 That's super fast, really, and we're all acknowledging that it's super dangerous that you're fast. But I'd say five to seven years is pretty far for the course. Tim, how long it takes to get from an idea to a production? This is Grant Kodis, which I just want to say really quickly. He's the Tony Ward winning book writer and lyricist of Eurintown. He's worked as a member of the experimental theater group The Neon Futurists, and his other projects include Pig Farm and Yeast Nation. One of his new musicals that he's working on at the moment is ZM, which is a show about zombies with his Eurintown collaborator Mark Kalman. So that is an introduction for Grant. Yay! Now, talking about how much perseverance you obviously need to have, because now that you guys are all sharing your stories, it really is a long trek from inception to stage. Yeah, it is. I'm on this panel representing sort of a different side of the creative equation. I'm a producer and manager. So in a producing capacity, just to give a little sense of why it takes so long, Amanda alluded to it, but I'm currently producing a project that's in its third year of development, which my producing partner on it is the president of Washington Square Films who really oversees a lot of our independent filmmaking, and it has been absolutely torturous for him. In the independent film world, you have a script, you have the money, you go. So literally we're in pre-production for a movie that last week wasn't happening, but it's going to start in July. So that's the timeframe that he's working with, and he just simply doesn't understand our universe. But this particular project that we're working on, it started with an idea. It's based on existing source material. So there was a long courtship process. I'm not sure what your experiences were, Amanda, with underlying material. Frequently, this is their family's legacy, this person's legacy. So there's a lot of trust that has to be going to the process. You're going to turn this particular project to these particular people. So once that happens, then it gets turned over to the lawyers, and lawyers frequently are paid by the hour, so it's in their best interest to make the process as long as possible. So then sort of throughout, you begin to sort of conceptualize and brainstorm into who are the collaborators going to be. Then it's a process of speaking with the agencies in terms of getting their ideas, et cetera, then meeting with writers, then coming up with short lists, and then agreeing, and then it gets turned back over to the lawyers. And so then sort of throughout these stages then, then you're getting an outline, a treatment, a script, a note, et cetera, et cetera. And then you begin having conversations with regard to producing partners, whether you're going to do an original theater tryout, which is the typical route these days. And then you become sort of beholden to their schedule and their calendar. They're frequently working anywhere from 18 to 24 months out in terms of their planning process. So you can be having a conversation right now on July, June 24th, and the theater with whom you're having a conversation can't begin to even contemplate producing your show either in an enhanced production situation or otherwise until at the very earliest September of 2018. So it's not through anybody's interest, desire, or passion to move the process forward. Sometimes it just takes time. Does anyone else want to speak to that? Yeah? So I can speak to the more early career side of it. So when you're starting out as a musical theater writer, pretty much, and things like the cover shows that Jennifer mentioned earlier are really helpful. You're shooting flares out into the universe because you don't know what flair is going to be seen and take. And so my first professional musical production kind of came as the result of shooting out a flair. I'd done a song series with one composer at this New York Cabaret venue called New York Theater Barn. And it so happened that someone was in the house, who was friend with someone else who was looking for applications to a reading series at a regional theater upstate. And that reading series was desperate for someone because one of their people had dropped out to do the Giant Mercer songwriters workshop. And so I got connected to them. I submitted a musical we had in progress and they brought us into their reading series. And then because of that reading series, they liked it and they offered us a full production the following summer. So that was something that never really happens in that we started writing the show in, I think, September 2012. And then by summer of 2014, we had a full professional production. So that's kind of the beginner's block aspect of it. They were like, wow, this is awesome, this happened. But the process that I'm much more familiar with is you write something, you do a reading, and you wait for a theater to sit on an optionit for a while. And then it just, as we mentioned, you have to wait for a bunch of people's schedules to align so these things can take a long, long time. But when the start is due along correctly, as George mentioned for our recent commission, it is a beautiful and wondrous thing. And that's ultimately what theater is about, writing something, seeing in front of an audience and revising it. So when it does happen quickly, it makes my soul happy, and I wish that would happen more often in theater so that writers could learn and grow because you grow by seeing your work in front of an office. I wanted to ask, Greg, do you want to speak about yourself? Oh, what are we talking about? If you want to speak about a specific musical or a project, you worked on how long it took from inception to the stage. And it's in the mic because it's being live streamed. Excellent. Yeah, I mean, there are two projects that I'm working on now that maybe are two different versions of how something can happen. One is a very producer-driven project, which is a musical version of the 1970s film, The Sting. So this is, for certain generations, this is a really bloody film. It's a story about Conman. And so the great thing about being hired essentially by producers is that the producer is going to be the engine which drives it forward, which brings people together, which creates a timetable, a creative development timetable. And also when the time is right, they will find hopefully a theater where you can try on a pound, and maybe that comes into New York if the show is good enough, and you've done your work well enough. I guess the tricky thing is to get yourself in a position where a producer is going to hire you to do that. So that's the big question. So it feels very luxurious to be in that position where you are either commissioned or a producer is behind you and you can really concentrate on creative stuff. The other model which I'm much more familiar with is you have an idea. You think it's great. You write it, you get someone to write the music, and then you just kind of knock on doors and make phone calls and send emails forever. There's a project that we've been working on since we had our first draft, I want to say, in 2001, and that it has had successive productions, but has not really gotten to a commercial place. And I haven't given up on it either. So that's another model. And a healthy career, I think, you get to have both, you get people calling you and saying, hey, you're the person I want to write the book for Mission Impossible. You have to do that. And then that will pay you away for a while, and then while you're writing Mission Impossible you get to write the history of cork musical. And it still has to happen. So, yeah, cork. So I killed lucky to do the producer stuff, and I feel really passionate about the cork musical that I could do on these. In contemplating this topic, I was reminded that curtains actually took more than 20 years to get produced, and obviously there's a lot of stories like that. So you guys are all professional person, dear words, as well as writers. That's what we have. That is necessary, necessary skill to be part of this. And it is good, as Greg was saying, to have a couple of things on the boil because there's always fallow times. You know, if you're one thing and you're obsessed with it, it could even become a little dangerous to yourself and others and your family members. It really is good to have a couple of things. And it's great, as Greg said, to have things that you're asked to do and things that you must do. They each have their own rewards. What makes each of you drawn to a specific topic or source when you first get that spark and start writing it or take the job or write the spec songs? And also, do you feel like that's changed since you started writing about what material you're drawn to? That was probably directed to the creatives, but from my perspective, I'm looking at material or drawn to material based on its potential. And that is sort of a shifting landscape in terms of where you think it can head. I mean, the reality, particularly from musical theater, versus play is replaced with your audiences, is that the reality of the long-term success for a musical is in some ways dependent upon its ability to have a broadly run. That's just sort of the reality. So in evaluating projects, you begin to look at what the potential is for a Broadway engagement. I begin thinking about it from the perspective of what's the message, what's the brand, how can I communicate the message, what is the landscape looking like right now, and 18 to 24 to 36 months out because that's how long it's going to take, and is there a universality in terms of the story that's being told, is it necessary, is it needed, is it now? Now in 36 months forever. But also, the reality not just in terms of audiences, but also in terms of investment because, you know, you're thinking about a project that in a regional theater, in the hands of production, is your only need to come up with at least a million to $2 million. To raise that money based on a hope of promise and idea. And then if you're getting into a commercial landscape and a musical, it's a minimum of $10 million. So not only do you need to evaluate whether you can speak to an audience, but importantly, can you speak to a high net worth individual who's going to write you a chat for multiple, multiple sounds. I think on the creative side, usually a historic work example. I want to see this now. Yeah, right. I'm going to start in this hole. Thank you. We're right on step two. Well, I just, from the creeps, I think there has to be just, maybe even in many, you're saying you can be dangerous to yourself, which I agree. But I do think there needs to be just a real fierce passion for the thing. I found that writing, I'm a book writer, and writing books, at first, the experience is like, oh, this is easy. I'm going to get, this is going to be done in two weeks. Fantastic. Then you find out that it actually takes years and years. And, you know, the timetables, even five or seven years is, you know, there's no guarantee of that. That's short in some ways. And so I think just to take your own temperature about your passion about this project, and because you can't really, you don't know who else is going to be passionate about it. So you have to be passionate about it first, talking about the playwrights, and then the composers, hopefully, in that marriage, in that partnership, there's passion there. So I think there needs to be just a fierceness about it if you're the one behind it, I would say. You've talked about some of, you've each talked about some of the ways that your productivity and creativity are benefited from having multiple projects at the same time or from, you know, applying for a commission. What are things that you've learned since you started as a producer or as a writer that have kind of kept these projects alive in you and helped you to write them over this long period of time? Is there anything else that you would tell other writers has been helpful? I think, for me, there are some places along the way where you get to perform with one song on an event or, you know, you apply for a festival and you can do 30 minutes of your show or something like that are super important. I used to think they were important in letting other people know what you were working on, and now I'm starting to have second thoughts about exposing your material too early so that three, four years later, when it's finally ready, people feel like it's been around forever instead of it being fresh. I think it's important to have a person who's made it to a singer and say, can we work on this kind of hearing in your voice? Oh, maybe we need to try another key. Oh, that's a mouthful of words that come. I didn't expect that. You know, that you learn so much about your piece just by having the experience of getting it out of your piano or your computer or your brain and getting it into the place where it lives in another human being. And so I started looking for more and more opportunities to do that. I learned to be really great performers and allowing the time to say, when you come over and I can buy you lunch and you'll sing me songs for me as a way to just make it real. Because I think... I sat in a meeting with a publisher recently who said... he really wasn't meaning to offend me, but he said, if your music only exists on your hard drive, it doesn't really exist. And it's so true. It does exist. It exists in my head, but it lives in someone else. And that's why I think process and production become two very equally important but very different steps that I have spent a lot of time thinking. I write music and my job is to get it on paper. But it's not true. My job is to make that music come to life. So that's the more you can learn about production and the more you can make your own opportunities the more chance you'll have to learn about your piece. I'm also just in terms of not really commercial, but choose your collaborators wisely. And choose people who you really get a kick out of being with. I mean, it's not always true. I haven't become best friends with everybody I've worked with. I've become best friends with some people I've worked with. But there's something about... I just think, I've got to smart that one. Or they make you laugh or when you're fresh out of ideas and hope, they're like, come on, we can do it. There's a good thing about doing a musical if you have collaborators is that you don't always have to be driving the train because you get tired, you can pass the baton. You know? And be with people who you're like, it's fun to be with because the process is sometimes... But it's not a waste of time if you spent that time writing and being with people who get you excited and who share your passion. And, you know, the best is that it has productions in a long life and it makes you buckets of money. But it's great if you really love what you do and are excited to spend the day with those people. And I think also to speaking to everybody's point here, you know, what George was talking about with regard to those moments where you get to have the work performed and Greg speaking to the passion and then speaking to other representatives we're all on a daily quest for small victories. Whether it's a script that you send out to somebody that somebody responds to because sometimes you're sending these things out into sort of a black hole void and you're not really expecting anything back so when you do get a pain back it feels good. And those moments also in the creative process and in the producing process it's very intimate and it's very... you're very passionate about it but at a certain point you begin to need to sort of open up the clamshell a little bit and without it we're like is this a good idea? And then you have a conversation with somebody or somebody sings the music or takes a look at it or hears what you have to say about it and they're like, it's a good idea keep going and so you do. I keep thinking about what Greg said about sending out floor players that that's what you said too about sending a script out into the ether in a way it is sending out players and I love that image because I think we all do that at the beginning at every level of the way and I think it's important to know that we're all doing that one of the first big things I did is I made an album and I paid for it myself and I didn't have a label and I didn't have anything and I did it and the reason I'm mentioning that is this morning Andy was talking about his podcast as a calling card and that's what I've said about it like yes I sold it but I would say in the 15 years since I made it it's maybe paid for itself it's not like I made a profit from it but it took my career from here to here and I would go to industry events and people knew that I was a songwriter even if they hadn't heard it it wasn't me saying this is what I do desperately hoping that you were paying attention and knowing what category but instead they knew me and because I had good singers on the album it lent a validity to the work there was just a lot of that that felt like something that wasn't in my career that I was making you know and I think one of the things that I want to talk about I always ask you this question when you're talking about 54 Below but I think one of the things I continue to evaluate is what is the good money to spend and what is the bad money to spend and I think that money for me was the best money I ever spent on my career was making my album I don't think everyone should make an album I don't think that I'm saying this podcast is probably a really good investment just hearing you talk about it this morning we were talking about this podcast and I said does it cost you money and do you make money and the answer was yes it costs money and no I don't think money but I think that's true of my album too that in a way that was the flare that I stand up but it was the thing that led me to having other people see me as a person who might be able to do this kind of work and led to other kinds of authors coming in I'm not sure I would do it again the same way that I would return on an investment that it did then but I am looking at what is the thing I should be putting my money into now that yields that kind of return I was listening to that album on the plane right here sitting a seat away from Georgia she doesn't know that that was when I was tweeting at you it was a very weird place to put your money what I have done in the past is lawyers piece before you have a deal I did it like I was trying to get the rights and I hired the best lawyer it was a waste of my money and you know I had people who were collaborating on something and nothing has happened yet and they are arguing about percentage points of nothing and they have feuds and they have drama and their lawyer sounds like that is a waste of money so don't waste your money if you are becoming a member of the drama skilled and if you have a legal question you can call and talk to somebody and it won't cost you a penny do not spend your money on lawyers don't do it unless they are negotiating a contract for you in that case do not negotiate it yourself Andy and Greg I know that we talked about choosing a collaborator is such an important step in this process do you want to talk about how you guys started collaborating and what your process together is like I'll start this one off so I am I have worked with a lot of collaborators not just on the podcast but also in the BMI workshop and you did that right? but Greg has done it though I actually met Greg originally when I was a music director for this thing called 8 Men Music Bills and Greg was one of the writers and it was one of those moments where it was one of those kind of festivals where the writers had a weekend to write it and then the actors had a week to learn it and then Friday there was a show and in that it was a weekend to write it but it was Friday night they found out what the collaborator was and then Sunday they was the read through and I was the music director of four of them and the first three ranged from pretty bad to okay and then Greg came in with his collaborator and it was this stunningly perfect little gem but I still don't know how it's possible to write this tight hilarious heartfelt 8 Men Music Bills in a day and it was in the Sam French festival five years ago or so so it got accepted into that festival then so I always remember Greg and Greg were so damn smart and then we were both from the BMI workshop and my workshop is that your first year in the workshop is spent they give you assignments to write a song a month or so and they pair you up with a different collaborator for each one so that first year you'd work with like kind of a tenor so something like that, ten collaborators and some of them I can't ever talk to again and some of them are lifelong partners and friendships and all that and it's been kind of similar but maybe ten different writers with maybe something like that and Greg and I have written two together and it's just been a lot of fun you know I'm kind of planning to write a full link together as well and I forgot how the questions started that's a good answer no just if you want to talk about how you collaborate when you're you know in the same room or when you're working on a specific project how did you write so I sort of I think like a collaborator Amanda mentioned that sometimes you have best friends and sometimes you don't for me I I think like Andy and I have a fairly like bare knuckles method of collaboration we get along we both have like a distinct lack of strangulation marks on our neck but at the same time we're not afraid to like we both have strong ideas and we both fight for them and it's a relationship because talking together and Mike's like I was going to say that part of the trouble part of the difficulty with collaborating is when you critique each other's work as it's in the middle of being written which is tough for everybody and I've definitely learned a lot on how to give my advice or my thoughts rather you know if a lyricist could be a lyric I'd say this doesn't make sense and I think Greg and I each understand that and we back up our criticisms of each other criticisms not the right word our thoughts and reactions and feedback like agreeing with everything the other person does isn't helpful to either the collaboration or the work so it's kind of the combination of being a a decent human being getting the most you can out of the work slash like looking forward to talking to the person the next time and when you cheat those three things it's great and when you don't it's a it's a sprite adaptation a little live stream I'm general I was just going to say that sounds like my marriage I mean literally it's very funny how relationships as collaboration and how much of it is say you're sorry and willing to change but also leave it down you know back and forth bounce self-doubt and willing to raise the other person up to the level in terms of actual collaboration method I'm sure everyone up here has different techniques to use and for beginning there's I've worked with a bunch of different composers but it's all solution so I mean you Georgia earlier today was mentioning the importance of finding the language with each collaborator and so every collaborator does have a distinct language and sometimes you find it by trial and error and sometimes you just happen to lock into immediately and then once you find it you speak in that language and I think that's why so many successful collaborators stick together for such a long time because they have this way of talking that gets directly to the point and that may be something only they too can understand but they're the only ones who need to I'm glad that Georgia brought up the question of how to spend your money as a writer in ways that are going to benefit you because I have a question about that for you know everybody producers and writers perspective of YouTube and how YouTube functions in this world I've been surprised in my position of looking to hire someone for a professional job an actor or a writer will kind of look at YouTube as a source as one of the sources in figuring out if they should hire this person or not which obviously is pros and cons and then it's a conversation we have at 54 below a lot where I'm like 140 people see this and if you film it you know millions of people can see it so I'm curious what all of your perspectives are on like the pros and cons of YouTube and how that's used in your careers and in musical theater today I'll jump on this one first I think it actually echoes some of the things we brought up in the copyright conversation before this which is I think it's the creator's choice you know if I if I'm putting an evening on at 54 below and I hire a videographer and get permission from all the performers which you must do you must make the performers either sign a release or give you some sort of verbal you know agreement that it's okay including the musicians then we're creating something knowing that we're creating it from more than 140 people and actually like the Big Red Sun concert that we did as part of the Festival of New Musicals part of the reason I wanted to do it is because we didn't have any of the content from that show on YouTube and I thought there are people who will type in Big Red Sun, Georgia Stitt and nothing will come up and I was like I want to change that so people can find it and so my investment in that evening it's cheaper than making demos you know it's a good way and 140 people will see it live and there's an energy of the live performance but to me that was part of the product that I was making my friend Julia Murney was Alphaba on Wicked and she talks about how frustrating it was to be a performer in Wicked and she would get up to the end of the first act and she would be in the wings ready to come out and perform and she said as she walked down the stage you can see all the lights in the audience going all the cell phone lights come on and she thought I'm not allowed to make a mistake tonight in this performance so I'm going to go into my I'm performing for posterity mode and I'm not going to allow myself to react in a live theater way to whatever someone else chose me because some girl in Australia might be searching on YouTube and this is the video she watches and if I do something that's a little bit real or a little bit in the moment it might be too much of a risk and my voice might crack or might something so I'm not going to take that risk I'm going to do the show for YouTube and she was frustrated that her experience as a performer was changed because it was being archived without her permission and I never stopped thinking about that is that I've had interviewers say I'm going to just film your concert and then show some of it after the fact and I say no I'm filming it or you've been asked for or not necessarily to pay you can use my official video that all the performers have signed off on and I've signed off on but if we go up on our lyrics in the middle of a show in the middle of a song I don't want to worry that that's what you're going to put in your review so it's about control but it is I'm making something and so I do have that control to the point of control YouTube is a tool as is Twitter as is Facebook that I'm too old to really know about but it's really from my perspective about being able to control the brand and control the message and the way in which it's being disseminated and everyone is hopeful for those viral moments which you can't script which is the point of them being a viral moment but they also need to be part of a larger plan you know Georgia spoke very eloquently with regard to her first album and you know didn't just record Big Red Sun because there's this sort of specific idea and thought classes behind it with projects that I'm involved with as well I would like to think that I sort of overseeing the project and its totality have sort of a long view vision of how these things can sort of propel you forward in directions you want to go I think the danger sometimes is when those become distractions I'm going to open it up a little bit for more questions does anyone have a question they want to ask a question that I was just jotting down some thoughts is that there's a mentality in the theater that you can't make money out of this and I'm just like in this inquiry about this mentality and I don't it seems like it's been proven and a lot of people get disappointed and so rejected that they can't pull themselves together anymore and do another show and so they just have this reputation of you just can't make money out of it and even if you're doing a show you should put the money in anyway even if you don't make money out of it and I just think that's preposterous I really do because it happens but I think part of the reason why it happens is because people have this mentality of that is going to happen as you're going through the process so I think a shift to the mentality that you can't make money out of this needs to be like reinforced it's like I'm almost like requesting now a panel in this conversation of of how can we create an environment of yes you can make money out of this and do it without compromising you know, artistically that's the hard part you know the phrase that the very famous line in musical theater you can't make a living but you can make a killing yeah or give a laugh at that also, yeah, and the reason I'm on the drama and skill council and the reason why it's so important is it's a safeguard against eroding the rights of writers there was a thing I mean Hamilton is a show that is the exact opposite of here it's making a fortune but this middle school did an unauthorized production of it and it was fabulous and it was up on YouTube and people were like and they shut it down and the school was like you should let us do it because we're so good and the point is no, you shouldn't do it because the right of an author authors don't have unions we don't have health care but we own our work so if your show is done you can make money, absolutely it's very difficult, but of course you can but you get paid if a school a school has to license your show and do it, they can't just do it by the way, of course it is incredible that that show is inspiring so many people but it wasn't their decision to make or whether they could do it or not so being a member of the drama school council and making sure we hold on to those rights and get more rights for ourselves because we are a unique brand so I don't think anyone would disagree with you in this room that it would be terrific if those of us who are theater practitioners could have a much more steady and stable income source but there is what makes our art form unique is also in some ways its limitations when the Lion King burst out of the scene in 1997 they did not have the opportunity to then go wide immediately as a film would do they can't all of a sudden go from 3,500 screens to 6,000 screens they are limited to 2,100 seats 8 times a week and then from there that's the top that you can make Hamilton has broken that goal but it trickles down from there we are limited and what's great about what it is that we do is that it's live and it can only be done if there are multiple companies happening simultaneously that's great but you're limited to 8 performances a week 149 seats $29 a ticket that's what the market is going to bear and then from there you begin to back out how much it costs you to do it and then what's left for the creatives is sort of what you left to so I don't think anybody again in this room disagrees it's just the the sort of reality of the world in which we live I think it's I mentioned that Beth Blickers is going to host a talk later it's later today right about others it's next I'll be there the idea that if you think about what your skill set is that there are other ways to make money to support the fact that you're writing theater commercial theater is a very specific thing and there are only a few theaters on Broadway there's limited real estate everybody who does this is competing for those spots so commercial theater is where you can make the big bucks everything else is we're doing it for art and passion and we're doing it hoping to make ends meet and we're applying for grants so that nobody's expecting to get rich off their off Broadway show that played an amount for profit theater we're putting content out of the world but commercial theater you can actually really really make a lot of money if you do that but I think the thing that I'm interested to hear about later today is that as a person who writes music and knows how to write for orchestras and writes lyrics I think there are all kinds of other things that I can do that are not too far outside of the realm of what I do like writing for industrials writing for television commercials I got asked to submit a song for a Disney animated children's TV show and there are different things like that that you can do that are still under the umbrella of musical theater writer but are not actually writing for a live theater and so I think your relationship with yourself over the course of your lifetime is where is my sell out line is that all part of something that feels like I'm being an artist using my skill set or at a certain point you say I just wrote a bra commercial I'm totally sold out you know what is where is totally bra commercial I mean this is I try not to talk about it too much but my husband wrote a bra commercial and he wrote it and then the following year they asked for a follow up so he wrote it in there and those two paychecks were the biggest paychecks we got we I didn't have anything to do with that I mean I have a bra but but but in a way that sort of allowed him the time to write the other things but nobody was giving him a weekly paycheck to write the shows that he was writing so there are interesting other ways to look for supplemental income without having to totally compromise with the history for them and theater does pay not just Broadway but it's all over the country it's all over the world so there are other ways to make money in theater that is not New York and Broadway and children's theater pays and lots of people need theater and content and songs and stories so I I I I have my skill set I use as a lyricist and I don't really translate that skill set into freelance work or try to make my living that way and I think for me my just a patient there is I prefer theater writing to be the thing that I love doing as opposed to the thing that I have to do do tasks related to it that I don't like in order to scrape by the living so my method is in college I study both theater and computer and it turns out one of those pays so I day job in tech and ever since I've graduated in college I've day job in technical roles and it's been very useful in terms of like it's a relatively low stress job I can go in and put in my eight hours and before and after I have my brain back to do theater and I don't have to worry about it because like a paychecks coming from a corporation and to just have that the security there frees me up creatively admittedly like I have to wake up very early in the morning to like squeeze in writing hours before I head to the office but for me it's the sacrifice that I make as my computer income like sneaks up and up more right now I'm at a level where I can support myself if I live in Paraguay and I trust Paraguay to have access to life streams and until then when you use Google searches think of me are there any avenues that take you as a writer directly to licensing so for example the MTIs and you know that type of work right now I know that schools and community theaters they're all looking for work and then you end up seeing Fiddler 18 times you know in your city because there's only so much work out there is there anyone looking into or expanding the idea of creating work that goes sort of a straight to DVD model you know like it's the old straight to video model where you would write shows or just for that so there are a lot of different avenues and they're actually in something that we're working on it saying no French is opening up a platform for people with self license and it's actually very far down the stream there's another great platform that just launched a year and a half a call next to the new play exchange so you can put your stuff up on there and hopefully people can come along and license it and really it's not as far out there as it seems to be your own stuff license just like as a person for publishing for the licensing house for those big licensing houses that is kind of the end of the line of your work so if you're ready for your work if you're like this is it, this is it it's done, it's finished, I'm ready here you go bring it to us and we can see what we can do with it and that's kind of we really don't want you to develop it anymore that's kind of you know you can change from things and stuff like that but yeah that's what I would recommend but there are platforms out there for you to put yourself out on I just want to say really quickly we're all you know artists in this room but we're all also audience members and whenever I hear that question it's like a reminder to me that when there is a production of Fiddler going on down the block and there's also a new musical like go see the new musical send your ticket dollars to go see something you haven't heard of before it's the way that more of these shows get licensed that aren't the 10 shows we've heard of before are if these like Samuel French properties see that people are buying tickets to them and they're getting licensed more and more so like we all have that power in our pop books or go see both because Fiddler is also great sure, check it out but like go see the new staff I have a question about collaboration I'm a playwright and I just thought we're kind of musical with a composer and lyricist team so far so good but I am concerned about being a third wheel like in this team and I'm wondering if you have experience and advice and a brief person they need you they need you, I mean I can imagine that they have a little secret language that's all their own if they're a team that has been working together already but I think if they could do it alone they would have they need you there was a big public conversation recently in regards to Hamilton was it Charles Ishwood who said one of the New York Times critics said made a comment about how he thought it was strange that Hamilton had that nominated for a book Tony Award when there wasn't even book in the show because there was only lyrics and it was just shown such a lack of understanding of what a book writer does and I think I have a series in the evening of songs that I would like to turn into a dramatic evening but I can't do it when I look at that list of songs it's a concert, it's a song but what's the story and what connects it and who is the architect of that evening and who thinks about how this character is related to that character and if you enter from here the New York Times are from here but also the big themes and if we're setting this up and it pays off here you haven't written that moment and that's not how songwriters think so I would say don't undervalue your role in this trio and I think the thing that you provide your responsibility as the playwright is you're the expert on the characters and where the characters are in their emotional journey of the story so it's maybe not it's not they have dibs in terms of what it sounds like and what the musical language of the story is going to be it's all a conversation it's all back and forth dibs maybe isn't the right word but that's sort of they can feel that and that's where they live and I think you should you should feel your your mastery of the story and of the characters and to know that it's up to you to communicate in conversation with the songwriters about in this moment in the story this character is heartbroken this is why I think the music in this moment needs to express that part of what she's feeling so and if it feels I mean I've been in that place too I don't know what they're talking about they're talking about staffs and clefs and things but there is yeah it's a really it's a critical, crucial role so it might have something to do with something else and also I mean you have as much aesthetic say as they do so if they're like this sounds fabulous it's just like we're saying relative to the wrong way for the moment you'd say it doesn't feel right or I don't hear those words coming out of that character also the truth of the writer the book writer is that they're the most essential and least recognized and it's the least glamorous role so no that's been a new case it's a musical so composers are the most visible then there's the book writers so I mean that's just kind of the nature of the piece it doesn't mean you're less important but it's just sort of the least of the three but no less essential or or easy it's not certain that it's easier um yeah um it's a fine, this is your first musical so and uh are you do you consider yourself knowledgeable about the musical theater world or like do you let um in a sense you are the third wheel but it's a third wheel on a tricycle in a sense that you're gonna feel less important and the composer feels less important and the lyricist feels less important each of you has to have that humility and to say I am part of something larger and I was thinking about uh kind of how Samhain talks about the difference between lyrics and poetry where the main difference is lyrics have that part missing that requires music so he points out oh what a beautiful morning what a beautiful day I got a beautiful feeling everything's going my way which by itself is like it's fine yeah it's cute but then what do you have that music it's just transcendent you know so your book is gonna get chopped up and you're gonna see them ruin it and you gotta hold your ground too but also it's that bigger picture part of it that by giving up by sacrificing your ego of this process for each of you to sacrifice that part and create something that is great in some of the parts you're feeling the right feelings of like oh my god where's this going I love the tricycle metaphor but the book writer is the front wheel there are the only ones attached to the steering that's nice I want to thank all of our panelists for such wonderful insight see you in a few minutes