Feeding the Dream

Just because the songwriting team of Caroline Murphy and Brett Macias live in New York, it doesn't mean they've got it easy

By Terry Berliner

I've been working with the songwriting team of Caroline Murphy and Brett Macias—both are relatively recent graduates of New York University's graduate musical-theatre writing program—for almost three years. We met through a mutual friend (which is often how it goes in this business), and our collaboration has blossomed so naturally that we've taken to repeating a catch-phrase about our coming together: "Coincidence? I think not."

Most writers of new musicals know the moment they got the itch to write—they can even tell you what musical they saw that changed everything. For Brett Macias, that musical was The Who's Tommy—a fact that tells you how young he is (28). Caroline Murphy (also 28) was nudged into writing musicals by her twin brother, Scott, who had attended NYU before her.

Possessed with abundant talent and training, Murphy and Macias also come armed with the necessary chutzpah. As Murphy says, "Who else besides musical-theatre writers would be willing to put down on the page 'the chandelier falls,' and then expect that to actually happen?"

In our time together, the three of us have been working on readings of several new musicals: Tuesday (a fantasy-versus-reality investigation of violence in our schools, inspired by the shootings at Columbine); Fishing the Moon (about a school of fish that keeps fighting against the current of life, until one adventurous fish reveals that it's easier to surrender and let the current take you); and Beneath the Surface (about an ordinary guy who makes a huge mistake—he rapes a woman he doesn't know—then digs to the center of the earth to escape the consequences, only to come face-to-face with his victim and his own demons).

As you may deduce from these capsule descriptions, Murphy and Macias aren't writing musicals for your typical commercial ticket-buying audience. (Or maybe they are: Have we forgotten Sweeney Todd?) Their aspiration, they will tell you, is to write original musicals for today. As Murphy jokes about their edgy subject matter, "Brett and I shoot ourselves in the foot with the kinds of things we write—full-length musicals about a school shooting and a rapist? The audience spends half the time hating our leading characters."

Since the first production of Beneath the Surface last spring at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Murphy, Macias and I have formed our own little united nation of friendship and collaboration. As we moved from project to project, we have weathered some personal storms of our own-broken hearts, drug and alcohol abuse, identity crises, financial woes, crippling sickness, the death of dear friends, Mamma Mia! the movie—and, not the least of these, the difficulties of securing a first production when you are not well-known artists. Since they graduated from NYU in 2005, it's been a rough road in life and art for Macias and Murphy, and I've been privy to those highs and lows.

Originally from Dallas, Caroline Murphy went to college in Amherst, Mass., to study playwriting. She says, "I never really wanted to write a musical song-and-dance number—I'm not in love with the structure that musical theatre demands of you. I am hopeful that the musical itself is evolving, not just to riskier subjects, but to more adventurous forms. I moved from playwriting to musical theatre because I presumed that musical theatre would give me more options of what I could say and how I could say it, and in a lot of ways I've found the opposite to be true."

Brett Macias, originally from Los Angeles, moved to Denver when he was 10 years old. He went to college at Webster University in St. Louis, Mo., as a musical-theatre performance major. Byron Grant, former head of Webster's theatre department, spotted Macias's talent as a composer and made a good call by suggesting that he apply to NYU. Macias says that when he discovered that he could "do more for the art form by writing and building a musical from the ground up" (as opposed to pursuing acting), his path was clearly laid out in front of him.

It was at NYU that Murphy and Macias met when they were assigned to write a short musical together: Coincidence? I think not.

The Colorado production of Beneath the Surface, which I directed, marked the first time a Murphy/Macias project has received a full staging. How did it happen? Since the University of Colorado was my undergraduate alma mater, I had a 25-year friendship with a faculty member, senior instructor and technical director Bob Shannon. He recommended me for a grant from the Roe Green Foundation, which supports artists at the college. (When all was said and done, other monies were needed to mount the production from the university's Graduate Committee for the Arts and Humanities, as well as its Roser Visiting Artist Program.) Part of that grant went to Murphy and Macias, because I knew they could answer my question, "Can you write a new musical in seven months?" with a decisive "Yes."

In today's new-musical development climate, this kind of speed never happens—most writers can expect that it will take between five and ten years to experience a first production. But this was an exception to the rule. Without the benefit of a reading or a workshop, we were immediately thrust into rehearsals, an experience Murphy remembers as "alarmingly stressful." Eight weeks after our Colorado residency began, Beneath the Surface had 10 performances in front of an audience.
The process was both thrilling and traumatic. I would venture to say that every single musical you've ever seen felt that way to its makers, because musicals never come out perfect the first time—never. That's why the out-of-town tryout and the preview period were invented. Once you know what your imperfect baby looks like, you simply have to figure out how to fix it. And that's easier said than done.

To give you a sense of the power and unusual tone of Murphy and Macias's characters, here is an excerpt from the song, "Ax to Grind," that follows the rape in Beneath the Surface. It is sung by the leading lady, called the Red-Headed Woman, to the man who assaulted her:

A woman with an ax, cha-cha-cha
Makes you wonder what went wrong
Last you knew her eyes were closed
Her mouth was shut
You got along.

When the three of us headed home from Boulder, we knew we had a show with a lot of innate challenges. Even Macias's loving mother questioned its potential. But I could see there was something there; it just needed room to mature and emerge in its most truthful form.

What Murphy and Macias needed was an artistic home, a safe haven, a next step. But before that could happen—especially if they wanted to submit their show for consideration at a festival, a producing theatre or an award competition—they needed to make the show better and record some of the songs. No one will look at a musical without at least a sample of some of the music. Fortunately, the week we returned from Boulder, I happened upon music supervisor Steven Bishop at a presentation of some new work at Birdland on Times Square. Bishop said he was looking for new projects. Coincidence? I think not.

Within a matter of weeks, Bishop had generously music-supervised and mixed the recording of six tracks from Beneath the Surface in his tiny apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Friends and friends of friends volunteered their time to perform on the recordings. "In terms of our writing process, actors are ridiculously helpful," Macias says. "Hearing them sing our material tells us if we are communicating clearly."

Thanks to these donations of time and talent, Murphy and Macias finally had a demo that they could use to find support for the continuing development of the show. One place they submitted material (for the second time) was to the prestigious Jonathan Larson Award, given in honor of the late creator of Rent. As many talented writers do, they've also submitted material for the Fred Ebb Award for Musical Theatre Songwriting, Kleban Award and Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre; applications have also gone out to an array of festivals, such as National Alliance for Musical Theater, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Theatre Building Chicago's Stages, the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab and Theater Resources Unlimited.

Macias and Murphy, so far, have not won a single thing.

Yet they persevere. I asked Murphy if it was a challenge to have a twin brother who seems to be ahead of the curve—her sibling is Scott Murphy, the composer and lyricist who, according to Lincoln Center Theater's Ira Weitzman, is on the shortlist of upcoming musical-theatre writers to keep your eye on. Her response was indicative of their relationship: "He's won all the awards—the Rodgers, the Larson and the Daryl Roth Award—but fortunately for us, we're not competitive. His success is my success, in a literal way—I literally borrow money from him! When I sit down and write something, the first thing I think is, 'Would I be okay letting Scott see this?' If I'd be proud to show him, I know it's top-notch."

Like most songwriting teams, Macias and Murphy have collaborative projects brewing outside the partnership—Macias is looking for a male collaborator (because of the subject matter) for work on another musical, and I'm quite sure that someday the Murphy twins will want to write a musical together. Macias says of musical-theatre collaboration, "It's a marriage, and if you expect to be writing with that person for any amount of time, you hopefully love her or him, because in essence you are two people who are baring your souls against the world. In the end, that mutual respect and caring carries you through really hard times, because you are going to fight and disagree."

Indeed, our little nation has weathered several such storms. Happily, Murphy and Macias have recently found another place to call their artistic home, a place where the next draft of Beneath the Surface is in full-scale development: Eliza and Frank Ventura, artistic director and executive artistic director, respectively, of New York's CAP21, which runs a two-year professional musical-theatre training program, opened up their doors to the Beneath the Surface team. So now all they have to do is stick together, rip their musical apart, carve out the excess and put it back together in a way that rings true—and make us feel sympathetic toward the flawed lead character. No small task, but I believe they can do it.

And, in case you think the yellow-brick road that Macias and Murphy have opted to follow has not been sprinkled with small miracles along the way, consider this latest development: Murphy's twin brother, Scott, and his writing partner, Nathan Christensen, are now working on their new musical The Giver side-by-side with Murphy and Macias at CAP21.

Coincidence? I think not.