The Morning of the First Preview

In the wee small hours of the morning (alright it's 831am)as my space heater hums and the snow is coming down I am contemplating our first NYC audience for The Road to Qatar! Happily for me there is a rehearsal today to clean some stuff up, put in a few tiny changes and rehearse them. But ultimately it's like letting your baby go to school for the first time. This baby went to pre-school in Dallas and did pretty well for itself. But now the poor Qatari is about to face New Yorkers who paid money to sit in the dark and be entertained. I grew up as a New York audience. Saw my first show in 1967 and fell in love with musicals. So I know that New York audiences are wonderful people. But that doesn't stop mommy and daddy from wanting to still keep control of our little bubala. Losing control is hard. I won't be able to run up and fix a line or change a lyric. Hell, we just wrote a whole new song that has been rehearsed for one whole day. But that's fun. The fixing, the writing, the fiddling. It's the watching without control that can give you an ulcer. But I am breathing deeply and trusting in this fabulous cast of Bruce Warren, Bill Nolte, Sarah Stiles, Keith Gerchak and Jamie Beaman...trusting in the great band of 5 strong and trusting that our baby can walk and dance and sing and entertain the world in a time it really needs it. Something funny is going on in the Middle East and it's The Road to Qatar! So get ready, Daddy. It's time for baby to take it's first steps and speak it's first words...oh my God, the baby speaks Arabic~! Shukran! Shukran to all.

From Good to Verse

In my last post, I talked all about the wonderful new verse we wrote for the lovely song The Other Side of the World. The truth is The Other Side of the World was one of the first songs written for The Road to Qatar! I once had a verse that began with the words "Ever since 9/11..." It was original written as the song for one of the guys to convince the other to go to the Middle East. It switched characters and finally found it's home as a duet late in the show. And it worked. In Dallas. It worked fine. But shows change and the chemistry of the book, music, lyrics, set, cast, lighting etc. changes the feeling of it all. And add a verse to the song that is really right to transition and right for the characters and suddenly the old song itself didn't seem as right. Sure it would work. But why couldn't the characters sing more in their real quirky, natural, funny vernacular? Why retain the poetic nature of the song? Well, it was worth an experiment. So I wrote several versions of a lyric that would say the same thing ultimately, but say it in a style that was keeping more with the show that surrounded it. Of course, it would have wonderful to have written the new song BEFORE rehearsals started, or even early in the short but wonderful rehearsal process...but there was no way of truly knowing what was needed until we saw the show in run thoughs...so here is where the craft comes in. Here's where you can't be scared. Here's where you write the lyric and your brilliant collaborator David Krane writes the music and you refine it and send it off to the wonderful actors who now have the task of learning it and getting it into the first preview of the show in a day. It's like the old days out of town. Jerry Herman playing Before the Parade Passes By for Carol Channing. Rodgers and Hammerstein giving Gertrude Lawrence Getting to Know You. Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim writing Smile Girls for Ethel Merman in Gypsy (okay so they cut it after one performance...never mind!) Writing musicals is not like writing a prescription. It's some other kind of alchemy that makes it all work and you gotta be...flexible...and on your toes, as Larry Hart wrote. So all those years of writing special material and fast, is like a warm up for when you really have to do it. When all eyes and ears are on you. You deliver. Tomorrow I will hear a whole new song called Who Knows...too bad the playbill will call it The Other Side of the World. Well, that's what inserts are for.

On the Wonderful Road to Qatar!

Well, January is swiftly flying by. We are now in the home stretch before the first preview of The Road to Qatar! We began rehearsals right after New Years with a marvelous comically brilliant cast, only two of whom did their roles last year in Dallas. The space at the York Theatre Company is ideal for this show. Last year we did it on a large stage and it worked, but now with the intimacy and smaller scale, combined with a really clever set and bold comically colorful costumes and props, the show is finding it's natural home. It was born for off-broadway and that's where it's going. Although we did very well in Dallas, got wonderful reviews and were named Best New Musical of 2010, we have continued to hone and change and rewrite to make it even better. Just yesterday, during the first tech rehearsal we added a button for the opening song Come Down to Dubai and wrote (in record time) a short verse for the only ballad in the show. Why a new verse? The song played well in Dallas. Our wonderful director Phillip George had a smart thought. After 80 minutes of brakeneck farce and comedy we are suddenly putting on the brakes to take a moment and figure out why the boys (the two short writers of musicals) are even doing this when everything points to imminent disaster. The song tells us that they have a bigger purpose (they are only discovering that for themselves) to bring peace and love to the other side of the world. Subtexually they two very different personalities bond during this song. They finally become friends for good. So to get over the hurdle of just slamming on the comic breaks, we wrote a verse to the song, which emerges from one of the writers melting down. Michael answers him in song that is in the new verse uptempo and funny but slowly as he says, "who knows" slows down to something more questioning and contemplative

JEFFREY
Why are we doing this? Did we do something wrong in some past life? Why are we here?

MICHAEL
SURE, WE'RE UP TO OUR ASS IN CAMEL CRAP
THE PRODUCTION COMPLETELY BLOWS
AND YOU ASK ME WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?
WHO KNOWS? WHO KNOWS?

WHO KNOWS WHY WE WERE CHOSEN?
WHO KNOWS HOW WE WERE FOUND?
BUT SOMEHOW WE BOTH HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE CHANCE
TO MAKE A JOYFUL HEALING SOUND
AND THAT SOUND WE CREATE
WILL REVERBERATE FAR AND WIDE
BRINGING PEACE AND LOVE
TO THE OTHER SIDE
OF THE WORLD

ETC.

I am very proud of this new rewrite. The interesting part is that on the weekend, we all decided, no changes for this week until the previews. But meanwhile with the input of the theatre and our own instincts, we have put in about 18 changes including this new verse. Today the band of five strong meets the cast of five strong and they will make beautiful music together for the first time. The Road continues...Next week we face our first audience. It's terrifying and exciting and every other emotion you can wish for or not wish for. I am confident and scared all at the same time. This show is unique. It's our lives up there. But then when you write with passion and love, isn't it always your life up there?