Advice from the Trenches
Musical-theatre vets offer hard-earned lessons for newcomers to the field
By Terry Berliner
Neil Bartram and Brian Hill: There has to be some bankable element to the project you are working on in order for it to get past the ‘pitch’ stage. As new writers, our names are meaningless as a selling point, and unfortunately just being good writers isn’t enough. We had the experience where a project of ours that was creatively very well regarded got stalled in the workshop process because it had a large cast and risky subject matter. The theatre takes a tighter hold on the purse strings when the risk is high, and in this case, they got cold feet. It’s awful to think that you have to cater your creativity towards these fiscal elements, but as unproven writers it is just a reality.”
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Hill: “Just keep writing. Work on many things. It’s easy to get bogged down in a single project, but putting all your eggs in one basket is unwise. If you have a number of ideas or pieces to pitch, you increase your chances. Besides, it can be enlightening and refreshing to return to an old piece after working on a new one.”
Bartram: “I will pass on the best advice that I have been given: Stay true to your instincts as a writer, because they are what make you unique. At every turn there will be ‘experts’ who offer their opinions and you will want to follow their advice, but in the end you have to be the final judge on what is right for you and your work.”
“Embrace what regional theatres can do for you. New work can find a life in the regions. Because of the way musicals work, it’s very easy to become New York-centric. There is so much amazing development that is going on in the regions. You get productions. Things get up on their feet. You can really see your work and start exposing audiences across the country to new work. There are so many resources. Our membership is hungry for new product. And many commercial producers have now started creating partnerships with those regional theatres because it allows for the development of a new musical to be financially feasible.”
“It’s important that your work be good and that you are good at presenting it. Even if you’re not a performer, I’d recommend any writer learn the necessary skills to be able to sing and read their work for potential producers. It’s a good thing to have some, if not all, the songs recorded. It’s costly and time-consuming, but people want to listen to and read your musical after you’ve presented it. It’s much better to present your material live rather than sending a script and CD. If you can arrange a meeting in a room with a piano, then do so. Live presentation beats out CDs every time. Just be sure you can give a good performance.”
Steven Lutvak and Robert Freedman:
“The one thing that we will never do is work on something that we don’t have the rights to. Hello, are you listening out there? There are too many heartbreaking stories about people who have done that. Working on a musical is heartbreaking enough.”
“You come into a collaboration with a knowledge of how you think things can work best. Then it’s all about how to work with that specific individual/artist. You can’t force a square peg in a round hole. Some writers have an easy give-and-take about the script, the structure of a script, even down to individual words in dialogue. Others don’t.”
“Be bold so that your work demands attention be paid to it. We live in a time when a night in the theatre on Broadway (with dinner and parking) for a family of four is going to cost upwards of $500. We can’t go back to the Golden Age, when the economics allowed for a real productive, creative industry that could exist in many forms, shapes and sizes. Writers need to know who their audience is, and whatever it is, go for it boldly with great stories.
Invite collaboration and leadership to the process. The ability to have a strong leader at the front of your process helps you break down walls. Musicals are about bringing a lot of people together to focus on one mission and one clear objective. Legendary producers like Harold Prince, Joseph Papp and André Bishop have helped artists get better at what they do. Engaging in collaboration with good leadership, where all the artists and the producing team respects each other, and trusts each other is fundamental to reaching your goal. All of that is as important as having capital to support the process until it reaches its natural conclusion.”
“I believe that the musical theatre is one of universal values—good art, good story, good tunes. It often has great entertainment value. Does a tree fall in the forest if you really don’t see it or hear it? In this case, does a musical exist if it’s performed once and put on a shelf because it’s an esoteric piece that the public will not pay money to see? Eventually, for a piece to be successful, the public has to pay money to see it. I think any playwright eventually has to feel that way. They’re not writing to put it on a shelf.
"The smartest composers, playwrights and lyricists are those who understand that after you add a director, designers, actors and an audience, they have to be involved in the process from a different point-of-view. It’s not a finished product when it leaves their pen. They need to be flexible. They need to embrace the different perspectives that all of these people bring to the project.”
“You can musicalize almost anything you want, as long as there is passionate feeling. Anybody that says, ‘That’s not the topic for a musical’ has forgotten Sweeney Todd. Once you’ve found your subject, written (and most likely rewritten) your musical, you have to be patient as well as the new show emerges. Things develop at their own speed. You will only become aware of problems in storytelling when they make themselves obvious suddenly. Then you look at your collaborators and say, ‘What were we thinking?’ Laugh at yourselves and rewrite.”
“Being a parent, I know that the power of wishful thinking is unbelievably strong. The distinction between I wish it were ready, and this works, is surprisingly easy to confuse. The advice I would give to others is to be very frank—what’s important is the piece itself and what it needs. The hardest thing is to call it what you think it is exactly. I’ve always regretted the times that I haven’t done that. If you think it’s not ready to go, find the voice to say that. Put it on the table.”
“Duke University is a one-hour flight away from New York. It’s really convenient. But at the same time the atmosphere is very relaxed, protected, quiet, and a great place to come and get work done. If we do work that’s good enough, for a long-enough time, the word will get out that this is a great place to develop new work. The artists who have come to work with us leave feeling that it has been a good experience. I want more than anything else for there to be a level of confidence that when producing partners and artists come to Duke there’s going to be a certain level of quality. It’s not to say that we are anywhere near perfect. But we are continually improving what we have to offer. I’m not the only one at the university invested in making this successful. The new president Dick Brodhead has stated that one of his priorities is the arts. Under his leadership theatre is really at the heart of Duke University.”
“I think our musicals [at Lincoln Center Theater] have been labeled as serious. But I tend to think of them as being grown-up. A lot of the musicals that I have worked on have socially conscious stories. I like characters who are flawed, or who are working out problems through the telling of their story. The commercial theatre certainly has enough opportunities for pure entertainment and pure fun. I think that we are trying to fill a void.”