My friend Suzy Conn has written a great insider article on the process of creating, mounting and succeeding with an indie musical. Suzy wrote and shepherded her musical Plane Crazy and has had amazing success with it, but it's been an astonishing amount of work to go from idea to execution:
Long story short, as I head into a two-week Toronto workshop of a revised PLANE CRAZY I am still juggling all three — book, music and lyrics. I am very lucky to be able to "test" the changes that I made coming out of NYMF so quickly. And I am particularly lucky to be doing it in a school setting where I can focus on the work itself through a fairly luxurious rehearsal process, and not be freaked about the "performance" deadline.
The Sheridan College musical theater program is the premier musical theatre school in Canada and is devoted to the development of new musicals. Part of this is very practical because the students benefit through exposure to the process of workshopping a new work — working with a writer, getting new pages constantly, and originating a role.
Working with this cast and the wonderful director Marc Richard I am continuing to evolve the piece as we rehearse because I feel free to experiment. For example, I came into the rehearsal process with two new songs, and I've just added a third new song! As I work with Marc, I'm discovering new things in my own work! Very cool.
