BWW Blog: Learn(ing) To Do It -- Writing for Theatre

Hey Broadway World! My name is Michael Gribble, and I'm not technically a theatre student! I am a sophomore Film Production major and Film Music minor at Chapman University in Orange, California. I've wanted to make movies since I was eight, and I'm thrilled to be learning by doing at Chapman's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. It wasn't until about three years ago that I realized I want to work in theatre as well, and subsequently began writing and composing for theatre.

During my sophomore year of high school, I played percussion in the orchestra for my school's production of Les Misérables, mainly because I wanted to play in every ensemble I could with my music buddies. But it wasn't until Les Mis that something sparked inside me. It didn't happen all at once -- I wasn't all that emotionally invested when we were learning the music in the band room every Thursday after school. But then we had sitzprobe (one of my favorite parts of the process, by the way), where I finally got a little bit of context for the music we were playing and the story we were trying to tell. After that, we were in the pit for tech week and our actual performances and, being that our pit wasn't fully underneath the stage, I was able to watch the show in full about seven times, minus a couple percussion-heavy moments that were too busy for me to be able to follow the story. The next summer, I saw Les Mis on Broadway three times.

I grew up in Madison, New Jersey, which is only about twenty miles from Times Square as the crow files. As a result, I was fortunate enough to have access to excellent theatre growing up. But it wasn't until that summer that I was making plans with my friends on our own to go into the city and see shows.

Clearly, theatre wasn't a "love at first sight" kind of thing for me. I liked it, but it wasn't until I started actually doing it that I fell in love with it. I've realized that film was the same for me -- I didn't know I wanted to make movies after I saw some spectacular movie up on the big screen; it was after my dad bought me a Flip camera and I started making silly videos with my childhood friends. I'm certainly inspired by great works of cinema and theatre that I see, but it seems I learn to love things by actually doing them, as evidenced in both film and theatre.

Since that Les Mis-filled year in high school, I've seen something like eighteen Broadway musicals and plays, some of them multiple times, with exponential adoration. Even going to college on the other side of the country, the number of shows I see each year continues to grow. Theatre is one of the main things for which I save money. Financially responsible? Maybe not. But with every show I see, I learn something new about myself and about storytelling. When I write, I constantly find myself thinking back to certain moments I've experienced in the theatre, whether it's a specific device a writer uses to to convey an idea, like Lin-Manuel Miranda's mastery of motifs in Hamilton, or the general emotions that were shared by the audience and actors for a brief period of time (I've seen Dear Evan Hansen five times, and each time has been nothing less than a wonderful, stressful, cathartic, and inspiring two and a half hours). If something makes me feel miserable, or hopeful, or overwhelmed with joy, I examine what the creative team did to make me feel that way, and how I can replicate those feelings in my own work to one day capture the attentions and emotions of an audience of my own.

It's also cool to see how my two passions overlap and differ. So much of film is inherited from theatre; editing and cinematography are pretty much the only aspects of film aesthetics that are not. Likewise, lots of great theatre, especially nowadays, is very cinematic. Take Dear Evan Hansen or Anastasia, for instance. The projections used to enhance the scenic design work wonderfully to immerse the audience in the world of the story. When it comes to writing for both art forms, it's fun to figure out what kind of piece I want to be developing. Sometimes I come up with a story idea and think to myself "That's a feature film," or "That's a one-act play." Other times, I come up with an idea and I don't yet know what it is. It could be a short film, or a feature film, or a stage musical, or a play, or a short story -- it's up to me to figure out what the story wants to be, and I won't know until I stop thinking so much and just start writing.

I still have so much to learn, and I always will, but what I do know about film and theatre I've learned from doing it and experiencing it. So if I have any advice to offer to aspiring creatives like myself, it's that. There's great theatre pretty much everywhere -- immerse yourself in it and just do it, even if you feel like you're not ready. There's nowhere to go but up!