SHOW HISTORY

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PASSAGES ARE PROBABLY OF NO INTEREST TO ANYONE BUT THE AUTHOR HIMSELF. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK…READING BEYOND THIS POINT MAY RESULT IN ENUI INDUCED VOMITING.

Child's Play
The idea of musicalizing a contemporary adult version of the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme occurred to me several years ago, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around a hook. Although the idea continued to nag at me, I abandoned the idea and moved on to other projects. In the Spring of 2000, I was exploring subjects for a children’s musical and thought I had settled on putting a new spin on Alice In Wonderland and/or Alice Through The Looking Glass. In researching the many nursery rhymes used in Lewis Carroll’s classic tales, I began thinking how interesting it might be to expand and musicalize one of them. The obvious choice seemed to be the most famous—Jack and Jill.

Like most people I only knew the first stanza of the beloved children’s tale. Once I read the second stanza, which is rather bizarre even for a nursery rhyme, my imagination started working. I became very interested in nursery rhyme analysis. Who would have thought that so many educated ADULTS would spend so much time thinking about nursery rhymes? But alas, I found books, internet sites, and magazine articles dedicated to every aspect of this nursery rhyme. Discussed topics include the sexual implications of Jack and Jill’s sojourn up the hill, the intended metaphor for maturation, women’s contribution to the downfall of men, and most importantly, the comparison and contrast between nursery rhymes and fairy tales.

I suddenly realized that nursery rhymes weren’t kids’ stuff…they were serious business. Furthermore, it seemed that all of Mother Goose’s short versed tales had been put under this much scrutiny, and I immediately read the full versions of every nursery rhyme ever written. The idea of musicalizing Jack and Jill in a new and unorthodox way was finally becoming clear and where I had begun looking for a children’s musical, I ended with a pretty strong concept for a full-length “grown up” musical. I had found my hook: nursery rhymes vs. fairy tales.

Now, if nursery rhymes really had as much substance as scholars and enthusiasts were braying about, then why were they so short changed? I mean, they really are trivialized next to fairy tales. What if it was my life? Wouldn’t I rather have the grandeur of a fairy tale? The existence of an actual storyline? My own book instead of one poem in a collection? Yes, damn it! I would! I would want a fairy tale!

Considering that Into The Woods already explored the fairy tale world and cracked the façade of “happily ever after,” I wanted to stay as far away from concentrating on fairy tales in Jack & Jill as possible (Outside of one song in which Jill tells “the truth” about all of the fairy tale heroines, I tried to keep the fairy tale references to a minimum in favor of grounding the characters firmly in Nursery Rhyme Land). However, because Jack and Jill aspire to turn their nursery rhyme into a fairy tale, I thought it important to research fairy tales, and key into their allure, their sexiness, their magic. Not only did I read Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, but I thought it valuable to peruse Aesop’s fables, which led to Jack’s plea, “Get on the phone to Aesop ASAP…and make things happen!”

The Goose Is Born
It was finally time to write this musical. I began by brainstorming a list of words, phrases, and images that I thought of when given the themes of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. One thing I concluded from this exercise was that similarly to all of the intricate analysis of these rhymes, everything would be initially simple in name and function, but ultimately over-complicated. For instance, although I knew my characters’ world was going to simply be called Nursery Rhyme Land, it was important to create a very real world with rules, social norms, and hierarchy. A hierarchy that begins and ends with Mother Goose.

It was decided that Mother Goose would be a fowl with a sick sense of humor who ruled Nursery Rhyme Land and wrote all of the rhymes, consequently deciding the lives of all of her subjects. The only way to escape was to be deemed worthy of a fairy tale; a decision assumed to be Mother Goose’s. I was certain that I did not want Mother Goose to appear in the musical. Rather, I wanted to make her presence so strongly felt that she would become God-like or reminiscent of an unseen killer in a psychological thriller. Always keeping the appearance of a loving mother but labeled a tyrant by many, her implications are wide and open to interpretation.

Jack and Jill
After developing this force with no stage time, I had to decide on the characters that would actually have lines and songs. Obviously, Jack and Jill were my leads, and I knew long ago that they would be adults, not children (making them children was part of Mother Goose’s cover up). Outside of that, I was unclear on who else I needed to tell their story, or even what their story was. If you look back on my notes, there are dozens of nursery rhyme characters mentioned including wolves that trap Jack and Jill up on the hill. All of these characters provided great one-liners or visual gags, but weren’t functional for two acts. I went back to Jack and Jill. What did I want their story to say?

I wanted their tale to have resonance with the audience; something that could have significance in modern times, and not be just some cute spin on a kids’ poem. When talking about a recent setback in her life, a woman I know once said, “I’ve played it by the rules! This shouldn’t be so hard.” That statement inspired what the story grew into and ended up making Jill the protagonist over Jack. The fears, questions, and regret that filled that statement filled Jill. A story about a woman so determined to obtain a goal and so fearful of what she’ll become if she doesn’t obtain it that she destroys a person offering a different dream. Of course, in order to be a musical, I would supply her with redemption in the end. Add to that a land of talking animals, some great songs, and comedy, and I could call it a day.

Jill was so clearly complex and complete from the get-go. Acidically biting, reluctantly vulnerable, and overly intelligent; the child of a broken home; a working professional, an internist to be exact; and attractive. Jill was going to be a fighter. In the course of the show she would learn what to fight for.

Jack wasn’t as clear to me in the beginning, and since he shared her dream, he started out as callous and tunnel-visioned as Jill. That had to change. It didn’t feel right on Jack. And then their big difference hit me: whereas the dream made Jill sad and fearful, Jack found the dream exciting and hopeful. The rest of Jack fell into place: he was open, honest, heartfelt, optimistic, and naïve; he worked with his hands (he started out as a plumber, but I soon changed him to a gardener to better fit in with the ending); and attractive. Jack would be the perfect doormat for Jill. In the course of the show Jack would learn how to be a fighter.

The Others
After I brainstormed song ideas and outlined their story, it became clear that the only other characters that were needed were one person for Jack to talk to about Jill, and one person for Jill to talk to about Jack. I set about choosing and creating characters that would be more than functional, and ended up with Georgy Porgy and Bo Peep. Each attained a history, but I was going to have to wait and see how that history fit into the show.

That summer I wrote the lyrics to “Bo Peep’s Lament.” Part of the reason that I chose her as a character was to use the play on words in that song because I felt that it could best illustrate Mother Goose’s “fowl” play. After completing the first draft of the song, I stopped. For no reason that I can remember, I didn’t touch Jack & Jill for nine months. The reason I found to come back to it was the composer, Jason Loffredo.

The Music
I knew from the beginning that I wanted the show to have a distinct musical style, and keeping with the small cast size, I thought that using a jazz trio would be really cool. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a composer to work with on the project.

In the summer of 2001, I began working with Jason Loffredo on The News In Revue in the Berkshires, MA. We started talking about writing together, and I pulled out “Bo Peep’s Lament.” I explained my concept for a jazz score, which he liked, and we decided to see how we worked together. Excited by the mere prospect of a partnership, I dusted off my notes and began writing a first draft of the script.

Jason composed, asked me to re-write a verse, I did, he went back to work, we talked through it, he fixed some things, and we had our first song.

Actually, the band was just a band until Jason made them “BAAA!” in the middle of Bo Peep’s song. I couldn’t have them in the world of the characters unless they were characters themselves. Thus, the Three Blind Mice were born, one of the show’s conventions that I’m most married to, and which supplied a great many comic possibilities as I wrote the book.

We wrote diligently through the summer, and by the summer’s end we had a complete first draft of book and lyrics, and four songs finished. Over the fall, winter, and spring, I worked out of town and the distance made it difficult to make any real progress on the show. Jason managed to write a song or two, and I had a living room reading and fine tuned the libretto, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2002, when Jason and I worked together again, that we took some great strides on writing the score.

The work continued through the fall, and we decided that with the score ¾ finished, we should make a demo recording. Our intention was to have a sampling of the music that we could give to people to generate excitement about being part of Jack & Jill’s future. We gathered extremely talented singers (Daniel Cochran, Katie Adams, Evan Harrington, Melanie Kann, and Brian Golub) and some kick-ass musicians (Wil Jordan, Skip Ward, and Joe Choroszewski), rented a studio in New Jersey, and recorded live on January 27th, 2003.

Recording live was a challenge. We didn’t have the financing or the time to track anything, and so if one person screwed up a take, that take was not usable. Also, outside of adding a little reverb and mastering the whole sound, there was little that could be done to the takes after the recording date. However, we managed to record all nine songs in just under eight hours, and finished with a product that both Jason and I were extremely pleased with.

That pretty much brings us to date, but please keep checking back as we hope to be able to report more in the very near future.

2/19/04

Show Me The Money
Okay, so now the demo record barely represents the show anymore, which I think is excellent news. It has been approximately one year since we recorded live in that little studio in New Jersey, and the show has grown and developed more than I could have imagined.

In February of 2003, Jason and I started planning for a Spring reading of Jack & Jill The Musical. We felt that the show was far enough along to present it and hopefully give audience to a bidding war between New York’s top producers, all wanting to move us directly to the Shubert. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, because the show we have now is infinitely better than the version we did at the reading. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Getting Our Ducks In A Row
Outside of the boring challenges of producing the reading ourselves (I could have more easily given birth to a platypus), the largest and most important “duck” to get in a row was the cast.

In the role of Jill, we originally had Liz McConahay (Cabaret, The Full Monty), and we were very excited. If you have seen Liz’s work, you know that she is an amazing performer with killer comic timing and a sincerity that captivates. However, in the first week of rehearsals, due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, Liz had to back out.

I was a bit panicked. Jill is the lead, extremely challenging vocally and dramatically. I put calls out and picked my friends’ brains. One brain proved fruitful—my friend, Daniel Frank Kelly, said that my description of Jill’s requirements sounded perfect for Felicia Finley (Aida, The Wild Party, The Life). At the time, Felicia was performing Amneris in Aida on Broadway and I had no connection to her—no friend in the ensemble, no former college classmate, nothing!

Let me just impart this word of wisdom that I have learned repeatedly in this business—“always ask…the worst they can say is ‘no.’”

I got online, looked her name up in the white pages, and cold called her. I left her a message, and she called me back that same day. We met for coffee so that I could give her the script/score/demo, and met one of the sweetest people in New York. She immediately agreed to do the reading, and has continued to be one of the largest supporters of the project, consistently going out of her way to help advance the progress of the piece.

As Jill, let me just say that Felicia embodies everything that Jason and I wanted in our heroine. Those of you who have seen her perform know that her voice is amazing (she belts very very high), but her greatest contribution to Jack & Jill is her quirky sense of humor and stellar comic timing. From the first rehearsal, I knew she understood the off-kilter humor of the show, and what’s more, she reveled in it. We had found a Jill with staying power.

To find out more about Felicia, check out her website at:
http://www.geocities.com/feliciafinley/

Duck...duck...Jack!
Equally important was casting the part of Jack, the part that worried me the most. You see, Jack has to be played with such extreme sincerity, I feared that he might come across boring. Since he can’t play the laughs, I was afraid that Jack’s humor could be lost if the actor didn’t find the funny essence of our innocent hero.

Enter Jay Douglas (Miss Saigon, The Full Monty). Originally, Jay was recommended to us by Liz McConahay (see above). We were down to the wire on this one too, not having found an acceptable choice for the part. We offered the role to Jay after only a singing audition, and therefore, didn’t know what to expect from him acting-wise. I needn’t have worried.

Without exaggerating, I have never had a character and an actor more married in my mind than in this case. Jay is the embodiment of Jack for me. His portrayal of the dimwitted but ultimately sagely Jack actually inspired me to write him an act one soliloquy in the revision. And just like his co-star, Jay’s belief in the project was staggering—he was actually a brand new daddy getting about two hours of sleep a night between caring for the baby with his wife and huddling with his headphones quietly learning his music in lieu of sleep. Once again, we had found the perfect performer for the part, and similar to his role, he has a heart of gold.

The Supporting Fowl
The roles of Bo Peep and Georgy were actually case well before Jack or Jill. In the part of Bo Peep, I had cast my good friend, Kathy Pecevich, an extremely talented actress/singer who Jason and I had worked with on The News In Revue. The wonderful thing about Kathy is that I can hear her saying the lines before she ever does. It turns out that she would actually have the hardest role because, as I learned from the reading, Bo Peep was the least well-written of the characters—But more on that later.

Georgy Porgy was to be played by Victor Hawks (Urinetown), a Broadway actor with a booming voice that you feel in your bones and a virtually endless range. I had worked with Victor years ago in Rochester, NY, but never really thought of him for Georgy until I saw him go on for Hunter Foster as Bobby Strong in Urinetown. Outside of being just plain damn funny, Victor’s musicality and penchant for vocal fun were aspects of Georgy that we needed to fulfill his function as narrator and singer of jazz.

Jason and I had decided to use only piano for the reading, but the jazz trio that the show requires participates throughout the script and score. Therefore, we had to cast The Three Blind Mice. We managed to get three very talented performers—Jason Weston (Mamma Mia!), Derek Gatts, and Brian Golub. Their dedication to the project in roles that will eventually be filled by musicians was essential and greatly appreciated.

And The Money Kept Rolling Out
A reading costs about as much as a co-op. Who knew?

Seriously, Jason and I went a great deal over budget. Enter the parents. Thanks Mom and Dad Falzone and Dad Loffredo. We spent a lot more time rehearsing than we had anticipated. Mostly on the score. A score that is very complicated, but which the cast enthusiastically embraced and worked very hard to master.

Needless to say, there can be no price tag on the amount of knowledge that came out of the reading. The performance dates being the two days following the 2003 Tony Awards, we did not receive the amount of industry attendance that we had hoped for, but in hindsight, I’m glad. The audience we did have provided reactions and feedback necessary to move Jack & Jill to its next step, greatly revising the script and score.

You Have a Mighty Long Duck
Yes, yes, the first act was too long. We hadn’t really had a solid run through to gauge just how long…and I did cut things…I swear. But alas, I sat there (stood really…I couldn’t have sat down during the reading if you staple-gunned my privates to an E-Z Boy) during the first reading and yearned to make on-the-spot cuts throughout the first half hour of the show. Oh well.

Getting to the second act, though, was a truly wonderful experience. It really flowed, was a good length, and had very little “fat” on it. “Hey!” I thought, “Most shows have to worry about the second act. This isn’t so bad.”

And it was true. Given my choice of major flaws, I’d take an overwritten first act with too much exposition in trade for a strong second act with great payoffs and a solid ending. And that’s what we had.

Opinions Are Like…
…I’ll let you fill in the rest. We had encouraged everyone in the audience to e-mail us with their feedback and a lot of people did. At one point, I turned to Jason and said, “If we listen to everything that somebody liked, we have a hit and we shouldn’t touch a thing; if we listen to everything that somebody didn’t like, we should start over.”

Don’t get me wrong. We appreciated and thoroughly considered every piece of feedback that we received. Personally, I was excited to get different people’s perspectives on the problems I knew existed. However, as all writers know, only you can sift through all of the opinions and decide which ones to develop and just how to implement them.

The resounding response to the reading was amazement at how far along Jack & Jill was for a first reading. Granted, it wasn’t as far along as we had thought or hoped, but I couldn’t have asked for a bigger sense of accomplishment or a greater feeling of anticipation and adventure heading into the rewrites. Jack & Jill’s story had just begun…

To Goose Or Not To Goose
Fortunately, Jason and I were working together again that summer on The News In Revue in the Berkshires. It proved to be an incredibly productive summer. I set out to address every moment of the show. The first issue brought up from the reading was the presence of Mother Goose. Across the board, everyone wanted to feel her presence in a more palpable way. It was interesting, I found that most people that actually wanted to see Mother Goose—to have her as a character—were people 45 and older. Nobody younger minded that you never saw her.

Either way, I refused. I would work to make her tyranny more felt without resorting to adding her as a character. I felt very strongly about that, and wouldn’t fully accomplish that until the next re-write.

The largest problem, of course, was that the top of the show was exposition heavy. We didn’t get to Jack and Jill’s first meeting quickly enough. It ended up being less simple than that, but more on that later. I set about stream-lining the opening number and first scene as well as re-writing the second song in the show. Little did I realize that I had produced a different version of the same problem. The up side is the new second song. Where the show used to have a musically complicated quartet called “Eyes To The Sky, Feet On The Ground” (okay, perhaps it was lyrically complicated as well), we now had a Sesame Street-esque ditty called “Nursery Rhyme Math.” Jason and I were satisfied and we moved on.

Not Flying Solo Anymore
One of my realizations from the reading was how weakly Bo Peep was written. Or perhaps I should say inconsistently. Those of you who have read all of this (God help you! Get a life!), remember that I said that “Bo Peep’s Lament” was written before anything else. Huge problem! The song is biting, sarcastic, and critical of Mother Goose and the world she rules over; throughout the rest of the show, Bo Peep is positive and believes in the land of rhyme. I was so married to this song that I had overlooked the fact that it was no longer appropriate for Bo Peep’s character to sing. Not to mention that it slowed the action of the play like a kidney stone.

Bo Peep’s solo was taken away, and I really beefed up her positive outlook—something that I couldn’t do before because her lament was holding me back. With that in mind, I gave Bo Peep a dream too, something to work for during the show. Given her optimism, she would believe that once she found all of her sheep, she could get a fairy tale too.

I cannot tell you how much this flushed out the character of Bo Peep. To my surprise I didn’t need to take away her quick wit and acerbic commentary, which was something I was afraid would have to go, but witty and acerbic people have dreams too. And the best part of all of this was that it opened up the possibility of adding back in “The Truth About Fairy Tails” (a Jill solo cut during rehearsals for the reading—see, I told you I cut stuff!) as a duet between Peep and Jill. How happy was I? It all worked!

So yes, Bo Peep lost her solo, but she gained a character.

You Don’t Know Jack
Ironically, the title of a song in the show, this was the consensus we were getting regarding Jack’s character. Or, at least, we don’t know him soon enough. In the reading version, Jack’s depth doesn’t really emerge until Act Two. I got a bit of feedback saying that Jack seemed a bit two-dimensional until the second act. As I mentioned before, I truly think Jay Douglas’ portrayal of Jack is brilliant, and so I realized that I had work to do.

I had already wanted to give Jay an Act One solo, but didn’t know what its function would be. Now I had one. It had to let us into Jack’s character, pulling from both his past and his present. I decided the best spot for the song would be his first conversation with Georgy after meeting Jill. This would be a way for Jack to “win” Georgy over to his side. At the same time, the audience would get to know Jack a lot better and honestly believe that love can happen so quickly.

The song is called “I Get It,” a bouncy patter song that reveals a great deal of depth without robbing Jack of his absurd naiveté. It is actually one of Act One’s best numbers, and has become one of my favorites in the show.

A Cut Cut Here, And A Cut Cut There
Here a cut, there a cut, everywhere a cut cut. Boy, did we cut. We cut whole musical numbers (“Eyes To The Sky, Feet On The Ground,” “Bo Peep’s Lament,” “There’s Always Something Else,” etc.), we cut reprises, and we cut verses from almost every one of the songs that remained.

Jason and I worked tirelessly to make every song, every moment efficient. I read the script twice a week, continuously editing, cutting, rewording. Jason was pulling his hair out, knowing that when he heard me run up the stairs that I would have another “brilliant” way of connecting two important sections while alleviating the need for an unnecessary one that just happened to be a musical transition. He began calling me Dr. Frankenstein. We discussed, we argued, we filed for divorce until we realized we weren’t married…

Regardless, by the end of the summer, we had trimmed the show by fourteen script pages.

Really Great Baked Goods
Our re-writes continued into the Fall. Jason was finishing “I Get It” and edits on the score, and I was up to reading the script three times a week (one of those time, out loud, playing all of the characters). When all was completed, we decided to have a table reading in November. We managed to reunite the principle cast with the exception of Victor Hawks (Jason Weston of mouse fame stepped up to play Georgy) and congregated at Jason Loffredo’s apartment in Queens (God help us all—the 7 train was running express into Queens that day due to construction).

Jason taught the new musical material, and when people weren’t learning material, they enjoyed rice crispie treats that Jason Loffredo had made. Really GREAT rice crispie treats. Never say that we don’t know how to keep actors happy. The reading went very well, and when we asked for feedback, boy did we get it. Both the positive and negative, all constructive, rushed forth from the cast. I madly took notes to sift through later, and once again marveled at how much these people believed in the potential of our show. It was apparent in every compliment, and even more so in every criticism, and it inspired me to start re-writing as soon as possible.

Another Openin’…
The biggest problem was still the first 21 pages of the show. I was in a quandary because basically, the whole opening number and the whole first scene gave the audience the same information. Now, I was always taught that in cases like that, let the song do it and cut the scene; but one of the most consistent responses we got from the June reading was that the first scene was extremely funny and very strong. What to do?

“Change the opening number!” The cast was unanimous at the table reading. Ideas began to bounce around the room of how to use the basic song from the opening number, but alter it structurally and conceptually to set up Nursery Rhyme Land and impart different information to the audience. Granted the task was exciting, but it was also daunting. I couldn’t start it right away…

So the next day I set up camp at The Coffee Pot and began hashing through the opening number. Four hours later I had a new structure that encapsulated the births of Jack and Jill, their childhoods, and their maturation into ingénues. It also introduced Nursery Rhyme Land more effectively than the old opening, allowing the audience to see the land in action. In addition, Mother Goose figured prominently in moving the new opening along (we actually see the events leading to Georgy’s and Bo Peep’s rhymes being written) which finally addressed the “palpable Mother Goose issue” in a satisfactory way. All of these changes required Jason to write a Mother Goose Theme that we would actually end up implanting throughout the score, a new section for Georgy to sing, a rhyming patter section to show Jack’s and Jill’s first experiences with not rhyming, and a myriad of transitions.

What we ended up with was truly wonderful—a visually and contextually interesting opening number that introduced the show’s world in a very general way and gradually specified its subject until we rested on Jack and Jill’s nursery rhyme, which is what the rest of the show would deal with. In effect, we had created the prologue that I had always intended the opening number to be. And it only took three and a half years.

Adding Some Fowl Language
In response to the June reading, I had received some flack for the bad language in the show. I had always written Jill with a potty mouth. It fit her, it was part of who she was. Georgy and Peep swore too, never Jack. I thought it was appropriate in order to convey the realness of these unreal characters. And since nobody could articulate why they disliked the language, I chalked it up to people just being oversensitive. I mean, Avenue Q has adult language all over the place…look at Rent…and if 42nd Street isn’t obscene, well then…well, I digress.

Needless to say, I disregarded that piece of criticism and moved on. But at the table reading, Jay Douglas said that the naughty language was jarring to him. He continued by saying that it threw him “out of the world.” Suddenly, that made sense. Explaining further, the others agreed, that it seemed as if Nursery Rhyme Land would have its own set of taboo words that wouldn’t be shared with our world. So I ran with it.

I didn’t get very far. I rewrote the script giving everyone nursery rhyme swears, and it didn’t work. It was only funny or cute when Jack said them. I left if for a few days, and then it hit me! I had to be consistent with my original concept that sweet, pure Jack would never curse, and if these new nonsensical words were to truly be considered “fowl” language, then Jack could never use them. Therefore, all of Jack’s exclamations went back to “darn,” “drat,” and “geez,” leaving the coarser “Goosedippit” and “curds and whey!” to the foul-mouthed Jill, brassy Bo Peep, and macho Georgy. All of a sudden, it worked. I was thrilled because the whole convention came across more specific and a hell of a lot cleverer. It didn’t hurt that the whole show became more marketable—Hello, family audience!

With all of these changes made, we regrouped in January at Jason’s (in Queens, God help us) to read/sing through the first 21 pages. It was a hugely successful day, and everyone loved the new stuff. The new prologue worked magnificently and the first scene and song (the new “Nursery Rhyme Math”) kicked the show off strongly. Everyone agreed that Jack & Jill The Musical was definitely ready to be shopped and produced. Well, that should be simple, right?

Are You A Musician Or A Mouse?
Throughout all of the rewrites, Jason had also been working on the orchestrations and setting up a musicians’ rehearsal just to hear the score out loud musically. Now, Jason is responsible for the piano and bass parts, but he had been working with a fabulous drummer, Joe Choroszewski, in order to create the drum book. For the better part of a year, Joe had been working on a boat, but with the assistance of tape recordings and the U.S. postal system, he and Jason had managed to complete the score.

Jason decided to rent the studio in Jersey (the same one we recorded the demo in) and found a piano player and bass player to round out the trio (Joe was on drums). With Jason conducting, they rehearsed and played through the show without singers. It was brilliant to hear, and really reiterated the idea that the jazz trio will add an infinite amount of style and strength to the show. I can’t wait to dress them like mice and have them sing!

DAT’s A Rap
Currently, Jason and I are preparing materials to submit to the Rusty Magee Music Project. However, one of the requirements is to submit at least half of the musical material on a CD or tape. Well, there’s so much new stuff, we’ve decided that it will be worth making a rough recording of some of it. We’ve secured a rehearsal studio, Jason’s DAT recorder, and the cast from the table reading and have a long list that we’ll get through as much of as we can in five hours. I’ll let you know what happens.

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