Interview:Douglas Waterbury-Tieman and Sarah Aili of THE FIRST STAGE at Analog

Presented by New Musical Theater Nashville in partnership with ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), The First Stage gives local Nashville composers and writers a chance to showcase their new work by performing 45-minute excerpts from original musicals in development. Presented quarterly, the concert series is held in the Analog Lounge at the Hutton Hotel. I had the privilege of attending the last entry in the series back in June. There, I was introduced to country musicals like Oil and Whiskey and Johnny and the Devil’s Box. I shall attend the next entry on September 12th, and I will be introduced to Fetching Water and Yeti Or Not. In preparation for the event, I got to have a little chat with some lovely folks from NMTN; Executive Artistic Director Douglas Waterbury-Tieman and Executive Producer Sarah Aili. Although they weren’t present for the interview, I still wish to mention two individuals who did a lot for this project. The first is Meredith DiMenna, who serves as Director of Marketing and Programming at Analog. The other is Emilia James, who serves as the Manager of Nashville Membership at ASCAP. Douglas Waterbury-Tieman and Sarah Aili share the backstory behind The First Stage, the shows in the next lineup, and their plans for the concert series’s future. 

Back in 2024, Douglas Waterbury-Tieman and Sarah Aili performed together in Nashville Repertory Theatre’s production of Waitress as Ogie and Jenna, respectively. From that point on, Douglas would invite Sarah to perform her own work in this other concert series that he did. “We had both been inspired by the possibility for collaboration between the singer-songwriter world and the musical theatre world here in Nashville,” Douglas stated, “and everything just sort of came together with a couple of thumb balls.” It was sometime in the summer of 2025 that Sarah brought up an idea for a series at the Analog Lounge. With some help from Emilia James from ASCAP and Meredith DiMenna from Analog, the idea came to light. Even though this series is for shows that are still trying to get their name out there, not everything has to be brand new. “A lot of them have done small readings before,” Sarah said. “It’s not shows that have just been written. They definitely have some legs under them, but they’re still a fresh new piece of theatre and music.” Douglas and Sarah are providing the writers with the space they need to share their work. She sweetly compared it to cooking by stating, “You need to cook things in a pot for a while, stir them up, and make them yummy and juicy. You can’t do that without the heat and the pot of the space.” Everything needs to marinate first. Testing the pieces in front of an audience can help the writers figure out what works and what needs improvement. 

Before I continue, I’d like to add a quotation from Meredith Dimenna, Director of Marketing and Programming at Analog. She wasn’t present for the interview, but we still asked her for a quote. Here’s what she had to say: “The First Stage really started with a conversation and a shared belief that Nashville's musical theater community was growing in exciting ways. Sarah Aili and Douglas Waterbury-Tieman had a vision to channel that energy into something lasting, creating a recurring series where writers and composers could share new work and connect with audiences. Sarah facilitated the introduction to NMTN, and together we saw an opportunity to build a platform dedicated to developing original musical theater right here in Music City. Sarah, Douglas and I are all ASCAP writers and we connected with Emilia James, who immediately understood the potential of the series and helped link it to broader national efforts supporting new work. We're proud that The First Stage creates meaningful opportunities for emerging creators while helping strengthen Nashville's place in the future of musical theater.” 

So, how do musicals get selected for The First Stage? As of right now, there is no website for writers to submit their works for consideration. However, that will hopefully become a possibility in the future. For the first season of the concert series, Douglas and Sarah either tested things out with their own works or took recommendations from people they knew. A friend of theirs recommended Oil and Whiskey, which was featured in the previous concert. That friend forwarded them to the show’s creators, writer Dax Wiley and musician Kit Nolan, and that’s how the honky-tonk musical came to Analog. Since this is only the first year of the series, it is occurring quarterly, and they are carefully picking out musicals that they think audiences would like to see. 

To help test out the project, Douglas and Sarah provided some of their own projects to the lineup. For the very first concert, Sarah and Meredith presented their own one-woman shows. When I last attended the series, Douglas presented his own musical, Johnny and the Devil’s Box. Sarah was happy for the opportunity because she got to present her piece in front of the audience before looking back at the video footage to take notes. Getting to experience the purpose of the series firsthand gave Sarah, Douglas, and Meredith an idea of how it would be for the potential creators they would bring to the stage. “Now we all know what this event feels like,” Sarah said. “That will give us a better perspective when we do align with the right shows that are in the right time to onto The First Stage at Analog.” Douglas added that they trust the process enough to put themselves into it. As a seasoned performer, he understands the anxiety of going first, and it only seemed fair for him to be one of the first to present a show. “It’s not very polite to ask someone else on your lineup to sing first,” he said. “You should do your song first as you’re performing and producing.” It’s a gracious thing to take the pressure of being first off of a fellow artist. 

Later on in the interview, Sarah included some more information on how they select shows. After listening to some clips of the songs and some light stalking of the shows on social media (Sarah’s words, not mine), they would try and pick a good variety of shows. After having two one-woman shows for the first concert and two country musicals for the second concert, they plan to switch things up so that the entire night isn’t full of the same thing. She also added a special requirement for the shows up for consideration, and this ties in with the involvement of ASCAP. “At least one of the writers involved in each show needs to be an ASCAP member,” she shared. She mentioned that Emilia James from ASCAP has been at every show and is “open door policy with anyone who’s interested”.  Having already been an ASCAP member as a songwriter for several years, Sarah discovered through Emilia that there’s a whole musical theatre section of ASCAP that she wasn’t aware of. “There’s funding for musical theatre writers and there’s support,” she shared. “They can keep track of the different songs that are out in the world so that the writers can be paid. It teaches them the business side of being a writer and a creator.” 

The shows that will be presented at the Analog on September 12th are Fetching Water and Yeti Or Not. I can’t say much about the premise of each show or what to expect, but I can share how these shows made it to The First Stage. Fetching Water: A Musical Tale was created by writer Leslie Becker and composer Michael Hunsaker, the latter of whom came up with the original concept. Douglas first met Leslie when the two of them performed together at 54th Below in NYC back in either 2017 or 2018. He provided the backup fiddle for an original song that she had written, and she had already performed in Broadway musicals like Amazing Grace and Bonnie and Clyde by that point. The two of them reconnected after she moved to Nashville. “As I started gathering email lists of writers in town,” Douglas shared, “she was one of the first people to get on that list.” Yeti Or Not: A Bigfoot Musical was written and composed by Brandon Marks, Sean Richards, and Derek Hughes (with Abby Nelson providing additional materials). Right off the bat, Douglas described the team as “driven” for their promotion of the show through social media. While Fetching Water had been in development for over a decade, Yeti Or Not is basically a newborn baby musical. “They are just hungry to get their work out in front of people,” Douglas said. As for how they made their way to The First Stage, Douglas said that he had met them through “friends of friends of friends”.  He had only spoken to them on the phone, and he is just as excited to meet them in person as they are to present their piece. Funnily enough, there are other Bigfoot-themed musicals in development as we speak (according to Douglas), but I’m sure that Yeti Or Not will be a rare sight worth seeing.

As the interview came to a conclusion, I brought up that The First Stage has two types of audience members. Type One is people who participate in musical theatre in some capacity, and Type Two is people who watch musicals without participating in them. I asked Douglas and Sarah what they’re hoping that Type One will take away from the concert. It is Douglas’s goal to create an established and supported community of writers in Nashville. “I think it’s very possible that Nashville has the most musical theatre writers in one city,” he said. “Maybe after New York, maybe after La. There might be more here than LA.” Given how Nashville is literally known as Music City, there’s no knowing how many musical theatre writers are waiting to bring their work to life here in the city. Sarah added that since she has her foot in multiple worlds from musical theatre to songwriting, she had songwriter friends who are not involved in musical theatre come up to her and say, “You know, I’ve had a musical in my mind forever. I just thought I could never do it.” She wants those kinds of writers to come to The First Stage and realize that they can, in fact, do it. It doesn’t have to look like a typical Broadway show; just collaborate with someone who can help tell a story. I mean, a couple of people came together to write Urinetown. “My goal is for the line between writing, theatre, and music to become more blurry,” Sarah admitted. “Let there be places where they cross over a lot, and the bride is not so steep.” Everyone is a storyteller, and she doesn’t want ‌potential creators to section themselves off. 

After discussing Type One, I asked Douglas and Sarah what they are hoping that Type Two will take away from the concert. Sarah has a friend who is a heavy metal singer and hates musical theatre with a passion. “I hate musical theatre. The jazz hands. The music. I can’t stand it. It’s too happy.” Well, that friend went to see Sarah star as Jenna in Waitress. Not only is it based on the movie of the same name, but it was also composed by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles. She was already an established artist before she made her Broadway debut, and even served as a replacement for Jenna during the show’s run. Sarah asked her musical-theatre-hating friend to come and see her play Jenna, and the friend ended up seeing the show three times. She was surprised by how different the art form can be. “Musical theatre is about human stories being told onstage with music,” Sarah explained. “It’s happening in the music world all the time. It’s just that the songs are broken up by the switch of a channel or the flip of a track.” She also explained how a story can be told throughout an album, citing artists from the Beatles to Michael Jackson to Dolly Parton. Speaking of the late great Dolly, she had been writing and recording albums for years before making it to the musical theatre world. She blurred the lines between music, theatre, and movies with storytelling. Sarah got a good vision of what The First Stage could be when she performed at the first concert. “There were rockers to theatre people to just hungry and passionate people.” Plenty of lines are being blurred, and it is beautiful. As for Douglas, he said, “Art can’t happen without an audience. I mean, it can, but if you really want it to have staying power, then you’d want to create a community. You need to encourage your audience.” 

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