Musicals
Yes, I write musicals. Mostly books to musicals, with the music and lyrics penned by my good friend Matty Selman. I started with Jass (all mine) then joined Matty for Steeplechase, Young Rube, and Slow Dance With A Hot Pickup. (We are now working on a fourth: La Dottoressa, based on the life of Maria Montessori.) Matty’s music and lyrics are so wonderfully old-fashioned and at the same time so brilliantly new. I dare anyone to listen to Rube and not come out humming, a gift to an audience that is sadly too-often neglected nowadays. (I do sound a little fogey-ish on this score, pun intended.) I think what I love about writing books for musicals is the almost mathematical challenge of it all, of seamlessly (or not) stepping into an entirely different way of telling a story, mid-sentence. With musicals, as with music, it’s all about structure, and that is why the anal gods invented them.
“Young Rube” with Steve Liebman and Mana Allen.
“Young Rube” with Steve Liebman and Mana Allen.
Yes, I write musicals. Mostly books to musicals, with the music and lyrics penned by my good friend Matty Selman. I started with Jass (all mine) then joined Matty for Steeplechase, Young Rube, and Slow Dance With A Hot Pickup. (We are now working on a fourth: La Dottoressa, based on the life of Maria Montessori.) Matty’s music and lyrics are so wonderfully old-fashioned and at the same time so brilliantly new. I dare anyone to listen to Rube and not come out humming, a gift to an audience that is sadly too-often neglected nowadays. (I do sound a little fogey-ish on this score, pun intended.) I think what I love about writing books for musicals is the almost mathematical challenge of it all, of seamlessly (or not) stepping into an entirely different way of telling a story, mid-sentence. With musicals, as with music, it’s all about structure, and that is why the anal gods invented them.