gonna happen somewhere in there and so I want to make room for it I just want to like kind of leave myself space that I can fill in later um and I try and not worry too much about the connective tissue um and try and like kind of just like leave myself um like these little landmarks that I can then figure out how to get to and so if we go okay here's our character list we've got these two characters who are deeply ideologically opposed in our musical about televisions and so I'm going to probably write a song about televisions at some point that has the two of them in it where's the most exciting place in this story for me to take these two characters and have them fight it out about that you know and so then I and then it's whether it's you or your writing partner like someone else then puts that hat on and goes how do I get this how do I make this scene get me from two people who don't know each other suddenly fighting about televisions I don't know but what a great prompt yeah I one of the sudden I was like oh I have an absolute no one of the things that I um when I've taught book writing classes because this is a very songwriter-y way to think about uh about a story and it's incredibly useful and without it I think that you're in danger if you're a book writer you're in danger of not having a musical but having a play and so one of the things that I've always forced my um reverberating courses to spend some time doing is I'll I'll like print out a bunch of um song lists and I'll take musicals that they know and like maybe I'll made them read the musical already but that I make them look at just the song titles in like ragtime or once in the silent erin sincerity is very good at this um but there's but there's plenty of other examples rogers and hammerstein any anyone who is a great dramatist as a songwriter stupid shorts um they all have that you can look at the song list and you can see the play you can see what it is and it's so valuable because it reminds you that's the goal if the goal is that you're going to because eventually you're going to sit down with a playbill when you're sitting there in front of the theater and you're going to look down and there's a song list in your program and that song list better look exciting and that song list better look a little bit like the show that you're trying that that you've made um and so those hooks matter so much on so many levels often the song title or the hook is just like the most repeated phrase defying gravity is a hook and it's something you hear a bunch of times and ideally you've got some song titles some song hooks that you're going to hear a lot that are major anchor points for multiple characters that are convergence points or divergence points that these are the fabric that in some ways like you could almost if you have a luring undersen play and then you have the adaptation of that play side by side if you were to then look at the song list of that that adaptation it would be a clocking of big thematic ideas major character moments and like yeah it'd be such a weird exercise to just like write the song hooks for august osage county you can do it but you do it like and it should be a summary basically of major emotional landmark points if you have song titles that are deeply deeply unconnected to your characters or your plot or major turns of character you have a problem you have a problem well and it's it's part of why the book writer's job is to get to the song because the song does the work this is why there's not a list of the scenes there's a list of the songs because the songs are the heart the soul the head the change the force the gravity the all of it is is in but one of the best things that a book writer can give to the song writers is a problem that has to be so it's like get to the song tell me what the problem is that this song has to solve and then i'm ready like i'm so ready to write it i'm like great okay done well and we talk about ramping building the ramp to the song and the entrance ramp and the exit ramp and the idea that a ramp i mean even architecturally it's getting hard things are rising stakes are rising the the song bursts out of a moment of emotional need and emotional eruption so that it's not just you know my job isn't like characters enter another character enters the song like no someone comes in going how could you do that what are you are you crazy we're going to lose everything if you now we're singing about the thing and we're singing right something much better than that you have to i don't mean this as a direct response to that um you have to be brave to like and this feels like essential to who i am as a human um you you have to be brave enough to put out the bad idea if you're gonna like collaborate and i do believe that musicals are kind of like and the epitome of what collaborative multi-genre work can be you have to be brave enough to put out the bad title of a song so that you're so that the lyricist can respond to it and possibly move towards a a better title you have to be brave enough to get a little egg on your face and like musicals for better and worse traffic an enormous amount of amount of vulnerability both in the performance of musicals and the creation of them and so i also think that like creating safe spaces connected to how you collaborate like talking about how you're going to work is part of it talking about like how you'll respond to each other's ideas and how you'll like make sure you feel good as you do something so vulnerable when you're just writing up i mean lauren is that something like how does the vulnerability differ for you when you're writing a play versus when you're like doing something in a writer room or in a collaborative writing process um it's hard it's harder to know uh because i am second guessing myself which i've gotten very good at but it is better and i will say the the literal practical advice in what brian is saying is that i will quite literally say to kate okay so the bad song is i need you so much la i love you as much as i love ice cream terrible terrible very terrible and then kate goes oh i see yes yes yes okay and she makes it brilliant poetic great brian can go the bad scene the bad conflict is the mom comes in and says ever since you were born i've known you and i'm like oh i get it gotcha gotcha now let me do the subtle fun charactery funny version of that you know and we we all kind of can see yeah i think we quite literally say here's the bad idea yeah i think that the the it's a it's an interesting combination of like bravery and also confidence um and it can't but it can't be ego because like you have to be just as willing to drop the idea as you are to keep going on the idea and you have to believe that you have to you have to believe that the people in the room are as smart as you are and are at every idea that they have is as valid as your ideas but you also can't doubt your own ideas because you have to believe that it's okay that you have an idea and that your idea is going to be half-baked and you're going to give it out half-baked and that that's the goal um and that sense of safety and making sure that the people around you know that they're valued know that they're that that you think that they're great and continuing to like say that not as like a pat on the back but just like as a just remember that i think you're awesome and that's why we're in this room so even if i say something about something you do the idea you had if i even if i say no to that idea something because i don't think you have great ideas like the reason you're here the reason i'm here the reason we're doing this is because we all believe in each other and i think that's such a fundamental part of it um that like i remember like in in middle school and high school we knew like a bunch of really really talented people and at the time i don't think i'd like i kind of took it for granted but i also kind of took it for granted that like none of us were really that talented like i just thought we were all talented for our group and then like i got to new york and about you know like there were like six people who are incredibly talented and guess what i think all six of those people are still incredibly talented like it didn't change and so i think that sense of your own um taste matters like ton and should be honored and i think it it doesn't mean that like the people you don't like they're writing or you don't like the way that they say is they're not good it means it's not your taste and so when you do find those people you have to hold on to them and you need to tell them that they're great and you have to work with them as much as you can i want to spotlight that to the idea of like collaboration is also like negotiating group taste it's it's it's and every time you add a member to your collaboration you have to renegotiate that and so like my taste is not the same as kate carrigan's taste is not the same as lauren gunderson's taste kate and i have things that fall within the venn diagram of things that are our shared tape and then taste and then the three of us do as well and so there's also an element to collaboration that is talking about the books and the movies and the musicals and the music and talking about what you like and what feels good to you and what is like adjacent to the pieces that you're working on together um there is an element of collaboration that is just becoming good friends with people um and kind of being kind to yourselves and remembering especially in musicals that you don't speak the same languages like the language in which i create is like nominally textual like mostly the things i create are our atmospheric and tonal and so lauren and i we have to have a pigeon language we have to create ways of talking to each other and we have kate who acts as an intermediary sometimes and sometimes we don't have kate to act as an intermediary and so you're kind as you make up words to describe things that you're doing as you like send people things that like ultimately end up just being really silly things that you've sent them um and you have to be okay to just like talk about the television that you're binge watching and why you think it might be relevant to your second act problem you know i will say that is there's a lot of ways to make a thing and one example i will use again as practical advice for y'all out there is if kate and brine are trying to write a song we're trying to figure out what is the song what should it be we know it needs to be uh one solo this is our chance to get to know this character care about what they care about okay the the practical homework is lauren go home and write a monologue that will never be in this play but tells the all of the secrets of the singer and what what are they worried about what do they love what do they hate what's going on and just blah blah blah blah and then maybe there is two words in that that kate goes oh that's an intro maybe that's part some of a hook and then they'll start collaborating and then maybe ask me for could you write a little bit more about this or or like no no okay they will take all of that away and write a whole new song that is you know and all of that is a form of of collaboration because there's things i know about this musical that they don't there's things brine knows for sure about this musical that we don't and we're kind of constantly finding ways to to share enough to keep it going and again it may be the bad version but even in plays a version is the version that'll get you to the good version that'll get you to a great version that'll get you to the version that's like yes opening night we did it brine and i worked on a song recently um for a new project that we're doing with a with a book writer and um i had like some very strong feelings about some of the hook ideas for it and uh i had very strong i had some like really solid lay was like i know that the song is called um this is the after the band song brian um there was i know that the song was called after the band i know what these two characters talking about i know that it's duet with these two people i know why it's called after the band here's some lyrics for it and the book writer was like yeah that makes perfect sense to me then brian said it's music and was like this and we were like no that doesn't work and then brian said it to music again and we were like no that doesn't work i just like kept trying different music on it and then finally brian and what was really cool is that at each step we ended up having these really interesting conversations about like the tonal landscape and the reason brian needed something because brian was clocking different things than we were if we were clocking character and story and brian was clocking the tonal place that we were in the act and that we had to we couldn't have the kind of song that i wanted initially in the book writer initially wanted but we also knew that the song was probably about this and i knew enough to send bad music i knew enough to say this is definitely wrong and yet here you go and then we finally hit this amazing moment where um brian like hybrided enough and zhuzh did enough and like forced it into this edit form and then i rewrote all of the lyrics to the song except for the except like there was a couple little things that we like we were like okay these parts work but i rewrote the entire thing and the song is like a hundred times better from having gone through that crazy process um but that kind of goes to i mean the question you must get asked all the time like what comes first lyrics or music and it's having worked with y'all it is both both and yes no all of it none of it yeah yeah i like it's it's just too hard to answer at this point um we i i think i have a like addiction to learning new tools and learning new methodologies of working and learning new ideas like and so i take pride in the fact that kate and i have never written a song like the same way twice like but on the other side i do think that there is like there is a genesis for every song like we we do the same thing that we do for writing a show which is that we like sit around talking about the song for a little while unless one of us is like i got this let me write a whole draft of something let me write some section of it and that happens occasionally where one of us like has a very strong instinct but for the most part we end up like talking for a little bit thinking about hooks thinking about that thematic idea and then once we hit that then we then we try all kinds of in the same way we're talking about how you wouldn't write a musical linearly just like line by line from the beginning you kind of need to structure out where you're going and you need to give yourself those landmarks anything within a song like you're not going to just start writing the song at the beginning and make your way through unless you're you know just i don't even have an example of stream of interest because it's not your art kelly but don't be our kelly no but but i think the thing about especially musical theater songs is that they are never they're not linear they're still recursive but they have they have a job to do in that recursive environment so if you don't know what that last thing that you're doing is you're totally fucked you can't get the job done a standard way of this happening would be lauren can you spitball a four sentence monologue about literally anything sure i this character just really hates um the uh the arguments that her neighbor is having and she feels like she needs to go save this woman because the guy is so verbally mean to her but she's terrified of going over there because of her past and her bad relationships and even though she knows that that this woman's got to get out she's terrified to to go over there and do it kate can you brainstorm a couple hooks that are possible for like what it could be called is she singing is she singing this song before she goes over she's singing this song as she goes over in conflict about whether or not she's gonna go gonna go over um um seen it all before um i'm not doing that again um none of my business oh i like none of my business that was my favorite but it's none of my business if i walk over there kate don't fix that lyric you'll make it no it's none of my business i'm not going anywhere or maybe i am you know and it's and we're going back and forth in conflict but you know i would just pass that and then we'd talk about what wasn't good about it and then we'd keep iterating but in order to be able to do that bravery is the word i think that the thing that we all just demonstrated is bravery um to be to be brave to like to put your first ideas out there you can move so efficiently through collaboration when you can create um where you can create a room or a digital room where you feel safe where you can trust and where you can just kind of both brainstorm and then also narrow in on ideas that like clock to multiple people mm-hmm yeah and i think that the thing that we do sometimes like we do the inverse of what we just did which is that like i'll go and take well we've we've had this like weird new process where we'll have like a bunch of hooks for a show and then i will write lyrics for all of the hooks literally it'll just make up a hundred possible song titles and then i like just like the weirdest little musical shopper going down the aisles i'll be like oh i'll take this one please yeah and it's and it's one of those things we're like especially because you know none of them like your expectation becomes that like maybe like 10 of these 25 things will lead to anything it becomes really easy to go really fast which actually i think is that i think that is the thing that the three of us like as our like trifecta we are really not precious and we are really fast and that being so useful there's something emotional i want to say about that and like maybe one of you can i i'm gonna speak a little in metaphor because i don't know how to say it but maybe this is another way that our collaboration works um so thinking about the idea of like giving space and holding space and taking up space within a collaboration is something i've thought about a lot um like a in terms of how i choose my collaborators i specifically am generally not coming from having an idea for a piece but rather just being drawn to humans where i want to amplify their voice and where i feel like i want to add emotional resonance to the kinds of stories they tell and i want to like propel outward the kinds of stories they tell and something that like the idea of cutting your work and trimming your work and making room in your work something that i've learned as a writer is that when i can create space in the in like the number of minutes we have like that when i can create space i'm giving room to my collaborators so like when we're talking about lauren not having the space for a five-minute monologue in the piece that's because she is ceding some territory to what kate is able to do and saying this is something that like as much as we all know that lauren gundersen can write a freaking monologue right we know that it's a choice that lauren's making to say hey i give you this space to use and for me like me taking up space is important as a writer it's important for me to say no we're we're gonna make this character sing and it's also important to know when it's when it's time to give your other collaborators stage time and every time you're making the choice to cut that song to cut that lyric to cut that scene you worked that's an act of giving space to other people to your collaborators like that and it's and it's also an honorific of saying or an honoring of saying this is what you do so well so you instrumentalize the f out of that emotion so that our actor can just bend and close their eyes and feel the feels while that music is swelling before they boom with carrot kate's amazing hook that we finally get to go like she is defying gravity or whatever but also for those out there there are songs that bottom bottom out and there's a little scene in the middle of it and that's a way for brian and kate to go lauren this is what you're going to help us do better than we can do is to clarify this plot point or give that piece of information so that the singer goes what and now i'm going to sing the rest of the song with that new information right so we are constantly you know passing the ball and the baton in terms of who can take us to the right place the right way so that we all get to make something beautiful y'all it is so hard and it is so worth it i can't believe it that like at this point in my life and we're like i still just freaking love musicals but like that's not true actually i think that like musicals in some ways like not as capable of getting to some of the ideas i want them to get to they're not as but like the thing i love the thing that like is like a shot of dopamine that i can't get anywhere else is that feeling of creative mind melding with other writers that does span genres it's thrilling and the experience of having like kate write a lyric to music that like was always there even though it hadn't been there until a few seconds ago the feeling of like having taken lauren's scene and totally like ripped it away from her claimed it as our own and remounted it and have lauren like nod and go okay and feel like we honored her and that like we didn't destroy her play but like god to even acknowledge that maybe you even like added to it it the the experience of getting to be that deep within someone else's creative project process is um it is it is beyond words it's the greatest i will say so now we're kind of at the end of our hour so i would love for both of y'all to say one more thing i will start by saying that for most of my career i was writing plays and i was writing plays and often kind of being confronted with various people in the theater community that seemed to be uncomfortable or didn't quite understand why i was writing such big emotion why i was writing big feeling and characters that didn't exit to have their cry but were like center stage to have their cry or their rage or their revelation um i was like no i put center stage that's why i come to the theater so of course fast forward a few years it is no surprise that i am now writing almost half of my projects are musicals in different different forms or musicals that i can't wait to write i'm always texting kate and i had a new idea for a musical texting brian being like cool wait here's another random saying it may be a thing um and it's because of that bigness i think musicals let us do big emotional work and the way music can sink everyone in an audience within seconds emotionally is an extraordinary power it is primally human it is collective and congregational it is like the church the biggest church for me um and is musicals and so much of what i learned was because of these two people and so much of what i loved why i love to do it is because of them so i'm so excited y'all got to hear from them what are the last couple things uh you both want to say to i'm not gonna really say anything because like for some reason i'm like just on the verge of tears at just being so grateful for like my ongoing like friendships and collaborations with both of you it really it i pinch myself every time i get to like collaborate with your words i'll plug our socials yes please that um kate and i are really easy to find and we're also like always doing things um both like sharing like skills on the internet and also like doing collaborative writing projects and things online so if you want to find the mad ones and all of the ways that they listen to all called the mad ones that um we won't issue shutdown notices if you start performing it in your bed rooms uh it's uh so you can listen to the mad ones on spotify um even even kate and she'll just send you the script um but uh so we're karagin loudermoke on instagram we're karagin loudermoke on facebook i'm um and you can find k karagin and brian loudermoke really easily so just like come get up in our business um and please make musicals that look like you and that like talk like you and that are nuanced bizarre weird musicals that are filled with bad ideas that are actually really good ideas and that we haven't seen yet yeah i was just gonna say that we should um i i think it's worth in this weird time it's not it doesn't have to be about like products it doesn't have to be about getting somewhere and finishing something but i do think that this is a this is a very strange moment in all of our lives like universally and if you have people that you can grab who you love who are talent who you believe they're talented and they believe that you're talented um i think it's a really really good time to grab those people and start to just share ideas and talk about hopes and dreams and things that you might be able to make together um because this is it's a good little incubation period where there's not a lot of there aren't a lot of stakes um if you get nothing done during this period that's okay and that actually is one of the best times to start something because you could just start to dream a little bit and then see what sticks um and but but i think finding those people and and reaching out to those people which is another kind of bravery um telling someone that you think that they're incredibly talented and that you want to work with them um it's it might surprise you what their response would be and so i think that's a really valuable kind of just first step oh yeah thank y'all for being who you are for being creative and for joining and sharing your wisdom with all these amazing people out there hi amazing people thanks for watching thanks for giving us something even though we can't make theater as easily as we can we can sure as hell talk about it all day which is my favorite thing to do all right thank you all so much um i will try to go on to the facebook comments and answer any specific questions kate and brian may be convinced to do the same yeah um thanks for watching we have a bunch of other interviews like this coming up directors dramaturgs we uh just heard that we have two um trans writers and actors we're going to talk about writing trans characters and casting trans actors