Interview: Yael Karoly Introduces BOOKTALK THE MUSICAL: THE CABARET at The Green Room 42
The 7/16 show celebrates the subculture of popular books through eleven new songs
On July 16 at 9:30 PM, BookTalk The Musical: The Cabaret will take the stage at The Green Room 42 as a celebration of the literary subculture that is BookTok and its community of fans.
The performance is poised to be an entertaining night out for anyone who enjoys losing themselves in the pages of a romantasy novel or who wants to hear their favorite tropes brought to life through a series of songs about popular, book-ish locations.
Below, read a conversation with Yael Karoly, one of the four songwriters of the project.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity
Can you tell me a little bit about how the idea for BookTalk The Musical: The Cabaret came to be?
I am a composer, and I actually just completed my second year at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as a composer, which is a really awesome musical theater composing and lyric-writing workshop that happens in the Financial District in New York City. So many famous composers and lyricists have done this project—some of the greats. While there, I met these three amazing women: Emily Everett, Lindsay Whisler, and Debi Richards. We became really, really good friends. We basically realized that we all shared this love for reading and started joking about BookTok. If you’ve ever been on TikTok, you know there’s a subgenre on TikTok called BookTok, where people talk about all the books that they’re reading and it goes super viral. People end up reading all these fun romantasy books, and they read them together and share their feelings on them. And we realized that the Venn diagram between musical theatre girls and BookTok girls is a circle.
If you like musical theatre, you probably love BookTok—anyone, not just girls. We just love the magical and the fantasy and the imagination of it all. And we realized that no one had ever written musical theatre songs about BookTok and about the tropes that we all love and hate and make fun of.
So we decided we’re going to write the songs ourselves. We put together eleven songs all about the different tropes and the relatable BookTok experiences into this awesome cabaret. And we have a great cast that’s going to sing all our songs. It’s going to be so fun.
What was your writing process like? Did you all four write together? Did you write separately?
Yeah, so the way we did it was we sat together and decided who’s interested in writing what songs, and we would pair up. Since Debi and I are the composers and Emily and Lindsay are the lyricists, we would sort of split up. I would write one song with Lindsay and one with Emily, and Debi would write one with Emily and Lindsay, and then sometimes three of us would write one song together. It was really collaborative. Everyone had their hand in it in some way, whether it was a lyric here or maybe a melody idea.
The four of us were really involved. We would sort of split up and write songs together.
What has been the most rewarding part of the project for you so far?
That’s a good question.
I think the most rewarding part so far is getting connected with other musical theatre people that love BookTok and just feeling their energy and excitement around this idea because it really is this untapped genre of musical theatre. People are really excited about it and are really excited to hear the songs and hopefully want to sing them in the future. We’ve gotten connected with so many really amazing performers.
As a composer, it’s a dream come true to get to write something that connects with so many people, especially in our niche community.
Do you have a favorite book?
Oh my gosh, yes. I just read Fourth Wing, and it totally got me into the genre. I love Fourth Wing. It’s just an easy, feel good read.
We literally wrote a whole song that’s sort of inspired by that called “Pick Me.” It’s about the pick me trope that you can find in romantasy books of girls that are so unexpectedly beautiful and strong and all the men are obsessed with them. It’s really so fun because you get to be totally immersed in the world.
Do you have anything else you’d like to add or highlight?
This whole cabaret is about the BookTok world and also just reading in general and the love that we have for reading. Actually, in this four-person composer–lyricist group that we have, we each are also composer–lyricist duos. So Emily and I are a duo and Lindsay and Debi are a duo, and we’re both separately writing full-length musicals based on books, too.
Lindsay and Debi are writing a musical based on a book called The Ordinary Princess, and Emily and I are writing a musical based on The Scarlet Letter. We’re actually going to be featuring songs from those shows, too.
It’s so fun to adapt these books and make them into musicals, as well—to further create that connection between book lovers and musical lovers.
Header photo provided courtesy of Yael Karoly
Tickets for BookTalk The Musical: The Cabaret at The Green Room 42 on July 16 at 9:30 PM are available here.
Learn more about Yael Karoly at www.yaelkaroly.com.
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