Ordinary Days

The other week, I attended a meeting at Roundabout’s education department. The staff was working with their teaching artists to brainstorm lessons they could integrate into the curriculum of students who are coming to see Ordinary Days.

It was a fascinating (if somewhat self-conscious) experience to hear a group of people develop ideas based on their own perceptions of this musical that I wrote.

For example: in Ordinary Days, a whole chain of events is started because one of the characters, Deb, loses her notebook. One group of teaching artists decided that an English class could explore the idea of cause-and-effect by having students write a play starting with the sentence “I lost my _______” and create a chain of events where losing something ordinary leads to something extraordinary.

Another group came up with a lesson that examined how shifts in musical tempo and rhythm illustrated differences between a character’s private and public personas.

And on and on and on.

What was so fascinating was that there emerged such a multitude of different perspectives on the material, and they all came from looking at the same script.

It struck me that the experience of previews, which we are in the thick of as I type, is a very similar exploration of looking at a show from new and different points of view.
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There’s a saying amongst theater cognoscenti that goes:

“Musicals aren’t written, they’re re-written.”

I would say that’s half true. I mean, call me a stickler for semantics, but I’d say:

“Musicals are written. And then they are re-written.”

Maybe the reason the saying goes the way it goes is that the re-written part of it is the part more people see: actors, directors, designers, producers, stage managers, the guy who delivers the coffee filters to the rehearsal hall. The writing part happens, for all anyone knows, in dark, secret caves somewhere, all musty and underground. Or, in my case, all alone, sweating and pacing in my cramped apartment.

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…is putting it together, right? I think a wise man said that once.

Rehearsals have begun for Ordinary Days, and we kicked it off with a big “meet-and-greet”—that is, an entire rehearsal hall filled with people who are helping to put this thing together, from the amazing cast and design team to the producers and the press agents; from the people raising the money to make the show happen to the education staff who’ll be bringing student groups to see the show. It was a little overwhelming, considering that all this started a couple years ago with little ol’ me scribbling some words and notes down on a page.

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