 Ideas for more panels that you would like to see, either the Guild presented on their own or in collaboration with the society, please feel free to email me or email Greg and we will be happy to do what we can. Hello to the online audience. If you'd like to send us questions via Twitter, please go to at dramatiskill, hashtag new play. And when those questions come in, I'll run them up to our moderator and we will ask them as they come in. I think that's it. So, without further ado, thank you for coming and it's my pleasure to introduce Greg Pliska, who's the president of the society. I'm the head of the New York Steering Committee. He's the head of the New York Steering Committee. I gave him a promotion, what are you saying? I'm the lead promoter. But enjoy. Oh, if you ask a question, please stand up and say it loudly so our online audience can hear it, okay? Great, enjoy. I'll be right outside if you need anything. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, thank you, Terri, and thank you, Zach, who's running our tech this evening. And also thanks to Roland Tech, who's had a membership here, who has sort of been my initial contact with the Guild. And actually, I hate to correct Terri, who just gave me such a wonderful introduction and a promotion. But this is actually the second thing we've done. The first thing was not public. It was a songwriter, book writer, round table. And we had 10 composers from the SCL and 10 book writers, lyricists from the Guild, here in the room together. And actually a few of them are here tonight. I recognize some folks on the way in. So we hope this is not just the second of our co-events, but the second of many that we continue to do together. I, when Roland and I sat down to talk about things we could do, this was one of the first ideas we had. Our membership at the SCL is primarily composers, also lyricists. The organization was based in, is based in LA, has been out there for some 35 years or so. And has had a growing New York chapter for the last five years. There are actually a couple of the other steering committee members here, Elizabeth in the back and Mark over here. If you don't know anything about the SCL, please chat with myself or Elizabeth raise your hand back there and Mark's down here. And Shelby Comstow, who you may have seen on the way in as our New York administrator. The organization originally worked mostly with composers of film and TV and media, but as we've expanded into New York, one of the major pillars of membership now is also writing for the theater. So this is, and obviously that's a large part of our New York population. So this is a great treat for us to be here at the Guild. As I said, one of the first things Roland and I said would be great to do is a collaboration panel. Let's get some writers and composers together and let them talk about what they do. How do words and music work together? How do a writer and a composer work together to create a piece of musical theater? And we specifically wanted to try to get a veteran team and a newer team. Who's... Alden Young. Alden Young. I didn't say that. I didn't say Alden Young. You were thinking it though. I was avoiding it. Clearly. I'd leave it to the writer to notice what words I'm not saying. The subtext. So we're... It's a lesson in subtext. We really couldn't be happier with the four folks we've got up here. I suggested that we actually sit composers versus lyricists, but they chose to sit in teams. I'm gonna say a few things about them. They are all very capable, talented, successful, and articulate folks and very modest. So the great part about my job is I get to brag about them and they don't have to do it. Chris Miller and Nathan Tyson, coming from East, from West to East. Chris Miller and Nathan Tyson have written, I believe, four shows together. Mysteries of Harris Burdick was one of the first, I guess. Fugitive Songs, which earned them a drama desk nomination for Best Review. The Burnt Part Boys, which is one of the first pieces I knew of you guys. I think I still have a demo CD of that in my apartment. Which got a Lortel nomination for Best Musical. And just finishing its run in Atlanta this last weekend, Tuck Everlasting, which has been described as Broadway-aimed. And we'll just leave it at that and see what happens. They have also written for Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Ringling Brothers, various other things. In their bios, they say, we apply for many grants and receive some of them. And that includes a low foundation grant. Rogers, Richard Rogers, Kitty Carlyle Hart grant, ASCAP, NEA, and so on. But that's not even as significant as the Larson grant that got in 2003. And then last year was kind of a great year for you guys. Nathan was given the Cleveland Prize for lyrics, for lyric writing. It's a very, it goes, one, the persistent, one, the brightest, get that award every year. And it's a very prestigious award. And then as a team, they were given the Fred Ebb Award for excellence in musical theater writing. So they are a pretty extraordinary pair of creators. Very happy to have them here. And continuing in an Easterly direction, Lynn Arons and Stephen Flaherty have been working together for an extraordinarily long period of time, which I say not so much to talk about their age. They started working together when they were five. So they're still in their 30s. But few teams really, few collaborative teams maintain that kind of longevity. And it's an extraordinary tribute to their, both to the work they do and to their working relationship. It began with Lucky Stiff in 1988, which was revived in 1997. And there is a film version of which, which we still haven't seen here. Is that right? Right, it's in the film festival. Okay, so it's heading our way, hopefully. And then 1990, Once on this Island, which I'm sure many of us remember, got a Tony nomination and won the Olivier Award in 1995, when it was revived. My favorite year in 1993, one of several shows they had done at Lincoln Center. Anastasia, the Disney film in 1997, which got two Golden Globe and two Tony nominations, was a gold record and had the number one song, which was Journey to the, Believe it or not. How's the beginning? It was the last film in the picture and it was called At the Beginning. And they were Oscar nominations, not Tony nominations. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I typed this up so clearly and wrongly. And then of course, Ragtime in 1998, which was, got them the Triple Crown, a Tony, a drama desk and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, as well as Grammy nominations, I believe, and was revived in 2009 on Broadway. Susical, 2000, revived in 2007, Grammy and Drama Desk nominations and is one of the most frequently performed shows right now across the country. A Man of No Importance in 2002, which got an Outer Critics Circle nomination award. Best musical. Okay, good. They could have brought all the awards in but then we wouldn't have been able to... They're in storage. Yeah. A Man of No Importance, right. Dessa Rose, 2005, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations, Cheetah Rivera, The Dancer's Life, which also had music by other folks in 2005, The Glorious Ones in 2007, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations, Rocky the Musical, or as Wikipedia says, Rocky Das Musical, which premiered in Hamburg and then was here in 2012, Outer Critics Circle nomination, Tony Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards were won by that show for Set and Lights, I believe and Little Dancer, right, which is on its way. It was last year. That was last year, right, right, it was last year. And Things in the Works that we don't know about. So Lynn and Steve, I'm thrilled that you're here. I'm gonna try to talk as little as possible. That's probably the most talking I'll do but a quick story. I did a Composal of the Breadest Workshop at New Dramatists, which goes on every year. It's a terrific experience. It's two weeks of intense collaboration, composers, writers, performers, really taking apart how do you put words to music and put music to words and tell a story with words and music and how do you understand how to communicate with each other as creative artists? And we spent two weeks grinding through this stuff and you've worked with every other potential counterpart on the other team and sometimes it worked great and other times it was a disaster but it was a learning experience. And at the end of this, we're all sort of wrapping up and one of the writers stands up and he says, you know, if I had had this workshop 10 years ago, my first marriage might not have fallen apart. And so I thought, well, you know, there is a way in which a collaboration is just like a relationship and hopefully we'll talk not only about how well it works but also how you get through the parts that don't work so well. Anybody who tells you their marriage is just so easy from the beginning to the end is of course not telling the truth. And so I guess my first question for you guys and we can take it however you want is how did you know, going back to the sort of collaborative dating process, how did you know when you'd found the right one in your teams? How did you know when you'd found the one you wanted to work with? Well, Chris and I met in 1999 in grad school. There's a musical theater writing program at NYU and Chris says that day one, he saw me in my long hair. So that's the guy. And this summer we actually celebrated 15 years writing together, so it's very exciting. Thank you for calling us young. Yeah, bro, thank you. But I think it was something about it, magically we had so much in common immediately. Both of our parents are, both of our fathers are ministers. We both have an older brother three years. Older than us, we both have like a love of like folk music. And just the same kind of... Yeah, and in our class at NYU we were the only, we were the youngest in the class. So we sort of immediately gravitated towards each other and it worked out that we had like a similar aesthetic and sort of, we liked the same kind of theater and the same kind of storytelling that we just had a lot in common aesthetically and in our lives too, so it like made sense. Was there a moment when you were writing something together where you said, wow, this is like, so you see each other across the crowded room and you say, I might be the one for me, but then is that a strange question? Is there a moment when you said, oh no, this song is, this is really exciting. What's happening now? Yeah, I mean, I think the first song that we wrote together, which it's a song called Growing Up, you can watch, we can watch it on YouTube. We started talking about our history together and we kind of melded both of our stories together and wrote the song and it started just like a night at a bar and we had some drinks and I took some notes and then we kind of wrote it in an hour together and it just felt kind of very magical and very real and for a lyricist, I'm always looking for a collaborator that's willing to let me sit on that piano bench with him and just be in the room together. The second that the door starts to close is the second that I feel like we're not really being able to communicate and that he respects me enough that I can talk about music with my limited knowledge of it and that he should also be able to throw out any sort of lyrical ideas. I think there has to be best idea wins always and that always felt, that's been the rule for the two of us and I think that's why we've continued to work together. And you guys are nodding over here. No, everything they say is interesting and right. Stephen and I are sort of the opposite of that. We couldn't be more different. Our backgrounds sort of couldn't be more different. She's a girl. I'm just like, this is good. Starting right there. Yeah, but we've been working together. Last year we celebrated our 30th anniversary of working together. Wow, that's amazing. And to this moment, the moment when we, well we met in the BMI workshop in 1982. He was a self-contained lyricist and composer and didn't need to work with anybody else. He was just this young, shy person who would get up and do these beautiful songs. And I was, I had entered the workshop as a lyricist although I had had a career up until that point as a composer lyricist, songwriter for television and stuff like that. But I thought, well, it's theater. You know, I've made a whole career on five chords and I don't think that I'm gonna be able to do that in theater. So I decided to just try and get in as a lyricist, which I did. And I would admire Stephen across the crowded room. I admired his work and I thought he'll never need me. So I was sort of speed dating a lot of other composers. You know, and they were all terrific and I've remained friends with many of them but nothing quite clicked in. At the very end of that first year, you know, they, I don't know if any of you have been involved in the BMI workshop but the first year there were assignments and sort of a standard array of assignments so that you learn your craft. And the last one was a song for two people in different places singing together. Wasn't that like a duet? Yeah, so just like split stage, split screen. Separate but together sort of song. And I remember I was standing outside the building talking to a few people. And this is like going through most of the year writing my own words and music. And he had never said really something about it. I had, no I hadn't. I had admired it across the room and I felt that I wanted to shake things up for myself personally, you know. Because I was frankly a lyricist by default. You know, I really felt that I was a composer but I'd been writing lyrics in college and for college shows and that but there was nobody in Cincinnati, Ohio that really wrote lyrics. So I was doing it by default and there was the last assignment of the year and Lynn was walking west and I was walking east and I just felt this little thing in the back of my neck say, turn around you Shmuck. And then turned around I screamed down the block and said, Lynn, do you want to work on the last assignment together? And I was so taken aback. And she was like, he speaks. You know. You know, it was so fun. And also our ways of working when we met were entirely different. Lynn came from like the pop in the commercial world and she's very much an improv gal like get up on your feet and like create it and and see what it is and think. Yeah, yeah. And I, my background was very eclectic growing up in terms of my interest but my education was classical. I studied serious composition in Cincinnati and I thought the idea of a writer was to lock yourself away in a little cell by yourself and I grew a beard because I thought that would help the cause. You get very, very serious and I would score everything out on paper. So I was like very, it was much more rigid than Lynn's way of working. So she denies this, but it's absolutely true that when I finally got to her apartment for that song, for the end of BMI, she says, okay, make something up. Just make something up. That's not true. That is true. And I had never realized or made anything up in front of another person. I thought it was much more of a private thing. Yeah, so in a whole, certainly it was a dare, you know, it really pushed me out of my comfort zone. But I think had I written a lyric first because my memory of this moment is that I had written some sort of a lyric first for a really, truly bad song that you will never hear on YouTube. I think I put it on the piano and said, you know, see what you can make of this and make something up in front of me, which he had never worked that way. And I, but I will say, I remember he put his hands down and he sort of looked at it and then he just did a little this and a little that and I thought, ah, there is. That's who I wanna work with. I did have that Walla moment with Steven because he understood lyrics and he knew how to set lyrics beautifully. See, and also Lin has like a really musical ear. So, you know, in a certain way, as it's developed over time, we've been one another's editors in a certain way, which is really, which is really helpful. So I think that first song wasn't honestly very good, but the process of creating the not very good song was wonderful and so we began writing together. It was, the song was two people putting, this is how old this was, putting personal ads in the village voice. I mean, come on. Isn't that just screen 1983? Yeah, it certainly does. Missed connections on the back. I was just talking about their differences, which is sort of apropos of us starting to work together. That was fun. You know, you guys were my, a question I was gonna ask later, but it seems apropos now because you guys talked about being in the room together and obviously that first moment is being in the room together. When you work now, are you still in the room together? Are you using technology more? So you're putting things on Dropbox and sharing things remotely. What's your, you know, I guess the question is, how has your process changed in 15 or 30 years as technology has advanced? What tools are you using now that you weren't using there? It's been long enough for us that we have a shorthand. It always helps if we're in the room together, but if we have an assignment that we have to get done and we're not in the same city or part of the city or just can't get together, then we'll share files via Dropbox or email or whatever. But for the most part, our shorthand helps in that like, he can send me something and I can set four lines of it and say maybe it goes here next or we can like get sort of like a rough idea of what it's going to be, even if it's just like, tonally in the right direction so that when we can finally like get together. Because I feel like it always goes quicker when you're together. When you're in the same room, it always moves faster. Because like the text can change and the music can change and it all can happen at the same time as opposed to being like, I'm gonna be a slave to this lyric because they're not there for vice versa. And 90% of the time when we write songs together, it's lyric first and I have learned and I'm curious to know if it's the same with you guys or if it changes. But I have learned the biggest shortcut is that I never write a full lyric anymore because I know that the structure is going to change. And so as long as we've had a good conversation about the story of the song and a possible idea for a hook or a title, I'll go away and I'll just write two sections. And I don't even call them verses or choruses. I just call them an A and a B so that we at least can distinguish between the two of them and just see what happens musically with it. And Chris will set it and of course something will change and then we'll talk through the rest of the structure. So then I'll go away and be like, all right, so we're gonna put the B first and then we'll do two A's and then a B and then maybe a C and then he will kind of form the rest of the song while I am finishing the lyric. But it saves a lot of time that way. Right, it was wasting all that time up front where you put something into a full song. Yeah, you're like, I'm so proud of this like rhyme scheme but it's not gonna work anymore because the music has to do this. And what about you guys? How do you find yourselves? It's all different ways. I mean, I couldn't even tell you what percentage of our work is lyrics first or music first. A lot of it is together in the same room. Once in a while it's lyrics first. I'm always pushing to get a little snippet of music because I think it was, I always quote, I think it was the Bergman said that the words are on the tips of the notes and the minute I hear something that feels emotionally right for a moment, I can set it like that. I can just take that and run with it. It's almost like creating like just musical fabric. You know, like when we're talking about a certain moment I'll come up with something else. Here's one way we could go. Here's a different approach. The other day we were working on a song. We're working on Anastasia for the stage. That'll be our next project. And we're working on one particular song and Stephen was doing just that. He was improvising different feelings for this one moment and he was unhappy with all of them. Yeah, I tried all these different approaches and none of them felt right. Right, everyone in the same room. And I said, how about a tango? And I said, that makes no sense. These are Russian people. I know. Right? But then we started like, I started like goofing around. And then I wanted to be more lighthearted in a comedic moment. And then I came up with this dark tonality that sort of sounded like it could be the cousin of the tango, but it was really funny because these two characters are sneaking around the third character who's in the center. And then it became this trio that came from a totally different place. I said to Lynn, I said, I want the chorus to be like, you can't see it coming. Right, and he just did that. And I went, oh, that's great. And so we wrote a song in about a half a day. That seems good, so far. But we won't be the judge of that, I don't think. But it's been really fun. There were so many different ways to do it. I mean, with ragtime, to get the gig, we actually had to audition with other writers. And I think I may have told you this. We had to make a demo tape and the assignment, if you were, to win the prize, is you were given a treatment that Terence McNally had done of four, well, 65-page treatment, and then we had to write four songs. And then we counted how many writing days we had to write a range, record, mix, and say, here you go. And when we counted how many working days together we had, it was 11. Wow. To write four songs, and so just. And they had to be produced. And at one point in the middle there, I was in London and Linda was doing something. It was like really complicated. So just for that, just to be just practical, we decided two of them would be music first, two would be music first. Just a bit. Yeah. And that's really getting the genesis of how that, you know. What's funny is hearing how the sense of play is so important, and just being willing to do something completely silly to break out of a stuck place, which requires the trust obviously to build up. And we'll talk about that too. What do you guys do when you're stuck? No. Smoker. One thing as good as if you order Chinese food, you will usually find the solution in the fortune cook. Oh, yeah. We'd always do that. It's like, oh, I see. But you do have to be careful with Chinese food, because with food combining, Linda would say, don't eat the egg roll. Don't eat the egg roll. Because anytime you eat the egg roll. And he would, and he'd fall asleep. And he'd fall asleep. So stay away from the egg roll. Everybody's running furiously. Chinese food. Because you're like, I have to wear a bun. I mean, I guess in a way, it's a larger question too, which is music first or words first is part of the question everybody asks. But the bigger question is, that's not actually where you start, right? I mean, you're starting with, as you said, the story of the song, understanding of the character or the moment. Yeah, which is why, just from the place that I approach things musically, as I always have to have some sort of idea of, I mean, I guess everybody does, but just the dramatic, what is the point of this? And it's hard for me to come up with music for a moment that isn't specific yet, that is a big, is this going to be funny? Is this going to be a ballad? What is this? I usually have to have some sort of concrete approach. What are they doing? What's happening? Yeah, even if it's just an A section or whatever. And then once that is right, then I can come up with the music first for the next section for the rest of the song and be like, this is where it can go. But it always like. It is a weird litmus test, and it kind of drives me crazy. And yet it also is just how we work, that if Chris can set my lyric fast, and then the song is usually right, and the approach is usually right. And if he struggles, and we're saying fast, I'm saying 30 minutes, like he reads it, gets it, and he has some sort of feel to it. And if that doesn't happen, it unfortunately usually means that I have to go back to the drawing board, which sucks. You said that here was your stopwatch rule. 28 minutes. Like, come on, get it, get it, come on, get it. Oh, no. New approach. But then again, that's why you only write an A. And you don't write the entire thing. That's very interesting. Do you guys have to demo stuff pretty significantly when you're sending it out to other people, or are you just doing stuff, piano and voice? Yeah. And I'm terrible at making really elaborate demos, unless I have like, unless I can sit behind the engineer and tell the musicians what to do. Like, I can't just like, do it all in logic myself. I can, but it takes me a long time. And when you have to do demos like that, they usually have to be done very quickly and really well. And mine are always kind of busted. So I have to like, I usually tend to rely on piano vocal demos. Because I can do those really fast. But I mean, you play guitar really well, too, right? Yeah, and I'll do that, too. I haven't for a couple of years, you know, a little hand problem. Do you find it helpful, more helpful, less helpful, to just like literally walk in the door, sit at the piano and play your song? Yeah. Like the bro building or, you know, Tin Pan Alley? Yeah, and we've done that a couple. That's how we got the tuck and relasting job. And that's how we got another job for another show that we're not allowed to talk about yet. But like, but yeah, mostly I feel more comfortable like going and practicing and like, yeah, presenting it. Because also, I mean, that's a whole other panel, a whole other conversation. It's like, how much do you want to, depending on who you're submitting work to, like how much do you want to give them in terms of a fully realized thing or? Right, it's an eternal question. Do you want them to hear a fully orchestrated thing or is that going to scare people away? Because you've got a 30 piece string section and so no one's going to want to produce that. Yeah, I mean, when we pitched tuck to those producers, we had written a couple songs on guitar. I took it in and I like took it on guitar. And they were like, that sounds too orchestrated to us. We need to hear another version of it. And it was just a string guitar. So I just did a piano version. And they were blown away. Yeah, they were like, that's it. Well, in general, people like to fill in the blanks with their imagination. And when you fill it in too much, literally. They tend, when you're presenting, when you're pitching a song or a show or whatever, they feel they want to have some input. They don't want to feel that it's done. Even though it may be done, they don't want to think that. They want to think, oh, I can do this. So it's better in general to not fill in everything because they can just envision something in their minds. It's more exciting. Yeah, leave a little space for them if you like they can come in and produce this. Related question, I think. You guys have worked, written book, have you written book as well? Or have you always worked with other book writers? For a thesis, I had to write the book, thesis at NYU. But then when that, that was the burn part boys. But then it went through many changes and we ended up bringing in a book writer. And since then, we have not written book, but we're about to work on a show together, doing book, because we've learned enough that we can do it. You finally learned something about the theater. Yeah, and like Steven, when I got to NYU, I was the self-contained out of necessity writing lyrics and book and doing everything. And mostly my first year at NYU, I was writing text until I got to, I think I did like two or three assignments where I was a composer. But I knew that in my second year, I was gonna switch over because I was like, I've had it, I don't want to write words anymore. I just want to write music. And so now after 15 years, like getting the itch again. It is interesting how all four of you come from a sensibility that's not just in your own little silo, but understanding something about words and dramatic writing and music. That was one of the wonderful things about ragtime, actually. That was really important. Yeah, I mean, I've written book for probably six or seven of our musicals and haven't really worked with, I think, really other book writers. Yeah, Peter, yeah. Terence McNally and Tommy and Joe Guardi and the rest were my book. But on ragtime, everybody did another thing. So I was the lyricist, but I had written book. Terence McNally was the playwright, but he's written operas and other musical forms. Graciela Danielle was the choreographer that she had directed. Frank Bellotti was the director, but he had written plays. So we were just all swimming around in each other's various, excitement and getting such wonderful and giving wonderful feedback on everything. And it's always, I think it's almost a necessity to understand as much as you can about everything. I mean, I'm one of those writers who sits in tech every moment that I possibly can because I love watching the lights and learning about that. And I love seeing how transitions are done and how sets are moved and the technical aspects of things. Not that I know a whole lot about it, but I understand how it all looks together. And I'm able to, if I have a thought, I can actually articulate it, as opposed to just sort of sitting there not knowing what's wrong and it's good to know. Nothing makes me happier than being at a production meeting. But each department talks about what they're doing. Wow, you guys are really experts at that thing. You really thought a lot about that, so cool. I really get jazzed by that process. Yeah, no, it's exciting. I love when you can analyze something. Why is that song not working? I know it's a great song. I really know it in my heart of hearts and yet it's not working. Why is that? And if you're able to analyze why, I mean, as an example, I occasionally mentioned this in Ragtime, Marin Maisie was singing a song called Back to Before. That was one of my favorite songs that we've ever written and it's a beautiful, perfect song. I don't think I could do better than that, really. Right up there. And she wasn't, it was just not landing. And we were trying to think, why not? And little by little realized she was against a stormy sky, grayish-green, beautiful, with some stormy clouds, wearing a grayish-green, beautiful dress. Her hair was kind of all disheveled and she was singing this song. And so little by little, they put her in a white dress. They kept the stormy grayish-green background like the sun rose as she sang and gained power in the song. They fixed her hair so she didn't look like the mad woman of Shiro. And by the end of it, oh, and the other thing was there was a boardwalk thing, a boardwalk, like at Atlantic City, an upstage. And it had the ability to go up and down and it was up for the whole song. And at a certain point, the sun rose, she came downstage, that went down and it was like, and she stopped the show every night. And also, you remember the entire first third she sang in profile. In profile, and then we turned around. And you know, and it's a little bit of everybody. It's a little bit of everybody in that situation and you have to know to say, is there something, you know, and to sort of notice and understand what's happening with each moment is valuable to do it. And also, I think the song is really going from the darkness and going to the light. So once we knew that every aspect, including the orchestration, the arrangement, the lighting, every aspect was about that. Yeah, and at the end of it, it should be a sense of joy and a sense of relief. You know, that the actors then was playing and then all came together. I mean, that's one of the challenges, but also one of the delights of our business is not only collaborating in a team of two or sometimes three, you're then working with the rest of the creative team to bring this thing to life, the actors, the musicians, the conductor, the director, the choreographer, the designers to bring this thing to life on stage. Do you got, how do you guys deal with that sort of collaboration out to the rest of the collaboration? I think it's the same best idea wins because it's so easy to take things personally, especially when you're an artist because it's such an emotional thing that happens. But for me, and then I think for us, especially when it goes out to designers and directors and all that stuff, first, hopefully you surrounded yourself with really smart people who are smarter than you could ever imagine and that you trust them because it's never personal. I mean, clearly in some cases it is personal, but from my perspective, especially musically, it's not personal. It's like, if this doesn't work, then we must fix it. Like, so, I feel like in all of our collaboration, like, as it goes out to directors and designers and choreographers, it's the same sort of approach in my experience, yeah. I think the best and most exceptional collaboration we've had are people that are willing to be a little egotist and willing to take critique and ideas from the others that are surrounding you. I mean, especially with Tuck that we just finished in Atlanta, we were having a really hard time with the final scene and it was our set designer that came up with the location and what needed to happen in that scene. And he just was in the room and was passionate and cared about it and because we let him in, he solved it for us, which was amazing. That's great, that's great. And that's part of it, it's that passion and the willingness to have a shared vision of what this end product has gotta be. You're all in it together to achieve this thing and if it's not getting there, then everybody can feed into that. And similarly, it seems like if you're not in it together to achieve the same thing, you're never gonna get there because you're all building it differently. Right, right. And unlike film, it's done in real time, so you and your collaborators, the entire group, are making it happen in the moment as opposed to here's my cut and I'll score my film. You know what I mean? So there's something about the shared group energy that's thrilling, I think. And even after a difficult preview, it's great just to have that harmony and say, okay, well, that didn't go very well, so what am I next? And I really love that creep energy. We went once on this island, there was one moment in the creating of that show, which I just loved so much. We had written a song, we had done a workshop and there was one area and I think that it was for the God of Water and his name is Agwe in the show and Agwe had a song called Doro of the Sea and we staged it with ribbons of water and all this stuff and it was very beautiful. It was very languid. Very languid and it just was terrible. And so we've wrote another song which we thought might work, we didn't know and we went over to Graziella Daniels' house and what she has heard. It was partially written, that was. It was partially written. The song was partially written but we had a notion for it. Some words and some music and we went over there and we're in her living room with her upright piano and Loy Arsenault's set designer was there as well. So Steven sits down and I start singing and Steven's playing. It's a funny thing, I was saying it's not ready, it's not ready, it's not ready. And I'm going just do it, just do it, just do it. Come on, just do it. And it was fabulous because he started going do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do Graziella's who's, you know, Argentinian. She gets up on her feet, starts moving. She starts dancing and she's going and it's like, I see it, I see it. And Loy goes, I see umbrellas. And with the three of us, all of us, we're like dancing around the living room. It's singing the song. The song is called Rain. It's the God of Water and he's creating a flood that a car is gonna crash on. And we were all dancing. Steven's playing, we're all sambaing around her living room. It was wonderful and that is the, that's what the number became. That was the staging of the book. Anytime you see it, they do it with those umbrellas and they do it with the same kind of movement and it's really delightful. And it shows that you have to be willing to allow yourself to look foolish because I thought it wasn't finished and I wanted to spend more time with it. And I had, if I had spent more time, that moment wouldn't have happened in that moment that wouldn't be on the show. I mean, it's like the beginning of your collaborative relationship when you're thrown into this, oh no, I'm not ready. You're just ready for most things. You're never gonna be ready. You're never gonna be ready to surrender. Yeah, those moments, you're always like about to throw up because you have to like play. It's like thing that doesn't even fully formed and you're just like, oh, I just get me out of here. I don't even wanna do this. And then you do it and you wanna cry because you just did something and yeah. And then they're like, yes, that's it, yeah. It's perfect. Yeah. Now I asked you guys to think about a moment that was a collaborative hurdle or a challenge and maybe share some of that with us. I don't know if you did or not, probably just gonna say, no, actually, we're gonna play a great song that we wrote. I just thought, I mean, it's obvious you've written great songs. We know some of those great songs. We've heard those great songs. We know the success. I just thought, how do we share with people something about how you navigate the moments that are not working and come out with something? So do you wanna play or sing something? Talk about that. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, okay, good. Who wants to go first? Well, we have a before and after that we can do. Oh, perfect, good, good, good. And they're both like two and a half minutes. Wonderful. Very short, yeah. Tell us about that. Okay, so we're gonna do songs from Tuck of Her Lasting. So Tuck of Her Lasting is a very popular young adult novel celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It's about an 11-year-old girl who runs away from home and meets a family that is immortal, that has been living forever. And she goes on this journey with this family and at the end of the story, she is posed with the question, will I drink from this spring and have an immortal life or will I embrace my own mortal life? And so that's kind of big, heavy questions in the show. And we're gonna play you one of the heavier moments, which is one that we picked it because I think we've rewritten this song more than any other song in the show. And this is for Miles Tuck. So there's a family of four of the Tucks. There's ma-tuck, pa-tuck, and then there are two kids, Jesse and Miles. Miles is 30 years old and he's been 30 for about 80 years. So he's 120. And of all of the Tucks, when we first meet him, he's sarcastic, he's cold, he's a little dangerous, or the rest of the Tucks are very warm and welcoming to this little girl. And you find out about three quarters through the act one, we finally find out why he's been so standoffish. And what we discover is that of all the Tucks, before he drank the water, he had a family. He had a wife and a child. And by the time they put it together that they were immortal and his family hadn't drank the water, it was too late. His wife was quite a bit older. His son was old too. And they didn't know where the spring was. Anyway, basically his mother, his wife took his child and they left. And so this was a song moment that he's explaining that to Winnie. I hope it didn't, okay, John, explain that. All right, so we went two different directions with it. And we're gonna play you. We had written the song and then we decided, all right, let's try another direction. Let's try a different color. Just because thought it was a little too heavy. Yeah, and all of the workshops whenever he would come forward and sing a song, it was like, oh, another ballad, come on, dude. So we were like, let's approach it from a different angle and see if we can't like, and there were two other versions of the song too. It's like a whole, we could do a whole night of versions of the song. So this is sort of three or four iterations into, three or four, it's a third or fourth attempt at getting this right. Yes, yeah. This is not the successful version of the song. Then we'll play you what we think is the successful version. The one that actually works with an audience and people. Yeah, yeah. But this is what we brought to Atlanta, thinking this is going to be a show, everyone's gonna love it, it's a different sound, and it just, well, that won't be the judge. So this is my little singing to Winnie. You'll fall in love, you'll say a vow, you'll ask yourself what to realize. That placement in the show, we were really worried that it was a ballad, but once we then moved a song before that that had this fantastic dance break and everyone was very, it was like a ragtimey kind of tune, it was okay and we finally earned this more serious moment, which we will now present to you as the exhibit be. I mean, that his son is named Thomas. I had a farmhouse with a grandfather club, where I would teach time to my son. Our lessons began at 12 o'clock sharp, and the man's would call in his wife. I'd say the big hand counts minutes, it's so tightly wound, it chases the small constellations in the sky. How to tell a side watch to grow time, you would never know the time. You realize that that's what you want to know that information. You want to understand why he's being mean to this little girl, and then once he tells that story in this amazing way, we also had the amazing Robert Lindsey play the role. I love the parts of the accompaniment that remind us of a ticking clock without being obviously that. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Right, right, but just come back to this pulse that sits there. I also love in hearing the two songs the way time is part of the hook one way or the other, but you probably have a page of all the phrases used in time. Yes. I'd love to actually give a chance. Do people have questions for Chris and Nathan about that material in that process? Let's open it up here before Steven Lindsey does something. Yeah. Did it ever occur to you to just rewrite the lyrics to the song to have the different content instead of trashing the entire song? And I thought those songs were really good. Thank you. Did everybody hear the question? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think we did that. I think we did, like, I think we tried it from like every possible angle. And I mean, sometimes we tend to jump the gun and be like, let's just write a new song. And then sometimes we'll try it as many ways possible so we don't have to write another song. And with that one in particular, I mean, there were like so many versions of it that it became hard to tell what was, especially when you're rewriting something constantly, it, you start to lose sight of like what that, where the song started and what the song actually is and what it should be. And I think just totally, it would be very weird for him to tell the story of his son and what happened with that kind of jazzy bluesy. Because I think everything in that first song, he's just throwing it away saying this is not, this doesn't hurt me, this doesn't hurt me, where that second version is very earnest and you just kind of have to like go for it. But there were, I fell in love with many, many timelines and there was just a time where I just kept, there was a time when I just kept giving him the same words over and over and over again. Because I, you know, I love the idea of like I'm left with nothing but time. I was like, this is really great. And there was a song called, Left With Nothing But Time. And then you're like, no, it should just be the last line of the thing. So at some point, you just have to give new information if you're swimming in your stock. Other questions, please. Oh, but to continue with what you were saying, so if you're integrating the book. So in your first version, where did you then, when you look, basically, allow the counter to reveal what the real problem was? In other words, you had to figure out then how to change the book with the song, correct? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so it was just add, with the first song that we presented, it was adding all these additional beats because he had to explain the whole story before he could sing the song. And then he sang the song and then she had to then change him in some way. Because that was kind of the rule for that show is that anytime when he is with one of the individual tucks, she has to change him for the better in some way or another. So then we also had to have that moment. And then, which was in the middle of the song, it was clunky, and then we had the final moment. Where now, in the new version, he could kind of hint at what happened, tell the story, let the song and connect to her. And right at the end of the song, she just said, I lost my father when I was 10, I will love him and miss him forever. Because his whole worry is that, oh my son, he can remember me. And she says that to him and he says, they're about to go to the fair. And he says, go and have everything. And he gives her all the money because he has it in her pocket. She goes to the fair and has a wonderful time. But that was then solved with four lines instead of 20 lines. Which is great. He's almost already made the change journey. He said, we buy singing the song. And she just unlocks the last piece. And he also, I think we had her leave at some point in the previous version, he sang the song and when he had left, so he was just singing the song to the audience, which is, you know, like give him someone to share this with and also let Winnie hear the story. So it's funny that like that wasn't epiphany, but it was. And there was probably a full year of this. I mean, there was a whole version of the song with him like actually teaching a little boy and the wife like coming in and then there was a chorus of ladies that sang with him. Yeah, and I know it's a soap opera, it was great. It was a whole, like. You're done good. It's a perfect thing. Well, that's Stephen and Lynn. Would you share something, some of that? You know, we will. It won't be as fabulous as that. But you know, what I was thinking from your question and listening to that was that for my money, a lot of the struggle that you have in writing musicals is not so much the song, but the structure of the show. Because you can take a perfectly wonderful song and if it's in the wrong part of the musical, it will get cut. And you know, we have a number of songs, not a number, not a big number, but a certain number of songs that have been in the wrong place, been fabulous songs and have been cut because they just, we couldn't find the right place to put them. And we've gotten a lot more savvy about that as we've gone on. But that to me and probably because I am a librettist as well as a lyricist, that to me is always the biggest challenge is getting the poles in the right order on string or however you wanna put that. You know, it affects, it can take a brilliant song and make it not work or it can take an okay song and elevate it into something amazing and notes are being passed. It just says you're doing great. Yeah. Anyway, I just wanted to, you know, because a lot of the time, I mean, we have several shows. We've just been rehearsing A Man of No Importance, which is a show we did at Lincoln Center and we're gonna be doing it in, right before St. Patrick's Day. 54 Below. 54 Below. The 15th. And I bring it up because there's a song that works so well on the show and originally it was sung by a secondary character who's placed in act one. Never worked and we cut it and then we were trying to structure act two and we knew that there had to be an event or a moment where this all started adding up for this lead character. And one of them, and says, what about that number that the old guy sang? The cuddle's number, bring that out of the trunk. And whenever we placed it with him, remembering his wife and how love never dies. But he's remembering the wife and all of a sudden that motivates Alfie to for the next scene which then, and not only was it a great moment and an unexpected moment, but it really motivated the entire rest of the act and I'm thinking, what were we thinking of? Yeah, that to me is the biggest joy. It wasn't the song. It was placement. I mean, I feel like we can all just write songs till the cat has come home because that's what we love to do. That's our joy. We just love getting in a room and sitting at a piano or with a guitar and just inventing songs. That's such a joy. The hardest part is the structure. That's really the hardest part and if that's not right, the songs will never be right and if that is right, you get away without that. Because you're telling a good story and it's about storytelling. I was gonna say one of the hardest shows that, well, there were two shows that were very, very difficult to write for us and I happened to write for both of them. One was The Glorious Ones and one was Desiree Rose both of which were done at Lincoln Center and both of which I think are two of my favorite shows that we've ever worked on. But getting there, I mean, Desiree Rose took 10 years of just trying to convince Steven that we should do this show. And then I finally had a really good... No, I found the source material really, really problematic. It was beautifully written but it was so dense and gnarly and there's a lot of anger in it and there's a lot, it was just really hard. It was written in a dialect and it had so many things for my money going against it and yet Lynn said the ending is so amazing but it's like, yes, but you have to get to the ending, you know? So I can borrow that one. 10 years, 10 years. She brought it to me, I think in like 90s too. I don't know. And then she kept like a little dog, you know, she kept being tenacious and she said, read it, read it. And I think I wouldn't have been able to write Desiree Rose had I not done Ragtime. I'm gonna write, did that. It became in a certain way a companion piece and I read it again and I said, this is really beautiful. I said, I still, I know you have a vision for it and I can't grasp that because I can't get it myself. I said, can you just somehow put your vision on paper? And she pretty much wrote what felt like an opera libretto, you know, pretty much like a folk opera for pretty much an act and some other little bits and pieces and this is one of the rare instances where I then went away and I was away for a chunk of time and I said it. And, you know, because usually honestly, you know, it's a yin and yang thing or it's like here's a piece of music or here's a scrap of, and this was like here's an act of material, you know. And I just went out and then I wanted to like stew on it and I went to wait for like some sort of weird moment in nature that would say now I'll get to the piano and write it and I was just thinking and thinking and dreaming and then there's this electrical storm so it would handle, it handles and I had my little battery powered recorder and I said idea for seven, different 14, different 21. And this thing just came out like a torrent and I said after being away for a while, I said Dolina, I said let's get together. I have 15 minutes of music you've never heard and we got together and then once we got it but I was able to see what her vision is and I was able to respond in my way to that and then we got together and then we crafted the rest of it like we always did, you know. It took things out. But it took 10 years to get there. You know, those are the hurdles and the glorious ones were sort of similar. It took a long time and I just couldn't figure it out and every summer I would sit down and write a new draft and they were in verse and I have different summers of the glorious ones. This is an iambic pentameter. This is, this is couplets. I couldn't, it didn't end up in verse at all. I mean people ask how long it took us to write the show and it was produced in 2007 and all I would say is let me put it this way in the first reading of the glorious ones. The ingenue was Donna Murphy. That's a crazy long, you know, the ingenue. So, but it started out as a large, it's very candied like. It's like the merry pranks of this little theater. It's like a piece of a comedian, right? It's a comedian. And they go from here to here. And the changing theater. And there's so many incidents into it. So originally we wrote it with like large scale with big chorus with the troop traveling and you know they meet these people and those people and it just really, really didn't work. And then we did, then Lynn's best one is that iambic pentameter version. It didn't work at complete. I was gonna bring one and I said it's too humiliating. And anyhow, what it wound up being is it wound up being a show about a troop and there were eight members of the troop and they performed all of the hundreds of roles in their style of theater. And it was really wonderful. So we thought that's what it should be. But then ultimately we were writing and trying to set on paper a show that's about theater that's not written down. So think of that, you know, it's about improvisation. So we knew that we had to get funny actors and creative people in a room and we just sort of had this like Canadian workshop and we'd go a lot of it using those ideas because it just seemed crazy trying to come up with a draft of paper about theater. To let it be created the way that. Yeah. And so it was wonderful. So these are the hard parts, you know just figuring out the what it is. And once you figure out what it is then you try to figure out how do we dole that out when we know what the story is and in what order do we dole it out and where do these moments come? And you know, so you know. And also the how to, you know because the other thing about Dessa Rose the thing that really changed for us it became about storytelling and telling one's own story because these two women that are the central characters in the novel they don't meet until very late in the game. So we thought we can't have one start and then the other major character doesn't enter till they are. So we had to find some way that they could be in the opening number and throughout. So it became an oral history. Oral history. Basically telling about slavery and the adventures of two women who actually lived and you know went on this journey together. Anyway, I mean these are just examples of craft. And just, I mean the common theme is sometimes you're there in the details trying to work it out and you realize you've got to take several steps back and realize it has nothing to do with this detail. It's where this fits in the whole thing. That's exactly right. I even love the, you know we talked about shared vision, right? That's so important to be seeing the same thing. And with Dessa Rose you could never see what I can saw until you sort of took it away from the source material made sort of here is what I see. Right, exactly. And then you went off and came back. He was hoping I wouldn't do anything. That's the whole thing. No, but no, but it's interesting. I don't think I was ready to do that show. I think whenever you go through the years, you guys know this as a team. It's like you're developing as individuals but also you're developing as a team. And I think in 1992 I would have written a really poor Dessa Rose. I don't think I had it in me yet. And I didn't think I had flexed enough muscles to be able to write that show. And it was really intense subject matter. And I don't think I would have been able to do that without ragtime, which happened six years later. And then that emboldened me in a certain way. And it's the same thing with The Glorious Ones. It's really about two generations of theater. It's about the old guard and the young Turks. And the old guard is the guy who's the improvisational guy. And the young Turk is creating this totally new kind of theater. And when we started writing that show, I totally identified with that young Turk. And I was able to nail that part. And I could never fully get into the head of the other guy. And then, of course, 13 years pass. And then you know more about that character. So it certainly, I think, was a blessing that it took that long because I was able to look at the characters and live with them and know more about that stuff. Have another way to get into that, too. Questions for Stephen and Lynn? When the book writer was the third collaborator, can we talk a little about that? Peter Stone complained to me that the lyricist always stole his best scenes. That's right. And not only that, but they got royalties on it. And he didn't. Can we talk about the third collaborator? Yeah, absolutely. We're working with the third collaborator right now. We're doing our third show with Terence and family at the moment, that he's writing the book to Anastasia. And you have to be a generous person to be a book writer because that's correct. The lyricist's job is to steal all of the highest emotional points and best scenes and turn them into lyrics. And if you have a problem with that, be a playwright. It's really true. Musical is a collaboration. As far as royalties, that's a whole, you know, songs or songs, there's a whole other structure for paying for songs on records or whatnot. But in the theater, it's all favorite nations. Everybody gets exactly the same thing. So if you want to complain about that, be a playwright. It's just one of those things. But Terence happens to be one of those very rare playwrights who not only is generous with his work, but understands musical structure. There are playwrights. We've had a few run-in, not run-ins, but a few experiences with a few of them who are wonderful playwrights and can't write a musical, just can't relinquish their work, can't don't understand musical structure and flow, don't understand rhythmic progression. There are a lot of, it's almost an intuitive thing. And Terence, we're very lucky that he's our friend and our collaborator, because he's fantastic in all of those ways. And he actually encourages Lynn. He overwrites. Overwrites. And he gets her right like a big soliloquy. You give it to Lynn, encouraging her. Use what, anything that's in there. And you know, and like the song Goodbye My Love, Goodbye My Love, God Bless You, and I suppose, West America too, that was Terence's speech. And I just said, that's a humorous, yeah, oh, and I think I just started setting the music and then I kept going from there with the idea and then Lynn was setting it. And then we knew that there had to be a change of heart or a change of mind in the middle of it, and then the music shifted that way. And you know, if the music can surprise you and you're supposedly in the driver's seat and you go, whoa, chances are you can surprise the audience and that's what it is, so much of it is about surprising the audience, staying ahead of the audience. Who's the book writer on Tuck, I realized it? Claudia Sheer. Claudia Sheer, right? And she, you know, it's a magical, mysterious job being a book writer and everything that Lynn said is right. It's like, it's totally intuitive and if the playwright doesn't understand, you know, musical structure and all that stuff, it just like becomes torture. And Claudia, we're lucky, Claudia does, like she's really great and understands all of those things. I saw her perform at Playwrights Horizons, I'm forgetting the name of the show, but the one with all her different jobs. Yeah, the one that's sideways through life. The one that's sideways through life. And I felt it was a musical without any singing. It just had this flow and this arc to it and there were just arias of words that were, I thought, sensational. Yeah, she just, and she too is very, we did an event and she explained being the book writer as the dirt from which everything blossoms. The rich, loamy soil, the nutrients. She's like, it's thankless and you get blamed for everything, but then you're also like the foundation and the bones from which everything springs. There was a question from Twitter, whether there's a, yeah, see that's what the secret yellow part is, is there a cast album for Tuck? Ever last thing? Not yet. Not yet, not yet. Hopefully there will be. There's nothing even on your website from that show? I mean, they're like random YouTube. There's some core things. Everything is on YouTube. Yeah. But hopefully there will be a cast album. Yes. Okay, good. I'd love to open it up for other questions that people might have. Yeah, down here. I'm curious about the process in the early formative stage where you're looking book writer, director, other media participants, and you're looking just to find a particular sound and feel to the project. Now, Rakton, of course, because of that had its own setting and the music took on that nature, but sometimes it's not as obvious maybe with Tuck ever lasting. What was the thought process about? What style will the music have? Does that affect the way you come up with lyrics and rhyme schemes and so forth? So just to kind of get a sense of what is that preliminary thought and creative process to figure out the tone of a musical? You know, I'll just say one quick thing because I'm not a composer in that sense, but Howard Ashman always said that he, in his opinion, every project needed to have some inherent musicality, some inherent musical style. I don't know if I would go that far, but it sure helps, you know, and when you look at many shows, we've done the only one that I don't think had its own inherent style, maybe, was Susical, which was more of an inventive model. Oh, well, you know it was interesting because Susical was the show that we wrote right after Ragtime, and there's something about when you're writing for a particular locale during a particular time, and even though it's different groups of people which allow you for a variety within that, you're really trying to capture your vision and your take on that world, but for Susical, it was, you could make up anything, and so the people that lived in the jungle, I thought, oh, it could be cool, it could be urban jungle, so there's kind of like R&B and hip-hop and soul, and there's like, during the chase scene, I thought, oh, this could be fun, it could be like those streets of San Francisco, and there's like those TV shows from the 70s, and I was like just... A little Aretha Franklin in there. Yeah, Aretha Franklin in there. It sort of lent itself to anything. But then the other worlds were other things, like the Hoos were, there was sort of like Spike Jonze when he was kind of thinking about this little odd thing, and so I think the composer does have to make choices, but I think certainly had its own sensibility. It did, but you know, a lot of our other shows, The Glorious Ones, was set in 17th century Italy, so there's an Italian sound that you find. Little Dancer has a classical French sound to it, the show we just did. You know, they all somehow embody something I think probably Tuck Everlasting would have some... Yeah, the challenge with Tuck was that like it was like a turn of the century New England setting and the turn of the last century, so researching that kind of music, it's like, hmm, it's just kind of like do you really want a musical to sound like this? Especially a contemporary musical. So, you know, in having the great fortune to have Casey Nicholaw in the room with us, when we first started working on the piece, we would, I as the composer, would like try a bunch of different things and we finally settled on this sort of otherworldly folk sound where it sounds like you can't quite put your finger on what this folk music is. It's like, is it Celtic? Is it Scottish? Is it Irish? Is it country music? What is it? And so it became this sort of like melting pot of different folk styles, while still giving you some period New England stuff at the same time. But we all, you know, you just have to like jump in and make those choices. If it's like totally wrong and anachronistic, sometimes that's even a choice, but. And sometimes that works. Well, look at Hamilton. I was gonna say Hamilton appears to be proving right now. You can go completely anachronistic and get to the heart of the story. Exactly. For example, when you did the two versions and you did kind of the first one that definitely had this kind of loosey dreamy, did that also fit into the scheme that you're talking about, about this otherworldly thing? Or did it sort of stick out as where did this come from a musical sensibility? I think it's a little bit of both with that particular one. That one was an attempt to go in a more like a saloon type direction for that particular character. And then what we settled on and what's there now is sort of in that more open universe of where does this actually fit on? And I think what you said really struck a chord with me. You don't want to be so slavish to any particular style. Like even little dancer that we did, like it's set in 1880s world of the ballet in Paris. And so I listened to a lot of that ballet music and in fact it ends with the ballet and we have a lot of dance in it. But at the same time, the younger characters, I wanted them to appeal and so younger people today could understand and relate to them. So their material is much more pop-like. And so trying to find a way to have the classical world and the pop world exist, that actually became the cool and challenging thing. Not only in the writing, but then when we got there to do the orchestration. Because I said, I don't want a rhythm section even though it has these kind of rhythms. So we played around and found interesting ways of stitching it all together. And in the end, the music still sounds like you're writing. Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? You're not so slavish to the period and the style that you're just gonna be somebody else. It still also has to filter back through you as the words do as well. The words are true to the period and the time, but the way you're putting it together is yours, not just. Yeah, I mean we, every time, and I always try to do it, but it never works. It's like every time, especially in Tuck, when there was an opportunity to write something it was like really like a gay 90s type period tune. We got one in there. And every time they sang it, like the odd, not in this recent production, but in like readings and work, previous readings and workshops, the people at the readings and workshops would be like, oh, come on. So they would go and find a way to like get that period stuff in other tunes while still acknowledging the contemporary or the audience sensibility. I know you guys have to take off and we're almost at eight o'clock. Can we take a moment? There was some other questions. Yeah, let's take another question. Is there gonna play something? Well, I don't know. Did you guys wanna play anything? We have, we gave you that opportunity to make this great story. We have a little something. And this just, this is off of ragtime. I think that's an interesting one because everybody says what comes first, the words of the lyrics or the words of the music. And with this one, this is one of the two that where I started where it was like music first. And it was, and it's the end of act one and we'd write our four songs and it started with music first and it's after the character of Sarah is murdered in a public place and there's an outpouring of grief from all over the country. And so I wrote a song that would become till we reached that day. I wrote the music for the thing and it's set in at Sarah's funeral. And I played it for Lynn and she said, you know, she said it sounds very hopeful and I said, well, I think the music would be hopeful. I think it would have that sense of hope and even though there's rage under it. And she said, but there's rage. There's rage, there's anger, there's point of view. So in other words, somebody reading about this incident in the paper versus Cole House who's in shock from seeing that himself to Emma Goldman who would have heard about it on the street and is instead of, how could they beat a woman? You know, and the women's issues and there are all these different points of view which sounded really cool. So I'll just play two little themes and then I have a bit of a surprise for the cool thing. Oh, I have a feeling it's this. I know, I don't know how to do this. There's a surprise over there. I don't think it's a lot. So what I brought to limb is pretty much this. I don't even know that, but it's the key. The lyrics, not that I feel like singing them because it's not in my range or anything, but there's a day of peace, a day of pride, a day of justice, we have been denied. Let a new day dawn, oh Lord, I pray, we'll never get to heaven till we reach that day. So it's a gospel hymn in a way, sung at a funeral. And so then we began to talk about the idea of the points of view, which was a really cool and interesting idea, which allowed us to go into individual heads. Now that came from Lynn. We're just responding to the piece of music that really didn't have a lyric to it yet. And so when we began working on that, I thought there is a really dark and ghostly idea of a ragtime that maybe could go as a counter pine. So it was this. And then they overlap, so half of them are singing, there's a day of peace, a day when justice will come and we'll never get to heaven till we reach that day. There are people over here singing what they did to her, what they took from her. She had life in her, Lord, she had my baby. Look what they left of her, left of her, left of my girl, very angry, very dark. And Emma Goldman singing, and they beat her and beat her and beat her, and it's all going against this hymn. So what I brought in, because we were talking about demos earlier, so I brought in the demo that we did for this game. Oh, our first demo. Yeah, and so this is yours truly playing the piano, and this is at a studio that had no, what's that called? Mixing board. Automation. Automation. So they were all pushing the faders. And we had our friends singing. We had our friends singing. So this is Shark Cooper as Cole House Walker, and many Michelle Pox in there. Yeah, there's tons of people. And whenever I listened to it, we kept the exact vocal arrangement for the production. It's pretty close to what we wound up with, but I can never replicate the excitement. I thought what was the hidden ingredient that's on this that you're about to hear that we never got into the show? And then I remember it's Billy Porter singing the alto part, and then at one point, he's doubling the soprano. Right. So let's get this thing going. Even then, we knew it. Sorry. What's going on? Yeah, okay. This was our audition, one of our auditions. Yeah, so this is the audition. Yeah, we got very ambitious. Yeah, we did the big moments. I guess it worked. Yeah, I mean. Okay, let's let us know up or down the volume lines. I'm excited to hear this. It's fine. Ooh. Sounds like trouble. No.