30 Days Of NYMF: Day 25 STREET LIGHTS

Street Lights
By Joe Drymala, book, music, and lyrics and Ryan J. Davis, director

It was probably halfway through rehearsals for White Noise that we said to each other, whatever show we do next, it has to involve music that people don't feel guilty singing along to. We'd been working on White Noise - a satire which featured white supremacist propaganda written in the form of teen pop music - almost nonstop for the past year, and by the time we opened it at the 2006 NYMF, we were eager for something a little more sincere, and a little less, well, Nazi propaganda-ish.

We'd both been deeply interested in politics for at least since 2003 when we met working on Howard Dean's presidential campaign (Joe was working as a speechwriter, and Ryan as a videographer and netroots organizer). We had also been devouring a few books since that time - Shame of the Nation, Can't Stop Won't Stop, Pillar of Fire - and we very much wanted to do a show that told a story of modern teenagers drawing inspiration from the civil rights movement to make some kind of local change in their community. We also knew that we wanted it to be full of music from the modern age - 21st century pop, R&B and hip hop. Our rule was that everything had to sound like it could plausibly be on the radio (and not just on Seth Rudetsky's show).

When we started working on Street Lights in 2006, the political outlook was fairly bleak for progressives (not that it's so great these days, either). The bulk of the show however was written in the heady days of 2007 and 2008 when Barack Obama began his extraordinary rise, and the optimism in the piece reflects this. White Noise painted a pretty misanthropic picture of a society easily manipulated by racist propaganda, but the story we're trying to tell in Street Lights is of a community that is reawakened by the moral voices of the younger generation. In the show, the neighborhood music has tied the community together through thick and thin, and a group of students is fighting to keep it alive, but the larger obstacles of crime, poverty and government indifference keep overwhelming them. The talented young people lead their community by using music to organize and inspire the neighbors around them to fight for social justice and change.

Since we started working on it, we've presented two benefit concert versions, Street Lights for Obama and Broadway for Barack, at the sadly now defunct Zipper Theater in 2008 and a reading in April of 2009 at Manhattan Theatre Club Studios. We are especially thrilled to be presenting the world premiere production with our old friends at the NYMF.

Visit our official site (Link: http://www.streetlightsmusical.com) for songs and videos from the show, and be on the lookout for a CD of the Street Lights music, which will be available for sale at the show & on-line in October.