30 Days of NYMF Day 23: Party Come Here

Party Come Here
By Daniel Goldfarb

David (Kirshenbaum) and I wanted to take this opportunity on Broadway World to thank all the people that have helped get Party Come Here to its first full production.  It's especially thrilling for me, to see it up on it's feet, as it was a play (called Jack, Jesus, and the Brazilian Marrano) before it was a musical.

Party Come Here has a lot of "me" in it.  It's inspired by a trip I took to South America, as well as a documentary on the crypto-Jews of New Mexico I happened to see one lazy afternoon on TV.  Tonally, it takes its cues from such disparate sources as Philip Roth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Christopher Durang, and Sergio Mendes.

There are a lot of people who helped me develop the material as a play before I ever thought of it as a musical.  I'd love to thank my writer's group, my mentors, and all the amazing actors and directors that I got to work with as the play was finding its feet.  And I want to thank my friend Kate Jennings Grant for introducing me to David, for giving him the play to read, and for thinking it may be a musical.

Party Come Here wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for three developmental readings that really helped shape the material and really take it from being a play to a musical; the first at Theatreworks in California, the second at the Roundabout Theatre Company, and the third as part of the 2005 NAMT festival.  We have been truly blessed to have had the most fantastic talent work with us on this project, on stage and off. 

Which brings me to the group that we have for NYMF.  It is humbling.  I am thrilled to be working with Hunter Foster for the third time (our first musical!).  Kerry Butler and Karen Olivo, the two principals new to the project are so talented and charming and kind, it's a joke.  This is Kaitlin Hopkin's third time with us, and we couldn't be luckier.  I saw Terrence Mann in Cats when I was 9 and I wanted to BE him - now he's in a show I wrote!  And Fyvush Finkel's warmth and joy and love of performing is infectious and inspiring to all of us.  In twelve days (four of them half days), they did the work one usually does with three of four times as much time.  And they did it with enthusiasm and generosity.

Putting a show up at NYMF is crazy (four hours of tech?!).  But there's also something about it that is so pure.  We're grateful.