Student Blog: Every Musical Starts as an Idea

Every single musical ever written started as simply an idea. Someone had to sit down and brainstorm every character, every scene, every music note, and how it all comes together to make a complete show that has meaning and can be understood.

There are so many popular musicals we all know and love. There are Broadway shows around the world that are lined up with audience members wanting to hear a story and creatives hoping to retell the story. But so many people disregard the process of developing those stories. We forget to think about the foundation of it all. What was the inspiration behind the show? What was the process of writing and executing it? Why is that character exactly the way they are and singing the exact things they’re singing?

I want to share my current experiences with New Works in Musical Theater, and why I think everyone should support and get involved with it, and connect with a writer!

My Experience

For those of you who don’t know me, I am in my third year at Berklee College of Music in Boston. The school offers many majors and minors in all aspects of music, including performance and various forms of production and writing. One thing I love about the program is the minor in Musical Theater Writing. Although I, myself, am not an MT writing minor, I have gotten to know many people who are, and as a performer, having the chance to get involved in original projects has taught me a lot. I wanted to list some of the things I’m working on right now, as I recently realized every theater-related show I’m performing in this semester is involved in New Works.

Curtain Up! New Musical Theater Songs by Berklee Students

Every year, Berklee performs a showcase called “Curtain Up!” at the Berklee Performance Center (Directed by Julius Williams III and David Reiffel). This is a show that highlights songs that are fully written, orchestrated, and performed by Berklee students. It features all sorts of songs and scenes from various writers. This year, I’m part of the 14-person cast that helps execute all of these songs. We have been in rehearsals all semester, learning the songs and choreography, all while other students are arranging and orchestrating the songs, since they all started off as Piano/Vocal scores. 

This year, each cast member has at least one song where they are featured in a soloist role, so everyone essentially gets the chance to originate a role, which is so cool to say. That means all 15 of us are going through the process of finding our characters’ motives, personalities, and mannerisms without any references. I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing everyone’s characters come to life (including my own!). In addition, the orchestrators have to find the characteristics of the song and figure out things like instrumentation, themes, and style, just to name a few of many.

I highly recommend you check out the livestream (or come to the BPC if you’re in Boston!) on April 28th to see all of this hard work make its way to the stage. TICKETS AND INFO HERE

Musical Theater Writing Vocalist

Recently, I took on a Student Employment job as a Vocalist for some of the Musical Theater Writing classes at Berklee. I am a part of a few projects that will be presenting Staged Readings at the end of the semester. During the rehearsal process, we have been working with drafts of the scripts and scores, meaning they are constantly changing as the writers and directors make discoveries through the rehearsal process. As an actor, I’ve gotten to see the direct inspiration behind many of the ideas and choices made in the script and music, and how much collaboration plays into all of it.

Berklee Course- "Theater for Young Audiences: Creation to Performance"

Okay, I know I said I’m mainly a performer (and I am!) but I actually do have an experience to share as a writer. This semester, I’m enrolled in a course called “Theater for Young Audiences: Creation to Performance” (taught by Professor Rene Pfister). The class involved being paired in groups of about five people and working together to write a 10-minute musical to be performed virtually for children around the world. All of the people in my group come from different writing backgrounds. There’s me, who pretty much just had experience from my Contemporary Writing minor and never wrote for MT, then there were songwriters and MT writers. I think my group worked really well together, and it was so interesting to be part of the writing process, not only for the songs, but also for the storyline and the message as a whole. I never realized how much intention goes into every word and note in the script until I was directly a part of the brainstorming and execution together.

Seeing Performances

For the people who are fans of watching Musical Theater, you should be on the lookout for original musical showcases in your area! Outside of classes, I’ve gotten the chance to watch my friends bring their musicals to life at local venues all around Boston. It’s incredibly hard for college students to put on shows like this because they have to be entirely self-sufficient in things like venue booking, paying for everything financially, organizing all of the logistics, including rehearsal and performance dates, auditions, finding orchestrators, creatives, and cast members, and promotion to help with selling tickets. That’s all in addition to literally writing the whole thing.

My friends who have done this never fail to impress and inspire me, and it is so cool to see all their hard work pay off.

What I've learned

With these experiences, I want to share my learning experiences from everything I’ve witnessed and participated in, especially over this semester.

Originating characters

On the performer side, I have had so much fun learning from the experience of originating a character in a new production. I used to always find inspiration for roles through the performances of others. But for new works, you’re lucky to even get a demo of a song, which leaves it up to you to find the character (with the help of the writers and directors). This has allowed me to step out of my comfort zone and find my own inspiration. I discovered that I love putting together playlists of other songs that give me a vibe of the character, and listening to the playlist on my walks to rehearsal. Also, being able to collaborate directly with the creative team and learn how they envisioned the character as they were written can be incredibly insightful.

How much work goes into writing a musical (!!!)

Additionally, on the writer side, getting to learn about the process of writing a musical through my time at Berklee was also wonderful. Even just for a 10-minute musical, my group did a ton of brainstorming behind things like musical motifs/themes, connecting everything in the storyline, and the lesson that we wanted the audience to leave with, among many other things. There were so many instances where I thought to myself, “How does someone do this for a full-length show?” because of how much thought went into every moment and every note. Experiencing that first-hand has taught me so many things that I won’t take for granted in the future. And seeing my peers actually doing it for a full-length show has been nothing short of inspiring.

Final Remarks

When you get involved Musical Theater Writers and New Works, you get to discover new music and allow someone to keep pursuing their artistic dreams, which is a LOT more work than it looks like.

Every successful musical was once a New Work, and before that, it was simply an Idea. So go support the newer productions in your area, because truly, you never know who will write the next hit. It could also be you!!