 Okay. Hi. This is exciting because we're going to talk about comedy songs and as a writer, I'm sure you all are too. I'm fascinated to know how everybody gets into this thing. I think one of the harder things to do, drama is easy and comedy is hard, I think. First of all, I love the fact that you've written a show called Bromance the Dudesicle, everyone. The Dudesicle. It's actually our most serious piece. Yeah. How are you getting expose on masculinity in America? Great. And that's going to be your first song tonight, a song called Heartburn. Yes. Can you set that up for us? Sure. Bromance the Dudesicle, as I just said, is about a group of friends, dudes, who have gone a lot of crazy ventures and teach a new guy the ways of being a bro. And this song happens late in the show after a lot of things have gone wrong. And the character Harry is singing it. He has always been sort of the loving sidekick, never quite gets his moment in the sun. And it's always sort of me as fun as you. That's it. So we have Will Fuller, who's going to play piano for us. Great. And Damien Graveer, who's going to sing for us. Excellent. There's a bird that I bite. And I can't tell. I'm just choked on the silence. And the fish and chips that I can't shake. In particular, can we back up on what you do in the collaboration? What are your jobs? Yeah. It's as simple as ten of it, but 99% of the time I write the book, I write music, and we share a bit of it. Okay, yeah. Can we find that that actually helps with any of your thoughts as we're talking about keywords or sentiments or whatever it is. There are so many moving parts that it helps to be able to share that. Absolutely. Yeah. In collaborating on the lyrics. Yeah. That's right. Do you recall how you started writing this particular song? Was there anything that sparked this song? I mean, many songs in romance. Romance being her shows came from an actual evening at St. Patrick's Day, where I was hanging out with friends who got very drunk and acted like some idiot, like a bro, and sort of like met this other guy who sold a beer, and then they had this terrible, like, oh my god, this is the coolest dude I've ever met in my life. Like, oh, you're never going to call me. Like, are you going to do this whole thing? And so I literally just texted Kyle about that. And I was like, I think I sound like a musical, and he thought I was insane. Wow. And then, so we started writing a song or two, or it just sort of sets out in a conference. People loved it. It's actually like our most favorite song. And so a lot of the ideas in usually for romance came out of like just funny, funny sort of concepts and situations. Right? So we knew in the bro realm. We knew that Harry was obsessed with food and would make fun of for this route. So we sort of knew at the crisis point, like, we kind of got a thing about called heartbreak. I mean, maybe isn't, isn't like the greatest way to explain it, but it's sort of like, there was like an inevitability about a number of things in romance in our minds. Just being one of them. But I can also say that in order, this is made sweeter by the setup, which is his fun song from the first half of the show is called Chili Cheese Fries. And celebrating, we're going to get Chili Cheese Fries at 11.45 on a Tuesday night. So he's at a rally pie that's so great that when the friendship falls apart, of course he'd be lamenting over something that is the effect of too much indulgence in fried food. Yes. And friendship. And friendship. Yeah, that's right. French fries and friendship. Yeah. Oh my God. We didn't even know we did that. Finding something to do every day. Yeah, well, you just have to get out there and start doing it. And these connections occur, right? Well, okay, great. I mean, I think one thing that's really successful about it is how seriously the character takes the situation at the start of the song. It's like, I think there are people, sorry, you could approach a comedy song in the Waka Waka fashion, I'm going to call it, meaning you feel like you have to write joke, joke, joke. And then there's this approach, which I think is the way I come at it too, is you find a character who's in a situation that is inherently funny. But the character doesn't know it's funny. The character just is being himself and living out the details and the throws of what he's in, like Pepsi, they see. And all those things that accumulate in your song make us laugh. Absolutely. And I think that, yeah, we don't think of ourselves as joke writers at all. We think of ourselves as creating situations and characters out of which comedy can soothe. And I think that, especially with romance, and maybe, I don't know if you're in town, the expectations and the title of romance to do school is like, it might be ridiculous. It might not have any substance. And so how do you keep the comedy and fulfill that for people who are expecting a comedy, but also be it heart and soul? And a song, The Carpenter, is a fun example of that. I mean, you actually feel bad for him. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you see the show. But he is in a ridiculous situation, but he cares so much about it. And that's sort of the humor, but also the sources that, hey, those are definitely important. Yes, I agree. I totally agree. Let's go on to... Can we talk about how you guys... Say you're writing that song. Do you guys have a routine? Do you get in the same room? How does that work? Well, I think we're talking about... So Mike and I have really enjoyed the process of writing full shows. And we think about songs in context. That's bad because you go, this is a good enough standalone. But usually, if we take it all the way back, we're thinking about the story that we're trying to tell, the moments where a song makes sense, the context and then the content for each of those songs, and gradually chip away at it until we get to where we are. So I think once we get to this stage, usually my goal has come up with some cool concept. And I see something shining around with it. Primarily, you go, oh, yeah, I was thinking of that. That being a lyric phrase or a bit of dialogue or something? I mean, it changes a little bit. I think the most common version, I guess, would be that I'll write a draft, which is really prosy, which is not me trying to write the lyrics yet. He'll take it and sort of find some inspiration and then the third one is when we're together, sort of going, how do we really make this lyrics? Struggling, growing punches, whatever it may be. And that's the most common, but we've written some side-by-side, and we've written some not in the same way. Well, some I believe more wholly to what you said. I think it's maybe sometimes harder with comedy songs because rhyme and comedy seem to go hand-in-hand with it. So if we're doing something really lush, then I can be a bit more free-form with placing a lyric in a melody line. But there are other times when it'll just be, hey, how's this? And I'll go, exactly how it is. Let's do it more or at all. Rip it to shreds and the skeleton is what remains. Yeah, that sounds familiar to me, too. I'm looking for, if it's dialogue, I'm looking for that phrase that could become the title of the song. And maybe as you read the title, if you're the composer, a melody occurs to you, maybe on a good day, right? Like the words sing themselves. Do you guys, when you're working on a comedy song like this, do you find that you have disagreements about what is funny and what is not funny? There have been certain instances. I think the best one is from the song that Michael was talking about that kind of started, Bromance. There was a phrase that was, he doesn't even like me, or we met on St. Patrick's Day, but I said, I'm not even Irish. It doesn't even matter. And he's like, no, no, no, you have to flip it. You have to land on, I'm not even Irish. And in my mind, I was like, it's cute, but it's much better. It doesn't even matter. I'm not even Irish. It just lends itself to be the second beat. I do think that the timing is something that you get, that you have to finesse to get this right. Yeah, sure. I mean, we disagree about many things, but generally, what is funny is not what we're disagreeing about. You know, we have a similar sense of humor. I think we will definitely... No, I think it's true. I mean, there's times when we'll both say, oh, we didn't make it funny enough, we need to figure out how to be funnier, but not usually times where one person is like, that's hysterical, and the other person is like, you know what? I would say sometimes we have the argument over what's too intellectual and what's too plebeian. So it's too simple to say, like, Michael's the intellectual and I'm the common man. But we may go... Nobody cares about Greek tragedy here. They want to hear, haha! We have to kind of figure out the right way to make it the right kind of smart and the right kind of approachable. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I feel like I've got that in my collaboration, too. We're trying to figure out how to be... Yeah, just like you said, smart enough but emotional enough or appealing enough, right? Once you've gotten, let's say, the comedy song to the point where you both think it's hilarious, do you have experiences where you get it into a room with an audience and then it falls flat, or has that happened? I don't think the opposite is happening, but we don't think something is funny and the audience is like, haha! We're just weird because you're like, why are you laughing at that? I mean, maybe it's about levels, right? I feel like something that we are forced to battle with just because we're in a fairly small, fairly competitive industry when there's fairly little money to fly around for $50 million productions, making trade-offs and saying every minute is precious. Is this getting us as much as we need it to, both from story and from knocking out of the park or the right type of rest from those bigger moments? Yeah. I'm sure there have been... I feel like in pumps, this is a show that we are commissioned to write. I'm throwing out many, many, many songs. I'm sure there are some that we can sort of win and be like, oh, this is going to be really funny in this moment. And even if it was maybe somewhat funny, it wasn't appropriate or something. You know what I mean? It didn't quite fill the need of the moment. Yeah, sure. Those are the toughest to lose because you're like, oh, it's so good for these four minutes, it just doesn't make sense in the show. Yeah. I mean, I can't really deal with how we were like, we are the funniest bases in the world and everybody else is not funny as it looks. That's what I think. I'm sure it has happened. No one told us. Perhaps. And I love what you said before, that you come up with something that you think is not funny, but in the room with the audience, it is funny. I think those are great discoveries. It's the only... We lead solitary lives as writers, singly or in collaborations, and once you get in front of the living thing that's called the audience, then things change. I think it's a great thing about theater. You learn what is funny that you didn't think so. Right? Well, I'd love to hear another one. Shall we set up the song called Welcome to My Sleep Over Party? So after all of our talk about how we... Not from romance. It's character first. This is a standalone song on the show. This was a song we wrote for a concert we did a couple of weeks ago at The Four Below, which was a late night concert, and they asked us if we'd do a show and said have it 11.30 at night. And we were like... I said, well, I'm usually asleep at that time. So if we're going to do it, we'd sort of have to wear our pajamas. And then out of that, we decided we would make the whole night at Sleep Over Party. And we thought, well, let's go to a classy joint and make it in that classy. So we were like, we have to write a song about Sleep Over Parties and sort of came up with... But even still it came up with a situation for a boy who is planning to sleep over party as you'll see is a little nervous about how it's going to go. Then hit the jackpot and we're lucky enough to find our next singer, Luca Padavan, who makes anything funny and charming. So we had him do the concert and now we're like... maybe we need to write Sleep Over Beautiful. You can all help us decide that. But yeah, so Luca can come up and sing. And now they're also going to sing with the guy. Great. We're going to be just fine here. Your first song is called Don't Cross Kitty from Symphony Jones. Well, and I love the title Symphony Jones. That's like a spy, a thriller musical. Can you tell us about that? Sure, yeah, let's do that. The song that we're going to do today has to do with the case that our heroine has to fall in order to save the world from a disaster that ends up being upon us all the time. So we're going to meet our bonus in the summer. Her name is Tim Hock. She is an Upper East Side Socialist and recently divorced. And we learned in this number that she's actually the leader of the Secret Coalition for Revenge, and it's fascinating to encounter intelligence and height. I'm also going to scratch. And I think I'm skipping on the censors. So her ex-husband, Henry Ossell, is really a designer of Oslet's luxury watches. Recently invented a watch that grants the person who bears the eternal life, the eternal youth. So she's eventually going to be used to mastermind upon herself time. I'm telling you this because you might not catch all of it. She's going to use her husband's watch. Yeah, her ex-husband's watch. Okay, the technology of that for this... Make an evil weapon. So in the scene just prior Ossell, her ex-husband was kidnapped from his lab and speared it away. And then in the scene opens and you see all of her evil minions wading into a dark alley led by her top henchman, Tiktok. Okay, and so they're all waiting for her to appear and then see it first. Because I'm slow about these things. So this is the villain whom Symphony Jones is going to stop. Okay, okay, great. And here is where we meet her. Oh, wonderful. Okay, great. And so we have a great cast. If you guys want to start coming up. Jason, look right on piano. This is playing Tiktok. Jordan Stanley is playing Henry Ossell. And then we have Darryl Holland, Katie Ray, Tamara Noly, Jim Ray, Tiktok, and Ethan Shulfin. And I should say just one quick comment. Jordan is most of the time an evil spy. At a certain moment he steps forward and becomes Henry Ossell. The threatening ex-husband. And then he steps back and becomes an evil spy. Great. There's been excuses for world-renowned, highly trained and very devious people's spies. I haven't come out. You just didn't start it yet. So trust me, anyone who interrupts me dies. As they come. So if you want to live to see tomorrow, which is unlikely to happen, because you're idiots. Well, then here's the bass. Right. So, and I'm going to say, you know, start with the bottom. No, the number. She's really explaining things. We're trying to find a character that was early. And then she was like doing a manic show too. And then the number that we've had for a very long time, which people love there, it's called Serbs and Orphans. It's a person who's wondering if they're at their home to raise money. It's supposed to be like orphans, but it's really for her to be the cause. Yes. Right. Right. So we figured that out. And there were a couple of plot points. Like maybe we saw also these kidnaps, that we saw the watch. There's two kidnaps watching these numbers. So we read the numbers and kind of talked them out around and forth. Yes. Are you able to name the titles of all the discarded songs? You said one of them was Serbs and Orphans. Do you remember the other ones? Or where you went on this journey? Yeah. I mean, I remember some that first took one lesson and I was like, no, right again. But I think the very first one was now the day when it was like, the woman with glasses, she can find a human man now. Yeah. Then there was a manic show. She was like, I'm off the figure and better thing. She being a... Forget you, forget the husband. So we were missing a couple of plot things. So this version felt more broken into the arc of the story that we needed to tell. Yes. Right, right. There's so much to accomplish, right? Your songs have to do two or three jobs, usually, to stay on the show. So this is great. I mean, it's a funny song and yet you're serving your story in the ways that you needed to. Yeah, there was a picture off the head. The last very long. Yes. Right, right. Right, right. The mimes sound funny. I mean, you're going for whatever seems funny, right? And yet you have to stay on task, you just have to keep things moving forward. It can't just be a lark. It can't just be silly for silly's sake, right? Which is fun. It gets me to a certain point that then when people see your whole show and they're like, how did you get the watch? Yes. Yeah, right. That's right. Well, it sounds from the way you described, I'm sorry, say your name again. Brooke. Brooke. Brooke, from the way Matthew just said that you said, no thanks to a song like Right Away. But when you're in a situation where you're able to like just be upfront about something that's not working. Yeah, we're nice about it. Yeah. Yes. I tend to be the one who's like, this is great. We're going to have an underwater ballet and a tune. And she's like, let's think about it. Yeah. But I think, on the plus side, I'm very ruthless. If it doesn't work, I'm happy to just How can I phrase this? Is sympathy Jones, does she get comedy songs in this show? That's a good question. I looked at the villains of the Scoopiest characters. They get more of the broad comedy. She has some fun numbers. Her main theme song is kind of like the TV theme song. She sort of has this, oh, here's my life in an office, but I really want to be fine. She gets this driving baseline and imagines what her life is like. So she has some fun numbers, but I think that the villains get the best comedy, and they have the funness dialogue. Yeah, yeah. How did you... So when you landed at this song, did you come up with the title first, what occurred to you first about this one? Do you remember? I was having a really hard time with this one because we were trying to get this down. We had a publication going on in the publishing show, and we did it out there. And when we looked at the clock, I was like, I remember I brought it into a drama still fellowship session. I got the line for this, but I knew I had to do it. And so I listened to a lot of Jones songs. I went and listened to all of them. We listened to Jones songs. We had a version that wasn't Tango, but it had to be Tango, you know? And I think there's got to be a bunch of, you know, people singing about this in her. I don't know, I don't know how it came up the title. I don't remember how I liked it that, but I remember feeling that I got the feel of it, and the sense of her sort of like perched on a trash can and all of you like, expecting her reunion. Yeah. Yeah. And when you start staging the show in your mind like that, and you imagine the backup singers and the dancing, how does that, how does that help you? That really helps me. So at the end of this number, they sort of hoist also up and they're parading him around, and it sort of, it has sort of a three-dimensionality, which is hard to get in the reading format, but then you sort of, it's like they have energy, you know, there's a reason for them to be sort of singing in this rowdy way, and so hard you're doing the Jonesy Jonesy thing, which tastes similar for you or great, I think the director had some great suggestions about Jonesy Jones and the Rumpa Blues. Yeah. Yes, and it's great how a musical director, because I've worked with musical directors like you too. Like, yes, a good one can make things lots funnier with choral interjections, vocal arrangement, I mean vocal arrangements can be funny, or there can be funny effects. So, I'm so glad you're bringing that into it too, because, yeah, yeah, you can be funnier with your collaborators pitching in ideas like that. It wasn't actually until I wrote it, I actually literally wrote the trumpet line first, you know. You can probably sing this. What's American? I think it's a Rumpa Blues. That's great. Yeah, yeah, well, that's the beauty of working with other people. I mean, that's, love stories like that. Can we go on to another song here? This being called Subway Romance. Yes. And is this a standalone song? Okay. Can you talk about this one? Yeah, this is a song from many years ago, so it's almost like a period now, but when I first moved to New York, over a decade ago, I lived in a lot of different sublates. I lived in Fortune Sublates in four years, and a lot of them were in Portland and Williamsburg. And that was before Williamsburg was sort of like out for Wall Street types. It was a really different landscape that's been, and I wrote The Elk Train a lot. And so, this is a song about writing old things and being a little delusional at the same time. Okay, great. I'll just play this one. I'll sympathize with you. No, you performed it very well. It just seems like it's the humanity... Sorry, I don't mean to take all the fun out of this, by analyzing it this way, but it seems like it's the humanity of someone who doesn't really... who doesn't fully understand, but she knows she feels something for the guy, and it's the light we feel in the audience like figuring out her situation before she has that makes it funny. Sorry, I just feel like I'm telling you stuff that you wrote it. Now, here's something. What leads you to write a standalone song like this? It's like going to a show, right? Well, I mean, I think this particular one, I mean, like I said, it was years ago, and it's kind of great to dust it up and bring it back in, because, you know, I think I played it for a couple gigs in the East Village, you know, singing bars, doing that, and they got a kick out of it, because you know that from Bedford, if you take the other thing, know that from Bedford to first out is one song. So they got, it's sort of like an in... if you're in the in crowd, you get that extra joke. So in the East Village, they got it. So I played it a couple times, and then, you know, I think, I wasn't writing big shows at that time, so it was, you know, I did a lot of children's theater, I'd written a lot of short songs, and I was trying to grow up a little long, so I think it was just testing the wires, and it felt more in the musical theater realm, and I think I'm there to sort of write more longer shows. Yeah, oh, great. Does anyone have a question for Masi? I've realized I haven't been taking questions. Maybe one will occur to you. Oh, yeah. Well, do you do music and lyrics? Yeah, I do music and lyrics. You're collaborative. My collaborative book writes the book, so she's a very talented playwright, and we come up with a concept for those shows together, and so that's how we worked on sympathy challenge. She wrote the hilarious script. When you're working with Brooke, or when you worked with Brooke on this project, did Brooke, did you have an outline first? Sorry, my real question is, because I'm often in this position, too, what did you work from, a full book or an outline or something in between? Yeah, well, first of all, I should say that I invited Brooke to come up to the point, but she did take three things, so she should feel free to chime in. So we always have a very detailed outline that gets realized over time, and that's why I work with her. And then Brooke often writes scenes, and then I'll steal all the best stuff from her scene and put it on, and we'll do that. So I think sometimes if we have a scene and we want to put a song in there, we discuss there should be a song here, and maybe I'm not sure where to go. I may ask her for a monologue or a little more content so that I can get inside the head of the character a little more, and then that helps when I sit down to songify that particular scene. Yeah. When you're working on a song that you think is going to be a comedy song, what are you... Is there anything in particular that you're aiming for, or is there a joke that you're aiming for, or is there anything concrete, concretely funny, let's say, that you see as a guiding star out in the distance that leaves you the right... the full draft? That's a great question. You know, I have to say, I was one of the advocates for this comedy theme because I had originally asked for a different theme and I didn't finish the songs for that theme, so then I was like, well, it's not even that funny, but here we are in comedy. So how do I think about comedy songs? I think... I liked those comments that were made previously about how it really comes from character. I think that's how I approach it. I think it's just kind of scary as a writer, for me, to think about, oh, I've got to hit this joke. I mean, it's hard to do that well, so people have a gift for it. But I feel like if the characters themselves are poopy enough, the audience will come along for the ride. And the performers will find ways to make it even funnier than I imagined because they'll have... we'll be in the character and the character will take them there. So we've definitely found that there's a really fun duet in Act Two for Kitty Hawk and TikTok where they are singing about how much they love each other, but really about how much they love, how evil each other is. And so there's all these metaphors for evilness, and that sort of is a fun guy. But again, it comes out of the character. Yeah. Oh, that's a... Yeah, that's another fun song. Well, great. I mean, yeah, your approach, I think, is a sensible one. I mean, because I'm... I'm just the same way. It's like having to write a joke. Like, who can do that? Well, Mel Brooks can do it well. Right? Yeah. He's wonderful at that. And then there are, you know, us mere mortals who just have to... have to make it funny with sort of the stuff we've got with a character in a situation. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions from us? Yes. Well, on that, I was thinking about, you know, where does a funny song come from? And I remember reading about the fact that if you didn't know your rising sign, it was usually connected to some illness. That was how you'd be able to tell what your rising sign was. A rising sign in zodiac? Yeah. Oh, okay. So that, you know, if you happen to have words that maybe it was because you were Pisces. So I wrote a whole song about it. So that's where the ideas come from. Sure. Sure. That sounds pretty funny. Well, we have another song from you called, and that's art. Yes. The show is called, I Want a Free Ride to College. And can you set this up? Yes, absolutely. And I'd love to invite my collaborator, Joyce. Nobody wants to come up. I brought this great house of women writers in. Just put it back here. So for this project, I actually just write lyrics, and I'm working with a great composer, Joyce Dunne, who's also here in the front row because he's doing the book. This is a reality show musical about a group of high school students on a fictitious but nevertheless hit reality TV show competing for scholarship cash. And this was an interesting process. So our Symphony Jones piece was published a couple years ago and has had a number of productions, and it's actually really popular with high schools. So we're seeing all these high school productions of the secret agent show. And they throw all these kids in the cast. You have 20, 30 kids in the cast, and we found this is the opposite of a professional theater where they make your cast as small as possible. So we thought, well, let's run a show for a cast of 20 and pitch it to high schools and let's see if they run with it. So that's what we're working on. It's a lot of fun. And this number, I think maybe more in the zone of it comes from a musical comedy. That's how you're related to the female comedy. It's sort of towards the number, towards the end of act one, there are 10 finalists who are competing on this reality TV show. There are some judges, some crew members, so we have a cast of 20. And so toward the end of act one, there have been a number of challenges and a number of contestants have been eliminated. And we're following our lead character, Teresa, who's going to be played by Tara Novy. She's kind of a shy, bookish girl, and she moves through the competition and sort of comes more into her own and has some tough choices to make about how cutthroat she wants to be late in the show. So this is the next challenge along the way. We've had a couple and here we are on like three or four. And there's one character named Marcus, who's played by Jordan Stanley, our previous awesome slash slide, who is the favorite to win at this particular challenge. But Teresa gets some advice from him and that kind of turns the odds in her favor. It's quite a long sequence. There's a music in the actual show. There's a musical number and there's a scene where you get to see all of their projects with terrible spoken word and interpreted. And then there's a reprise for Teresa. But we're just going to do the first big introduction musical number piece of it. Great. Teacher Pat Vicasso. Yes, it's absolutely my real name. Welcome to my studio in artist. Today's challenge is to create a work of art. Okay, let's get started. On the count of three you might begin one, two, three. Yes, so yes you are. Sort of becoming so expansive and he's a little out of control and so very nice work. Very nice to meet you and anyone have a parting question for Massey before? Yes, he has it in the back. How does it not go for the dude model in the art class? Oh, I sense a rewrite. I sense a rewrite. Good, good question. I will say I wanted to thank the singers though because this is the first time we ever heard from that show and just like an hour basically a rehearsal this has come together and I'm just really thankful. So I just want to thank them. Okay, well thank you. Massey Asari everyone. And finally we have the team of Michael Kuman and Chris Diamond. Please welcome them. It's a pleasure. This is a special pleasure because I got to sit down for coffee. When I happened to be in Pittsburgh about seven years ago I got to have coffee with Chris and Michael and at the time they were considering moving to New York I think, right? So we had a little chat about what it was like to be in New York and here you are years later and you've got a list of awards like as long as my arm so congratulations and it's such a pleasure to get to talk to you again here and to hear some of your work. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Oh good. Good, well I mean let me just let me just start off by saying this I got to you sent me your show Danny Girl back around that time and am I remembering correctly Danny Girl is a show about a girl who has cancer, right? So imagine that these guys were writing a show like that as one of your first efforts and as I remember it well it had a tremendous heart but it also had a fair amount of comedy right? Am I I mean I don't think you have one of those songs from Danny Girl tonight but I just wanted to start off by talking a bit about that show and how did you find comedy in cancer? Can you talk about that? Yeah, I mean that was sort of the big challenge with the show we knew right from the beginning that if you're going to write a musical about a nine-year-old girl with leukemia that it can't be what people expected to be so we really worked hard to try and find the joy in it and it was inspired by actual events inspired by the life of my cousin and if you know anyone who deals with cancer or any serious illness you know the truth is that there are moments of levity there is great joy and I mean I think for both of us you know comedy and a lot of times comes from pain and comedy is one way of dealing with that so that was what we really set out to find that when you look at kids who are sick there's a ton of life in them and so that's what we really wanted to capture with that piece Yeah, I mean I just I remember really being captivated by it and then really delighted at how there was something to laugh about along the way so and let's and let's move on to a song that we will hear tonight called Welcome to Today from the Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes can you set this one up? Sure so after our first musical about cancer what else do you do? we thought for a long time what could we do to do something that was just really fun something sort of completely opposite of a nine year old girl with cancer so we came up with the idea of a guy who wakes up to discover his life has become a musical and he's on a quest to get out of the musical because he hates musicals and so this song we're going to hear is the actual first number of the show and you don't really need to know too much setup other than that Chris is going to be playing Howard Barnes the title character and I will be playing his neighbor this song in the actual show ends up being like a huge group number it starts with two people and then it follows Howard on his trip to work and becomes just like an over-the-top group number with like lots of choreography and lots of light changes and you'll just have to see and hear those in your head also I'm not a super loud singer so if I'm too soft you can just you know do what old people in church do and be louder tomorrow it's tomorrow's to day today's to day tomorrow it's yesterday yeah absolutely there's a lot of back and forth a lot of collaboration you know we have kind of bounce ideas off each other and give each other a lot of feedback so yeah there's a lot of back and forth and that's healthy I mean I remember when I first started like writing shows with other people I thought oh I've got to do my job they do their job and as you go on I think you find that you're sort of in it together and like it's the cross-pollination that really leads to stuff that you never come up with on your own sometimes definitely especially with comedy I mean I think with comedy whatever is funny works so like we always work with the best idea in the room you know and sometimes sometimes just rearranging a couple words makes something significantly more funny it's really it's an interesting thing sometimes it's trial and error sometimes it just comes to you the first time yeah yeah rearranging a couple words that leads me to ask how did you how did you get the fat guy face that was very funny I wasn't expecting it I think because we weren't expecting it yeah anyway you remember that was pretty early on that was that sort of first that first chunk there kind of came out pretty quickly as we were sort of searching for what the song was and it there was something about somebody eating bacon that I thought was particularly amusing to lyricize and just looking for the exact way to express that so that it landed properly right there at the end and fat guy face happened to be the the lyricist right we haven't really talked much about it yet but the idea of the joke landing at the end of the musical line makes us laugh yeah that's actually the big one can you talk more about that how you can point that point the joke we're calling it a joke now I know I was not supposed to I think you can think of it as a joke because a joke has a punchline right and where the punchline occurs at the end of a joke so if you kind of are translating that to musical terms if you have a rhyming couplet with the second part of the rhyming couplet it's going to be the punchline to the joke so usually that's where jokes happen in in a musical song yes I would right you save the joke for the second line of the rhyming couplet absolutely yeah and even if it's not that funny a joke it's being in that position so it kind of suggests that it ought to be funny on our bad days that's I guess what happens but on the good days it actually is funny and it's in the right position could you talk a little bit about the bodily fluids you know what I'm talking about blood or feet that's the title of our memoir that was another one that took a while to get that line phrased exactly correctly and I think it's another one of those things that wouldn't be funny if it weren't so true that joke plays a lot better in New York than it does anywhere else anytime you sit down in the subway you sort of resign yourself to the fact that you're probably sitting in somebody's bodily fluids you know so it took us a while to get the exact kind of what does the line say the line is now you're cruising beneath Manhattan oh what wonders may come to be there's a chance that the seat you sat in wasn't covered in semen blood or feet yeah it took us a while to get the sort of backhanded compliment of that right which kind of comes up a couple of times in the song to figure out you know for someone like the main character in this show whose world view is kind of cynical helps you adapt that to musical theater and so that original joke I think the punchline was always semen blood or feet but it wasn't always set up properly it was originally something like that the seat you sat in might be covered in semen blood something that wasn't as funny because it wasn't the opposite the humor really comes from playing the contrast an idea that on some logical level is hopeful earlier the idea that none of the homeless people have exposed themselves to you today is a great thing it's kind of the joke that we discovered with this song that thematically it kind of ends up playing out over the course of the story and that's an interesting thing that I think about in comedy like what is the game of this song I have a hard time just thinking about how to describe it but the game of this song was how can we rephrase horrible things to sound positive also with a little semi comic theme of making fun of musical theater opening of a musical that you might think there's like little things like that but I would say the big thing was although I think biggest punchlines come from that kind of game but it's interesting that you bring up semen blood or pee as well because that is the that's for us that's sort of an important part of the song because if you're writing a comedic song generally you want the jokes to get funnier as the song goes on and that's sort of the last expected joke place because we've set it up it's the very end of the third verse so to speak so we wanted that to be the strongest one do you agree about that? of course you've got to build it you've got to make things funnier not less funny absolutely that's very smart and I didn't realize until you just said it but you were saving these things for the ends of verses and then going into your cherry chirpy chorus it's just sort of funny because it's grinding into the nerves that this character doesn't want to be in a musical and just let me compliment the music too we've been talking about the lyrics but the music is like it's so bouncy that you expect it to be funny in some fashion I just want to go out on the loom and say that because music is subjective differently but I feel like the music is setting us up to laugh thank you but let's move we have another song from the same musical so I really want to make sure we have time for that this is called Gotta Get Out also from the noteworthy life of Howard Barnes can you set this song up? yeah so this occurs a little bit later in the story it features the character of Howard who's been for 15 minutes or so trying to wrestle with this idea of what's happened to his life now that it's been hijacked by this musical and this is the point where he definitively declares that he is going to get out of the musical to this point in the show it's important to know that he has not sung yet he's just been hearing people sing to him this will be the first time that we hear him sing and to play Howard we have the fabulous Sergey Robles applause and as the song begins he's alone on stage and he gets hit with a bright spotlight god damn it that's bright terrific what? oh I see what's going on here really you think I'm going to stand here and suddenly start to sing what's going to happen screw that whole show to think you almost got me there didn't you well I hate to burst your bubble but my life's too normal for a musical play steady install it and I like it that way the rainbows and bunnies save it for some sentimental sap I hate musical musical my condition's getting worse I gotta find a way out of this musical before the second verse I gotta get out I know what you're trying to do you owe me and my dreams I'm sorry I have to win I strive for order nothing simple and my life is on track my bread is white and my coffee black oh my god this musical is terrible once again I swear to god this musical is unbearable it's driving me insane some little trick some secret switch to be flipped someone that I can escape they're so god stupid musical but I swear that I'll pull it once and for all I will stop this musical to pigeonhole this song but is this a song of complaint give it as the I want song the I want is I don't want yes which made it really tricky we talked about this one for a long time before we dug into it because the essential challenge of a musical about someone who doesn't want to be in a musical is how can he sing do we want him to sing can he sing at all can you get away with not having a protagonist ever sing in a musical and so this was the way that we kind of got around that challenge to have the musical really kind of pulling the singing out of them yeah that's a great solution does he, well we'll have to see the musical I won't ask if he sings more because that is a huge right, that's a huge issue the reason I asked about song of complaint is that it seems like a lot of comedy comes from seeing characters in a situation that they don't want to be in and it's the complaint it's their complaining that actually leads to some very funny funny relatable comedy but maybe I'm wrong to think that about I mean that's his whole character actually his whole character is he doesn't want to be in this musical so maybe I'm being too Dr. Renare about that I have a feeling no I mean I don't think that's inaccurate to say I think it's part of the fun of comedy is watching characters actively struggle against circumstances they don't want to be in and trying to raise them so yeah that brings up an idea that I remember from BMI the BMI workshop of that you really it's hard to get behind characters that complain except in comedy you really don't want to write characters that have a lot of self pity except in comedy it's something to laugh at but it's hard to really get on the character's side of their complaining yes that is an excellent point I mean the classic one is Adelaide's Lament from Guys and Dolls and you're right the BMI workshop the famous Lehmann Engel musical theater workshop hosted by a broadcast musical incorporated yes that is a wonderful lesson I went through that workshop as well or I dropped out of it sorry but before I dropped out that message of yes you can't sympathize with a complaining character but you've stated wonderfully the exception to that rule which applies to our theme tonight do we have any questions for this team there are two wild parties there you go that's right yes well we just had a workshop at the national lines for musical theater last week so we're starting some really exciting talks I don't know I can't say for certain but hopefully soon very good anyone else can I ask a question about the song before that phrase about the that phrase you know did you I think you either extended the music there or forced the lyric on purpose is that correct actually it is the exact same rhythm that is actually a lesson that we've learned quite well is that you don't want to mess too much with the punchline as in let the punchline breathe as you would as a sort of as a stand-up comedian would but particularly in the world of musical if you set up a rhythm or a scansion for a lyric don't break it or try to mess with the punchline let it fall naturally and that what you're referring to actually there isn't I don't think there's a change there actually I wasn't sure it matches another verse for the same yes okay maybe it's just the way it was delivered possibly I'm not a trained singer quite possible no I'm I was just curious whether musically that was a musical joke no I you know I let the lyrics be jokes I know I try not to mess with the with the lyrics too much because I think in a comedy song if you're writing a comedy song it is all about the joke right everything needs to support the joke and I last thing I want to do it if you write a really funny line last thing I want to do it is get in the way with it in fact I just want to let it breathe let it live as much as possible and something that would be interesting to hear your thoughts on is I you know I think particularly in a comedy song the composer has a lot to do with the punchline because you are literally comedies about timing and you are literally setting the time of the joke so I think music in a comedy song even though it can't really get in the way of the joke has to sort of set the timing of the joke do you agree more yes I mean the music needs to have led us to that place magnificently efficiently I mean that's that is the total joy of it to me like you've been able to make the music in such a way that the joke lands on those two or three or four notes whatever yeah and it just feels like it was meant to be like that I want to say about your reaction to fat face I I think it my sense of it is it's because you in the lyric the phrase was already used like just like two or three seconds before and we're not expecting fat face to come back that was the lyric surprise of it to me that maybe made it seem musically different too but I totally believe you that it's the same music sorry that's my sense of why that played the way it did we we are running out of time but let's hear this last song which is called if you only knew from a show called Judge Jack Justice Judge Jack Justice Judge Jackie Justice oh is this a misprint here maybe but it's going to be it would be more appropriate because I shall be playing the Judge Jackie oh ok this is a show that was commissioned by the Pittsburgh CLO it's sort of a satire on reality television courtroom dramas a lot of people's court and Judge Judy it's about an aging female judge named Judge Jackie and this song is going to be sung by her trusty bailiff Henry who will again be played by Sergio Robles you'll have to imagine me to be not only a woman and a judge but also a good actor it's important to know that that she is speaking to the plaintiff and defendant throughout this song and not to Henry so it goes into fantasy a little bit you know something people wouldn't realize what a moron you were if you learned to keep your moron mouth shut you ever heard that before? neither did I I just made it up I'm going to put it on t-shirts and make a million dollars Henry you want to buy a t-shirt? no your honor I'm going to bring a sile like Romeo and Juliet over here love love will make fools of them all Henry everyone but you and me let me tell you something you cast off from the cast of deliverance on your best date you are half as smart as I'll be three days after I'm dead you've got this wit that I'm utterly disarmed but you're sarcastic laugh it sets my heart on fire and I must admit that I find myself quite charmed by your cynical work you want to know something about love and I'm not s-love makes about as much sense as male nipples we put up the character wonderfully and we understand the situation anyway it was compliments to you both for making that happen like how often does usually you have to get into a song a little bit so that thank you um I feel we're out of time okay well it's been a total joy first let's applaud this guy and also let's re-applaud Kyle Ewalt Michael Walker listening to their song I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did and thank you to the drama skill for sponsoring this evening where we could talk about comedy songs thank you