Some exciting news
Oh, hi friends!
Last summer I started writing a musical with my friends Justin and Shoshana. We would meet on Zoom and presented songs and scenes to master class instructors through a New York Public Library program and the BMI Workshop. (David Henry Hwang! Lynn Ahrens! Susan Birkenhead! Grace McLean!)
Our group was separated by many miles — Shoshana in Manhattan, me in Brooklyn, Justin in Florida — but we kept meeting, and we kept trying.
This is what I’m learning about a long-term project. You have to dig a little, then a little more. There were many weeks when I didn’t have much to contribute, and when everyone started getting vaccinated and the feeling across the country edged from despair into excitement, there were thoughts of “Who would want to see a ‘Covid musical’ anyway?” (Fever Dreams chronicles the lives of artists and caregivers through yellow fever, Spanish Flu, and Covid-19, with an underlying optimism and hopefulness for our shared future yessss)
But still, you dig.
We even applied for a few opportunities that didn’t quite pan out. But rejection is a teacher. You remember what you wanted.
Fast-forward to today, and I’m about to pack for a two-week writing residency as this gorgeous place, the Ferguson Center for the Arts at Christopher Newport University. Our team is heading down to Newport News, Virginia to write, workshop, record demos, and dig a little bit — OK, a lot — more with our friend Ilana as our fabulous director at the New Musicals Lab.
Now we get to do the one thing we’ve been missing the most over the past year: Get in the room and do the work, together.
Progress isn’t linear. Neither is your project. Keep going anyway.
“In reality, what one gives to the public is what one wrote alone, for oneself: it is the book of the self.”
—Marcel Proust
(h/t Robby Macdonald)
If you’re currently absorbed in writing or creating alone, I hope this gives you some clarity. Is it lonely? Sometimes. Is it hard? Perhaps. But is it necessary in order for you to turn over and translate a small piece of yourself into something read by others? Yes.
Finding That Meow-lody
Cats watching Cats. (Thanks Dorie Clark for understanding the tiny intersection of two major interests)
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara