Jack!

Okay, so the thing I’ve been working on for at least a couple years now (how long? I’ve lost track), the musical based on my high school diary — incidentally, how happy am I to have that tight little description at hand when people ask me what I’m working on: it’s evocative, terse, and it resonates with shows (Dear Evan Hanson, Be More Chill, which are not substantively much if anything like my show, except in the broadest general way but “I’m writing a musical based on my high school diary” gives people’s brains a place to land) that are getting a lot of attention right now in the musical theater world? — which started as a bio-musical of Horatio Alger, became a mashup of Horatio Alger and my high school diary, and then shed the Alger story — is now 13 songs and 95 pages long.

I sent the songs and draft to a trusted friend and colleague for feedback. He’s the first and only one to read it. They (they?) always say that when you finish your first draft you should put it aside and let your brain settle a bit before going back to re-write. So that’s where I am.

The obvious next choice would have been to take up the Horatio Alger musical, which spun off on its own, and I envision it as a more conventional book musical, because I’ve already written 3 songs for it. But I think I’d like to wait on that one. I think I might want to just write the songs and find someone else to write the book, someone with experience writing a conventional book.

I’d like to start something further afield. For a long time I’ve wanted to make a musical set in the Gold Rush. There’s tons of great queer stuff in there. But something in me is resistant to another piece requiring a lot of historical research. That muscle is still sore from the Hester Prynne musical. And I feel drawn to create a story out of thin air.