30 Days Of NYMF: Day 24 PLAGUED

Plagued - A Love Story
By Vynnie Meli - Book and Lyrics

I was scraping snow off the windshield of my rental car with an unopened package of Dentyne and I was laughing. It was May - May! - and I hadn't seen snow since '07. The Day Before I was walking along the Chattahoochee River in sandals, jasmine filled the air and my azaleas had come and gone. I'd flown in from Atlanta to work on music with Casey Filiaci and I should have known. I grew up in Rochester - and with Casey. But, May?

Plagued - A Love Story is my first musical. When I'm working on a straight play (Chopped Liver in Paradise, Jim Crow and the Rhythm Darlings) it takes pages of dialog to stir an intended emotion. With Casey's music, I feel like I'm cheating. He sits down at the piano and even before the singing starts, the lyrics, the words - his beautiful music immediately brings you to that place. It's dialogue on steroids. Inconvenient snowstorm or not, working on Plagued with Casey, Mike Pallini and other wonderful, generous voices is a gift.

I took a break to check my computer and screamed out over the soundproofed walls: "We're NYMF finalists!" The email said to prepare ourselves in case we were selected. How do you prepare for getting what you want? I'd spent the first year of this journey immersed in medieval history. Did you know that if you shave the bottom of a live chicken and place it under your arm any boils you may have there will pop? That hedgehog urine had medicinal purposes? Ok, so invitations to dinner parties dwindled. I reconnected with the wunderkind of my youth, and mad high school crush, composer Casey Filiaci. And I wrote. Mostly, I rewrote.

Plagued - A Love Story is about Cinderella and Prince Charming, 20 years later. Their rebellious teenager, Dusty, wants to study science and cure the Plague, but her diva Queen Grandmother just wants to marry her off to a rich old prince. "Where is my Fairy Godmother now?" Cinderella wails. The Fairy Godmother is on Peachtree Street. She must be. It's like she waved her magic wand and turned a giant pumpkin (or that big iron peach looming over midtown Atlanta) into a yellow cab from La Guardia to Midtown. I'll stop now before I risk comparing anyone on our creative team to a dormouse. But, here I am, several years after I scribbled "Ever After is an Awful Long Time" on the unused pages of my daughter's Hello Kitty World Geography notebook. Casey and I are working with an amazing director, Samuel Buggeln and musical director, Zak Sandler, and the fabulous Kim Vasquez of Gray Lady Entertainment. Joy Dewing has brought together a dream cast that brings my characters to glorious, if a bit quirky, life.

In our show, reality abruptly crosses the drawbridge, disrupting their fairy tale world. "Magic Is So Over". But, as we start rehearsals for Plagued - A Love Story with our incredible cast and creative team, the magic is just beginning!