On Writing a Musical Part 1

During the 2009 Winter Break it became increasingly clear that my school, Taft High School, had precious few dollars to spend on getting the rights to do this year's musical. It was also obvious that it would be hard to find a published musical that would allow us to cast all the many girls (and the few guys) who wanted to be in it.

The solution seemed obvious, write an original musical. No problem! I can do that. Two months to do it in, plenty of time. Ah, hubris has its price.

With a little gentle nudging from our wonderful drama teacher, Julianna Olinka, I began writing on January 2nd during the last week of winter vacation. Seven weeks later it was done - printed script, piano and vocal lead sheets, and guide audio tracks for the singers. I was lucky to have a Julianna's friend, Laura Manning, cowrite the lyrics. In addition to saving me time, she did a wonderful job.

I am now almost done with the orchestration. After that, there is the overture and some incidental music to write, but most of that will be derived from already composed material so it should not take much time. It can't take much time because we open April 29th!

The next several posts will be somewhat random thoughts on the process - what I learned, and what I should do or not do next time (if there is to be a next time).