…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.

The ‘putting it together’ part of making a musical doesn’t always come easy, especially during all that time when you don’t have a rehearsal hall full of people helping you out. When you’re writing a musical, you will inevitably, at some point, get stuck.

Hopelessly, irreversibly, bashing-your-head-against-a-wall-repeatedly stuck.

I was writing Ordinary Days during a fellowship I had at the Dramatists Guild, a program that offers young writers a forum in which to develop new work. They would bring in guest artists to hear our work and talk to us about their own creative processes. One guest artist came in, and she said, whenever she got stuck, she would take a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, without fail, something there would get her unstuck. So when I hit a wall about a third of the way in to my first draft, I took her advice and went to the Met.

(She also said she wore a large hoop skirt to the museum so that the crowds of tourists would not invade her personal or creative space. Needless to say, I did not take her up on this part of the suggestion.)

Looking back at my notebook from this trip to the Met, there are a lot of notes, in smudgy pencil, that didn’t make it into the show. Such as:

Picasso as harlequin, his favorite alter ego. Harlequin’s painted shirt matches the argyle sweater of the hipster who just walked in.

‘The Smokers,’ Brouwer
–ha! he cast his friends

But that trip to the Met turned out to be a turning point in the putting-it-together of Ordinary Days, and, in the show, the characters actually spend some time at the Met as a direct result of that visit.

About a week before rehearsals started, I got a text message from Jared Gertner, who’s playing Warren in Ordinary Days. Apparently, the cast had decided to take a field trip to the Met, and wanted to know the names of the paintings that the characters talk about in the show.

They found ‘em, and here’s one!

When I was at the Met that day, looking at this painting flipped a switch somewhere in my brain. It’s called ‘Camille Monet in the Garden at Argenteuil,’ by Claude Monet. It’s a pretty random Monet in a pretty random gallery at the Met. But there was something about it…

Of course I noticed the great wonder that is Impressionism – a beautiful metaphor that’s been noted by such great minds as Stephen Sondheim in Sunday in the Park with George and Cher in Clueless. But there was also something that struck me about the setting of the figure in this vast, impressionistic garden. The woman was made out of the same flickering, not-quite-cohesive specks of paint as the garden around her. It was a picture where the person and the place were almost impossibly tangled. To me, that entanglement was the story of that painting. In my notebook I jotted down a quick lyric, which did end up making it into the show:

This painting reminds me
Of people like us.
Thousands of tiny specks
Huddled together
In random arrangements
That nobody expects.
Every dot, on its own,
Ordinary and pale.
But thrown together
One by one
They make this dazzling
Joyous
Hopeful
Sort-of
Fairy tale.

Who knows if that was what Monet had on his mind when he created that painting. But dear old Claude and his paintbrush helped me out a little, a hundred and thirty-something years later.

I told you a lot of people are involved in making a musical, didn’t I?

And speaking of those people, there are a whole lot of them who’ll be working their butts off in offices and rehearsal studios across the city over these next few weeks to put up this show for you, our cherished, soon-to-be audience members. I can only hope that the work I’ve done in writing Ordinary Days will live up to the incredible talent and dedication of everyone who is now tangled together in the process of creating a new musical at Roundabout Underground.

Comments

1. Robin Says:
   September 11th, 2009 at 11:51 am

   Adam, we’re going to New York to see Ordinary Days in October – after reading this, I think we’ll want to make a trip to the Met to look at the pictures that the characters talk about in the show. If you still have the list, do you think you could post the names of the pictures? We would love to have that connection with the characters.

   Robin (mom of Jordi, from The Hollow – he would love to see you and Hunter after the show if possible! Though I don’t know if you’ll be at every performance.)

2. Chad Says:
   September 19th, 2009 at 10:44 am

   Adam, this is such a great story of the process you’ve taken to create this amazing musical! I can’t wait to come to the city to see it (and you, hopefully). And I agree with Robin, I’d love to know the list of paintings that you were drawn to on that fateful trip to the Met.

3. Adam Gwon Says:
   September 23rd, 2009 at 10:38 pm

   Thanks guys! Well, the two paintings that are specifically referenced in the show are Monet’s “Camille Monet in the Garden at Argenteuil” and Cezanne’s “Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses.” To see those paintings online, you can search the Met’s collections database at http://www.metmuseum.org. The show also makes more general reference to the works of Klimt, Dali, Manet, and Picasso, if you are truly up for an ORDINARY DAYS-inspired trip to the Met!

4. Kelda Says:
   September 29th, 2009 at 4:48 pm

   Adam, Dan and I can’t wait to see Ordinary Days in a few weeks! I remember the first strains of music you sent me from this show… I am so very proud of you!

5. Tom & Barb Mitchell Says:
   November 24th, 2009 at 9:42 am

   Attended the show on Sunday, November 23, 2009. Absolutely outstanding, we thoroughly enjoyed the creativity in the crisp dialogue and the paths of the actors in their search for themselves. The actors were engaging, not for a moment did we loose attention.

   Thanks for producing this thoroughly entertaining afternoon.

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