Never saw myself as a musical writer, but...

[breakinglight11]

I've undertaken a new project lately, one I'm kind of surprised to see myself working on. While modeling, I happened to comment to one of the photographers I was working for that I was a playwright. He said he was a musician who has always wanted to write a musical, might that be something I'd be interested in collaborating on? We talked about it a bit, and it seemed like we'd be able to work together, so we're given it a shot!

I mentioned back in October that I'd been wanting to work on a story that was outside my typical milieu, about somebody other than my usual white cishet subjects. The story of Lillian Holland, a character from my thesis play Mrs. Loring, sprang to mind, as in a conversation with iagotolycus we decided that she'd burn down part of the mental hospital, run away to Chicago, and found a speakeasy jazz club. I decided to go for it with this, and proposed a project about a young black girl named Josie trying to make it in the big city in the 1920s, in which Lillian is a supporting character. My collaborator, whose name is Troy, liked the 20s-era musical styles like jazz and big band, so that's what we're going with. I like the idea of a putting forth a story with a WOC lead, plus a diverse supporting casts including women, queers, and other people of color. It's something new for me as well as something different for the musical theater canon, and we'll be creating substantial roles for black actors. This week I outlined the plot, and while it will almost certainly need some tweaking, I mostly have the structure of the story nailed down.

I'm surprised to find myself working on a musical. They're far from my favorite form of theater, and I know next to nothing about music. But it seems like it's a lot more similar than I thought it would be to writing a straight play. Troy is very serious about seeing this get put on, so I'm happy to be part of a show that's likely to see production. As Steph said, "You're going to get famous from writing musicals and you're going to hate it."